More half measures

Well, here’s a thing:  £5bn to spend on improving bus services and the roads for cycling.
More half measures!
This was the news on Tuesday when Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed that the controversial High Speed Railway 2, between London and Birmingham and points north, will go ahead.

He also announced £5bn across five years for cycling and buses. However, some will see this as a mere PR to deflect criticism from those opposed to HS2.
I read that the PM mistakenly told Parliament that cycling’s share of the £5bn was to be £350m. But he was corrected. The sum for cycling is to be £1bn over five years.  That’s a relief, from peanuts to small change.
(But wait, I've just read that the actual sum across five years is in fact £350m! So the PM was correct!
That's according to Cycling UK's Head of Campaigns Duncan Dollimore who is as frustrated as the rest of us at the continued under investment in cycling. If that is the case, time for a profanity - £350m is fuck all.)

But let's just imagine the funding was to be £1bn.
Because that's the figure, plus a bit, that is needed to build Manchester's proposed 1,800 miles of cycle ways,  Manchester cycling Tsar Chris Boardman told The Guardian this week. And he's still
waiting for Boris to provide him with the money.
So that pours cold water over the whole thing.

Good luck, Chris. The rest of the country is only getting £350m.

But In his other guise as British Cycling Policy Advisor, Boardman welcomed the government funding as a step in the right direction and praised the Prime Minister.
British Cycling said:
“The Government has now committed to 250 miles of new, high-quality separated cycle routes and safe junctions, dozens of new Mini-Holland schemes, working with local councils to reduce lorry traffic and ensuring all new routes are built to tough new design standards.”
It’s a start, I suppose.  But whose design standards, the cycle planning experts or government flunkies?

The tens of thousands of miles of other roads in need of this treatment will have to wait. However, there was no suggestion there was more money to come, year on year, for the massive restructuring of the road system that is required.

Being a sceptic who reported cycling policy false starts over four decades, I am wary that this latest government announcement will be another dead end.
The good news is that the Bikeability cycle training is to be extended to every child in England.
But dear oh dear, that will be waste of time if the hostile road system isn’t made safer for cycling according to comments made Cycling UK, the national cycling charity.

And I’m not impressed with the promised 250 miles of segregate cycle lanes…a few miles in different towns and cities?
Imagine having a motorway system built like that, 10 miles in the West Midlands,  five miles in Lancashire, 7 miles in North Yorkshire and five miles in South Yorkshire – big county,  is Yorkshire, that’s why they get two!

So this is all smoke and mirrors story to fix in people’s minds the idea that government is doing the right thing when the promised investment simply won’t go far enough.
They do seem unable to grasp this.  Well, they do grasp it completely. They're messing about!

And besides, I do wonder,  is there now the government mechanism whereby central government can now  tell the 160 Local Authorities  what to do as distinct from “advise”.    Because otherwise nothing very much gets done, with only the likes of  Bristol and now Manchester showing initiative and London are spending real money on cycling improvements. It’s all bits and pieces, no co-ordination.

I was reading in a recent issue of Cycling UK’s magazine that very little cycling or walking has been included in new housing or business developments in recent years.

This will suit the roads lobby who certainly don’t want too many cyclists nicking what they regard as their road space.  That’s what this is all about.