It is highly recommend that you watch this ten minute film made by Edinburgh Critical Mass.  It was compiled for the exhibition Pedal Power held last year and features Critical Mass and other forms of cycling campaigning in an historic and hilly city.

Could you rock up on your bike and cycle around in a group to demonstrate the humanity and popularity of cycling?  You have an opportunity, as:

Critical Mass St Albans is being relaunched on Friday 28th March.  Start at the Old Town Hall (St Albans Museum) at 6pm and go for a short and slow ride around, bells and whistles and happiness encouraged! 

To reinforce the benefits of cycling, watch this video from GCN on the risks and benefits of cycling - with some great data to support cycling. It also has some interesting facts about arachnophobia...

The Fete du Velo will take place in Redbourn on Sunday 6 July 2025 and STACC has been given a spot in the CycleZone.  We cannot staff our stand without your help!  Please get in touch if you could be in Redbourn on 6 July and spend some time hanging around being a cycle campaigner.  It is very easy and the festival is brilliant.  Picture above shows our campaigner mingling on the Hertfordshire Cycling Walking and Wheeling stand in 2024.

At long last, the Traffic Regulation Order has been made for extending north the current 50-mph zone on the A5183 St Albans / Redbourn Road, which ends at the junction with Hogg End Lane, and extending the 40-mph zone to just south of the roundabout outside Redbourn, and will be enforceable from 14th March.

The changes have been touted as 'speed limit decrease' - which is true so far as replacing the National Speed Limit with 50mph limit goes.  However, the 40mph zone is now extended all the way to the roundabout past the petrol station and the Chequers pub - so an increase from the existing 30mph!  STACC formally objected to the increase, which was proposed to extend over the roundabout and towards the village.  Objections from STACC and others have achieved a slight modification -  the roundabout itself is 30mph and the entry into Redbourn remain at 30-mph limit too.

Once confirmed, TROs become legally enforceable. This means putting up signs and road markings to inform drivers of the new rules, so expect to see some new signage soon. You can see in the photograph above, there are now temporary speed-limit signs just south of the Hogg End junction  which can easily be removed.

The purpose of green boxes at the Victoria Street and London Road junctions with Marlborough Road is clearer since  signs have been put up.  You can continue to turn right from the main traffic lane if you wish, but you now have the option to turn right in two stages.Here on Victoria Street, to get into Upper Marlborough Road, you can swing left in to the green box on Marlborough Road, turn yourself ready to then go straight ahead when the Marlborough Road lights go green.

Essex County Council have a nice 'technical' explainer here.  These two-stage turns are usually used for very large intersections, but are helpful wherever you don't want to have the pressure of motor traffic when you make a turn.

As a consequence of the works on Boundary Way (discussed on the right), there's been some beneficial early improvments. You may not recognise the location of the photographs above; they were taken on the northern leg of Buncefield Lane, Hemel Hempstead, which became prohibited to through motor traffic late last year, after being a favourite spot for fly-tippers for many years. Gone is the dark, dank linear rubbish tip! The rubbish has been cleared, the hedges have been trimmed and the winter's mud and leaves have been swept away leaving a smooth wide surface for walking, wheeling and cycling. Moreover, if you cycle here at night, you will find that the lane is now well lit.             

Dacorum LCWIP

The draft Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan for Dacorum Borough Council is now published for comments.  The LCWIPs are important for unlocking government funding for active travel projects, and the government's brief to local authorities is 'aim high', and in particular to create a network for active travel and tackle the barriers that discourage walking and cycling, such as large junctions and busy fast main roads.

Member action: get in there and get commenting, especially with positive comments and suggestions for enhancing the Plan.  Commenting closes  on 23rd March.

Work is progressing on this Active-Travel Fund (i.e. national-government funded) scheme that is part of a route that can be used to link St Albans to Hemel Hempstead and the lanes beyond. It is great that Herts County Council (HCC) is being forward thinking and setting a high standard for active-travel provision. The Maylands industrial area has been and continues to be extensively redeveloped.  You will be aware also of the huge East Hemel Crown Estates land proposal.  HCC has been determined to provide easy and attractive active-travel routes in advance, rather than lagging behind the development and expansion while people get into car-commuting habits. Part  of this is the conversion of the roundabout on Boundary Way to be Dutch-style (and therefore friendlier to cyclists & pedestrians) which is now underway. Although the road (and now the footway) between the roundabout and the northern leg of Buncefield Lane is currently closed, cyclists can get through using the newly constructed  cycle-path alongside the north verge (see above).

Sadly, not everyone can work out that cars cause congestion, and offering alternatives to car commuting relieves congestion as well as achieving all the personal and public-health, environmental and economic benefits of active travel.  The scheme has been getting a lot of vocal criticism. Because the people who oppose providing for walking and cycling are so loud, it is assumed that they are the majority.  However, they are not, as Professor Ian Walker's research has confirmed.

Member action: take every opportunity to speak up in favour of active travel, and leave positive comments on social media; be the not-so-silent majority.

The Cycling Facility Register (formally known as the Cycling Asset Register) has been developed alongside the LCWIPs, as a tool to identify existing provision and gaps.  The Herts CC team is very keen to have ongoing input - the register is designed to help everyone understand what infrastructure is available for cycling and what is planned. It also provides the way to suggest missing parts of the network which can be considered for future works.  So do contribute; you can find at this link under its new name of Cycle Facility Register.

Five of the county's ten Districts / Boroughs now have approved Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs), one is being reviewed and three are currently being developed.  The odd one out is Broxbourne which is being separately developed. The LCWIPs are iterative rather than fixed; they are intended to be periodically reviewed and updated.

The Nickey Line in December and now fully cleared after STACC reported the absolute state of it to the Green Spaces Team.

Member action: report infrastructure defects and see the results!  We have updated the Links page, so it is now fairly* easy to report issues.

*That qualifying 'fairly' is because responsibility for managing highways is not always clear.  Currently the District Council is managing highways verges and trees for the County Council, and we are pleased to say, doing a good job!