Cyclescape is an online campaigning toolkit that is being developed to help cycle campaigners to work more effectively by creating an accessible record of infrastructure issues reported by campaigners. It also pulls in planning application data for campaigners to see in context, and allows the sharing of examples of best-practice from around the UK to assist the discussion of solutions to local problems. Cyclescape has a blog which gives more information about the development and progress of Cyclescape, as well as providing a useful guide for new users. You can set areas of interest on Cyclescape so that you are notified of any new activity in your locality, enabling you to keep up-to-date more easily.

At the time of writing this article (Feb. 2015) Push Bikes has just set up a Cyclescape group to help us keep track of infrastructure issues around Birmingham and Solihull, so that we can report these to Birmingham City Council and track the progress of improvements as they are made. Our group can be found here: https://birmingham.cyclescape.org/. This group is open for anyone to join - you do not have to be a paid-up Push Bikes member to do so - and will be regularly monitored. Please do have join up and start logging issues in your area.

Something that Push Bikes will be exploring in the coming months is how to use Cyclescape to engage with councillors about cycling issues in their local areas. For councillors who do not cycle, the barriers to cycle use are not normally obvious, and we are hoping that by seeing these barriers on Cyclescape, councillors will gain a better appreciation of the many small but vital measures that can be taken to improve conditions for cycling. So, please do contribute issues and comments on Cyclescape and contact your councillors with the appropriate links so that they can see those issues too.