Wednesday 9 October 2019

ALICE IN WONDERLAND LEARNS THE BITTER TRUTH


 


A year or two ago this blog commented on the hitherto unknown and scandalous story which explained why no half-decent funding has ever been provided to improve cycling road safety or, for that matter,   any transport policy worthy of the name.

This was revealed when I reviewed Christian Wolmar’s revolutionary book, “Are Trams Socialist – why Britain has no Transport Policy”.


I am persuaded to run these facts by you again…like one of those oft repeated Second World War movies they keep showing.

Because last week Cycling UK (formerly the Cyclists’ Touring Club) complained once again that the government is still refusing to part with the money to make the roads safer for cycling.

It’s as if they didn’t know why!


Surely Cycling UK knows the history?   But they’ve never seen fit to tell the cycling world how cycling was simply  never considered in the huge expansion in road building over 60 years ago. Other than to blame the motoring lobby.


It’s about time Cycling UK told the whole story to their members. Come on, I’ve been a member for over 25 years. Do it for me!

Write the story revealing all the ugly details of how cycling was engineered out of the equation all those years ago and has never been allowed back in.  Or is Cycling UK scared of frightening away new cyclists by admitting the roads are hostile places to be? It’s a problem for them, I appreciate that.


But in coming clean, at least everyone will then know why this is such a Titanic struggle to get funding to enable Britain to even get close to replicating a cycling policy similar to that of Holland and other countries.


For this is a fascinating tale of bloody single-minded opportunism by those with vested interests in road transport back in the 1960s.  


The very same qualities, it might be said, employed today by that bunch of comedians in the Cabinet conjuring up Brexshit Hell.

Notwithstanding that most of us are going mental after three years of this Brexshit nonsense since that ill-fated referendum, Cycling UK remain clear headed in their continuing work to protect cyclists’ rights. For there are many areas in which they successful. But not in the big one.


In the latest issue of Cycling UK’s magazine, Duncan Dollimore is lamenting the continued lack of finance for cycling in the government’s spending plans. Clearly, it’s beginning to get to him, for he reveals a healthy dose of scepticism in quoting the White Queen telling Alice in Wonderland: “the rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.”

That sums up Her Majesty’s Government perfectly.


Dollimore says he is still waiting “for any MP, minister or civil servant to explain why investing more in active travel doesn’t make economic sense and isn’t needed to help tackle our inactivity-related public health, air pollution, congestion and climate crises.”

As if this logic will surely make sense to them.  

Well, first off, the older MPs  aren’t that bothered by climate change because most of them will be extinct well in advance of the chaos science is predicting for the human race.  

As for the younger ones, with few exceptions they may not see cycling as a major career move because they suffer from Big Projectitus and  want to only to be involved in mighty schemes,  like HS2.


Besides, the ruinous transport decisions set in stone half a century ago dare not be challenged for fear of losing motor voters.  

It’s worth remembering what happened to John Prescott who, as deputy PM to Tony Blair in the 1990s, received a slap on the wrist when he dared to suggest cars should be used less often. And his transport brief calling for an integrated transport system was taken away from him and his suggestions binned.

As for today’s government,  funding for cycling is the furthest thing from their minds, hunkered down as they are with Brexshit and dancing to the mystic notes of the pied piper of Downing Street, one Dominic Cummings, nightmare advisor to the shameless Prime Minister Boris Johnson.




As Mayor of London back 2008 Johnson was cycling’s friend, remember?

Then he honed his skills as an illusionist and conman by giving us cycling “Superhighways”, those blue painted cycle lanes offering a false sense of security which evaporated at major junctions, and contributed to the deaths of cyclists there.

So no point in running this story past Bojo’s cabinet.  They are engrossed in fulfilling the Brexshit dream of misguided Leavers who blame the EU for the ills of our own government’s making!


So as we career out of control towards leaving the EU, with no firm idea of how trade and the supplies food and medicine is to continue, let us examine another previous government fuck mess which, although small by comparison with the current shit show,  put cycling on the back burner for ever.

Hats off to cycling

We go back to the 1960s, to another bunch of self-serving MPs headed by the then  minister for transport, road builder Earnest Marples, who eventually did a runner to France, thence  to Monaco, wanted for fraud – leaving home in a rush, drawers left open, clothes strewn about -   to avoid arrest for tax avoidance.


Back then the government, noting the growth in car use in the early 60s, determined that this was to be encouraged.  There was no thought to strike a balance by providing for each mode – rail, buses, cycling, and pedestrians.

They considered people only cycled until they could buy a car.

They put into peoples’ minds that driving was the only way.

It was a vote winner, after all. So it was decreed that people should be able to drive where and when they wanted to.

And so drivers came to believe this was their right and that bikes and buses were in the way.


This policy, says a well-known transport expert today, was “pursued with a fervour bordering on fundamental fanaticism which to this day dare not be challenged.” 

They came up with a transport policy – but only for cars.


In fact the rail network was at the same time conveniently savaged in the infamous Dr Beeching cuts which took an axe to 5000 miles of the network in the guise of making the rail network more efficient.

The network certainly needed pruning, but this went too far and many local communities lost their vital rail links.  Is it a coincidence, I read this week, that many of those communities whose rail links to the big towns and therefore employment opportunities were severed  voted Leave?


The plan was that everything must be done to facilitate and encourage car use, never mind those who didn’t own or even desire one.

So Marples presided over the Buchanan report which recommended – wait for it - that the motorway network be extended into the heart of every city and town in England.

Plans were drawn up! But then, horror of horrors, it was realised this would mean the wholesale destruction of town centres and tens of thousands of homes, a sure vote loser, that one!

So the scheme was quietly dropped. But not before a start had been made in various cities and towns, including the Hammersmith Flyover built by Marples Ridgeway and a chunk of Hyde Park destroyed to widen Park Lane! 

The inner-city motorway plan was quietly shelved.


To this day nothing else has ever been proposed that might address our inefficient transport system and cycling has been the biggest loser.

But the drive everywhere dream has persisted and nothing must be allowed to disturb it simply because there is big money in motor transport.

This is why the M25 has more junctions than originally planned for – to allow business development along the link roads accessible only by motor transport.

Society became wedded to this dream.

So promoting cycling on the scale envisaged by campaigners remains a vote loser in the minds of government for fear of a backlash from the motoring lobby who see this as a threat.

Even when it can be argued that the growth in leisure and cycling sport makes it a vote winner!

“You need to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan.

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