St Albans Car Free Day 2009 - Success

Picture by phatcontroller

St Albans 2009 Car Free Day (announced in an earlier post ) was welcomed as a modest success. In this, the first year that St Albans District Council (SADC) has promoted the event, the aim had not been to attempt to reduce the volume of car traffic in the city.

In the end, four stalls were manned - STACC's own, Transition St Albans [see], Intalink (Public Transport) [see] & SADC.

There was to have been a Travelwise/Intalink bus as well, but it is thought to have broken down. (Happily my bike showed better reliability in transporting the contents of the STACC display.)

I must thank the 14 STACC members who turned up to assist and support. It was a remarkable turnout at such short notice & on a working day. Some of you stretched your lunch hours to be there. Your presence was extremely encouraging and generated much additional public interest in our stall and in the whole event. In fact we ran out of stocks of free maps and literature well before the end of the event.

The Slow Bike Race was - significantly - won by St Albans' cycling Mayor - Councillor Chris Oxley, STACC member Pat was second. I am at pains to stress that Pat (who had been much fancied to win) was NOT under team orders allow the Mayor to win.

I believe that SADC will be encouraged by the support given & will, we hope, be able to host a larger well planned event in future years - STACC will be urging them to do so.

UPDATE - 29/7/2010 - by STACC Tom

Date for CAR FREE DAY 2010 is Sunday 26th September.

(Provisional date had been given as  19th Sept - so please change your diaries.)