Cycling in the City

Newcastle City Council’s “Newcastle’s Fit for Cycling” programme aimed to increase and sustain active travel across the city.  The Public Health and Transport officers within Newcastle Council approached AskFuse for help in mapping and evaluating change in sustainable travel and health impacts as a result of the project.

AskFuse supported this enquiry by publicising the enquiry across the Fuse network of researchers.  Fuse researchers from Newcastle University, led by Dr Vera Araujo-Soares, teamed up with Public Health and Transport officers within Newcastle Council to devise a two stage research project.  The first stage from 2014-2015 developed and tested an evaluation framework for ‘Cycling in the City’, which encourages people to take up cycling, particularly in hard-to-reach groups such as such as young women, older adults and members of the black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.  The second stage was to apply for National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funding to provide a comprehensive assessment of the different interventions within the ‘Newcastle Fit for Cycling’ programme.   

This evaluation, supported by AskFuse, resulted in: 

• Collaboration between Newcastle Council and Fuse researchers to apply for external funding to the NIHR Public Health Research programme.
• Increasing the regional research capability and capacity by funding a project Research Associate
• Designing an adaptable assessment tool with core variables on health and physical activity, but with the flexibility of location-specific adaptations for different interventions.
• Systems mapping existing sustainable travel interventions and projects in the region.

Fuse academics and the Council plan to collaborate in future research, as Fuse researchers are involved in international research into sustainable transport.

For more information, please contact:
AskFuse manager: Peter van der Graaf
Phone: 01642 342757
Email: p.van.der.Graaf@tees.ac.uk

Last modified: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:36:45 GMT