250 years of British transport cock ups

My piece entitled “How Britain has failed Cycling” in the December 29 issue of Cycling Weekly claims that discrimination and lack of political has led to no city having a half-decent cycle network. It is helpful to see this sorry situation within the context of the UK’s curious approach to transport over the past two centuries.

In Transport in Britain – from Canal Lock to Gridlock – by Philip Bagwell and Peter Lyth, published in 2002, the authors point to the absence of “any tradition of transport planning in Britain … the tendency to finance transport modes independently on a case by case basis has meant that integrated transport policies are rare…..”

As a consequence, Britain, unlike other European countries, has never applied a national strategy nor provided adequate investment in transport, from the canal age through railways, road and air travel.

The book says that this, coupled with low level of investment - with the exception of headline projects like Concorde and the Channel Tunnel - has adversely effected the British economy, impacting heavily on business and personal travel.

So, while individual Britons have made the UK famous for invention and technological and scientific advances, this brilliance has been squandered by successive governments who to this day hold to the belief that market forces be chiefly allowed to drive development.

The inability to create a national cycling strategy as part of an integrated transport policy is simply another British bodge.