BIG INTERVIEW
‘ALL FORMS OF MICROMOBILITY, INCLUDING E-SCOOTERS AND E-CYCLES, ARE ABSOLUTELY THE FUTURE’
“When I first came to Bikeability two years ago, I looked at the data and we were reaching about 1% of children with SEND on our courses. And national stats are about 15% of children in school have SEND. That to me was woefully inadequate, and we need to provide inclusive Bikeability. “We’ve done huge amounts of work. We’ve invested in projects to deliver Bikeability differently to children. We have invested in additional top-up funding, so providers can bring in extra staff. “We’ve got partnerships with Wheels for All centres so that we can provide Bikeability through those, and we’re also about to roll out some mandatory training for our instructors so that they can do more work. “All of these things take more time, more money and more resource and efforts. But that’s how you get to see change with those groups. And then the final group is parents and carers, they hold the key to the bike sheds. We can give children the confidence, the skills, the independence, even the cycle, but if a parent says: ‘You’re not cycling, I’m too concerned’, then we need to do more work with them, which is why we’ve invested in family training to show parents together the skills that their children can have and how they can help their children to develop cycling skills as well as how to cycle with confidence.”
Current trends “All forms of micromobility, including e-scooters and e-cycles, are absolutely the future,” continued Cherry. “We obviously need to see what’s now going to happen with planned transport legislation, with the new administration, but with the potential proposals to widen the definitions and to even think about lowering the age range for children to use them legally on the road. “We agree and support that, but we want there to be training and of course we would suggest it should be mandatory for everyone before they take on any cycle or scooter. “We are the industry best placed to do that. We’ve already got instructors who teach e-scooters and e-cycles
www.bikebiz.com October 2022 | 23
to adults, happening all over the country, happening with some of the private providers, for example Beryl down in Bournemouth.
“They work with our Bikeability instructors to do training for people going out on Beryl e-scooters. So we’ve already got the industry and the systems in place, it just needs that additional funding and rollout to make sure that we can do that for everyone but we strongly support micromobility in the future.” On what retailers can do, Cherry said they need to be
having conversations at point of sale to assess the rider’s ability. “That’s something that we could skill up retailers to do. You can have in store checks certainly and then if they’re real novice riders, ask at the point of sale if they’ve considered cycle training. “I’d also like to see the industry come together with Government to look at different forms of e-learning. I think the Transport for London cycle skills modules are excellent, but obviously that’s London centric. “It’d be great if retailers could get together and we could produce something all together that says, if you’re a novice rider, get some face-to-face training. If you’re coming back to cycling, and maybe just need a bit of a refresher, I think we’ve got the opportunity to do things on e-learning.”
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