Sunday, 22 April 2018
From the Runs Secretary, Rupert Goodings:
This article describes the results of our recent survey of members. It should be read in conjunction with Thursday ride changes: introducing the first trials, which introduces some changes to our Thursday rides.
Thursday rides survey – Email introduction
The following text was used to introduce the survey:
The Thursday rides are our most popular rides and they continue to attract new riders. It is a very sociable and enjoyable group. We don't want to lose any of those good features.
But there are three challenges that we would like to address:
- A range of different riding speeds (some a bit faster, some a bit slower) making it difficult for the leaders to keep the group together.
- Big queues, delays and departure chaos at the coffee stops. Again, making it difficult for the leaders to assemble their group to continue the ride.
- Large straggly groups on the road that create unsafe riding conditions causing extra stress on the leaders and making it difficult for motor vehicles to pass the group safely.
I hope this makes it clear that these changes are mostly about ride safety for both the leader and the riders. We have very good leaders and they work hard to make the ride work. But I think we can and should make their job easier and less stressful. I argue that issue (3) is more of an issue for larger groups (8 or more) and that it is exacerbated by the range of riding speeds. Simply put, it is hard to ride in a tidy group when you are having to ride a bit faster than comfortable. For this reason, this survey is focused on the first two issues.
Thursday rides survey – Survey details and results
We want to make some changes to the Thursday rides to make a more enjoyable and a safer ride. We would like to further separate the rides into smaller groups to reduce the delays at the coffee stop and to have a smaller more manageable groups on the road. We are considering various options, including separate coffee stops and different speeds.
This survey is to help us re-organise the rides in a way that matches the sort of ride that you want to do. We plan to trial the most popular changes on the village start and only adopt them if they work. We would then look at making changes to the city start, so we are asking both village and city starters to take part in this survey.
Q1.Do you agree that we need to make some changes to the Thursday rides?
Strongly agree | Agree | Neutral | Disagree | Strongly disagree |
12 | 21 | 4 | 0 | 2 |
Q2. Are you currently a village starter or a city starter?
Village | City | Both | Other |
19 | 11 | 3 | 7 |
Other includes (a) ride direct to coffee and (b) not riding (because ride too fast)
Q3. Proposed change: Split the rides into two different speeds. We think that the group would work better with two different speeds. The current speed is too slow for some and too fast for others. We think separate rides at different speeds would allow more of us to ride at a comfortable speed. Do you agree?
Strongly agree | Agree | Neutral | Disagree | Strongly disagree |
19 | 15 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
Q4. If we split the rides in order to have different speeds, what speed would you prefer to ride?
Slower | Same | Faster | Other |
12 | 10 | 14 | 4 |
Q5. What is your preferred start time in summer? This is for summer rides, when we usually have longer rides.
09:00 | 09:30 | 10:00 | Other |
12 | 25 | 2 | 1 |
Q6. Proposed change: Two different coffee stops. We think two separate coffee stops would help to reduce delays. If we have separate coffee stops we would still hope to meet up at the lunch stop. Do you agree that we should have two different coffee stops?
Strongly agree | Agree | Neutral | Disagree | Strongly disagree |
11 | 15 | 7 | 5 | 2 |
Q7. Where should the second coffee stop be located?
Further away | Same distance/Different café | Closer | Same distance/Same café | Other |
5 | 17 | 2 | 9 | 7 |
Other includes (a) same café but different times (b) "depends" (c) bring your own flask
ANALYSIS – How the survey results vary depending on the starting place
Preferences | Village starters | City starters | Both | Other |
Faster speed ride | 5 | 8 | 0 | 1 |
Same speed ride | 7 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
Slower speed ride | 6 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
Preferences | Village starters | City starters | Both | Other |
Faster speed ride and 09:00 start | 1 | 3.5 | 0 | 0 |
Same speed ride and 09:00 start | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Slower speed ride and 09:00 start | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
Preferences | Village starters | City starters | Both | Other |
Faster speed ride and 09:30 start | 4 | 4.5 | 0 | 1 |
Same speed ride and 09:30 start | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Slower speed ride and 09:30 start | 4 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
Preferences | Village starters | City starters | Both | Other |
Same coffee stop (happy to queue) | 6 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
Same distance but different coffee stop | 7 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
Further coffee stop | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 |