SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

Great times ahead for cycling, it seems, from all the positive announcements coming in from around the world since the previous blog.  Let's have another look at this story.
The roads are to be made safer for cycling, cycle lanes will be wider and longer, and people will switch from driving to cycling for short trips.

Is this real, or from Alice in Wonderland?

   Well, Cycling UK’s ears pricked up at Transport Secretary Grant Shapps statement:  “commits the Government to make public health part of transport policy, and active travel a core element.”

 Not sure how the UK government’s £multi-billion road building plan fits this picture!  Some 50 new road building projects are also planned over the next two years.

The scheme is facing a legal challenge from Transport Action Network, claiming such plans are in breach of the UK’s climate and air quality obligations.

So, a mixture of dreams and nightmares on the transport front.

Latest Government plan sounds too good to be true. 

At least several countries are now acknowledging the dire threat posed by pollution.

It’s taken over 200 years for them to reach their senses, despite the many warnings.
One such can be traced back to the 19^th century America.

This from Chief Seattle, who had witnessed the Red Man’s lands taken by the white man and who made this comment after observing the intruders wasteful ways.

He said:

“Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench.”

And that was before pollution from factories and traffic began to poison the sweet smelling air his people cherished, but which has been taken for granted by the rest of mankind pillaging and burning the earth for the riches which have given us our modern world and yes, been hugely beneficial in improving our lives.

But at a huge cost to the planet and to our health.  It is only in recent times we have sought to conserve, to replenish, and to try to restore balance.

It’s in our nature leave shit everywhere, even on another world.

How about this gem I heard lately, from a recent TV documentary on the historicMoon landing in July 1969.

Don’t forget this bag, Buzz Aldrin called out to Neil Armstrong through the hatch of the Lunar Module, as Armstrong stood poised on the ladder, about to become the first man to set foot on the Moon.

It was a small bag

Armstrong took the bag and threw it ahead of him onto the surface of the moon, where it still lies. It contained three days of accumulated trash from their flight from earth. So man’s first act upon visiting a new world was to trash it.

Say no more.

It can’t get any worse, surely? Things must be about to get better.

So, here we are, it’s May 2020.

It’s made the news, cycling is the way forward.

The Coronavirus pandemic has brought the world to its senses.  The lockdown which halted road and air traffic and factory production led to a huge drop in pollution levels.

It was as if suddenly we have woken up to the perils posed by pollution, which kills 9m globally a year, causing the respiratory illnesses which made so many vulnerable to the Coronavirus.

Now, apparently, cities  the world over have declared they want the clear air to remain, and call on  people to cycle and walk more and drive less and crucially, avoid using crowded public transport and the risk of infection.

How long will this last, will the honest endeavours of the enlightened be able to withstand the backlash from vested interests in the oil business?

We shall see.
For now, here are the positives.
Impressively, the UK government acted within days of announcing their plans for cycling, by issuing detailed instructions Local Authorities are to follow in order to put in place the Pop up cycle lanes quickly. 
So far (today, May 18) we know that Brighton was the first to install a Pop Up cycle lane, on a major dual carriageway. London quickly installed one on Park Lane.I think York has one in place.  Working on it, are Peterborough, Manchester, Liverpool, and other cities.
Meanwhile, Extinction Rebellion has spray-painted an unofficial cycle lane on a Cambridge Road.  
So, off to a good start. We next need to see a major road-rebuilding programme to accommodate cyclists in town and city.  

Then we’ll know whether all this is just more deceptive talk from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.  Whatever happened to his 40 new hospitals promised in his election manifesto?  Turns out there is only money enough for six NHS Trusts who each have an existing major hospital in urgent need of rebuilding.

Over to “pouring cold water on it” thinking.

We may well get the pop-up lanes, but the rest? It’s all too good to be true. The dozens of positive press stories following the announcement may convince the casual reader it’s happened. That  artist’s impressions of town centres criss-crossed with wide bike lanes are happening.

Those drivers who shout at cyclists for not using the adjacent cycle lane don’t know the cycle lane is all but one kilometre in length and is crap. 

As far I am aware, every pro cycling report calling for safer road conditions from Cycling UK (formerly CTC) presented to government has received fulsome praise.  But the buck has been passed to Local Authorities and those who had the political will  lacked the funding to do much.

This Creates the impression it’s been acted up or will be soon.  
We all know that the £2bn promised for major cycle works is about £4bn short. 
There is growing support from towns and cities with the political will do this work, if they are provided the funds to do so.
In the meantime towns hurry to install Pop up cycle lanes supported by the promise of £350m from government.  
As for the rest? 
Who knows?

Cycling takes off - or does it?

Well, well, quite suddenly, cycling as transport, plus walking -  ignored  by successive governments for 50 years, paid lip service at best, given buggar all in the last budget -  is now to get £2bn funding, effective immediately.

Cycling transport revolution at last? 

The reason?  The government is rightly very concerned that the economy will collapse because people are too spooked by the Coronavirus pandemic to use public transport to start getting back work. 
Whether it is safe to do so yet is an open question.  The latest advice on how lock down might or might not be eased from Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised as confusing.

However,  they have turned to the humble cycle to save us from ruin.

The basic plan is to put in pop-up bike lanes, widen the pavements, make junctions safer and provide cycle and bus-only corridors. All this within the next few weeks.

Additionally, there will be vouchers issued to help people pay for bike repairs and to provide more “bike fixing facilities”, whatever they may be? Perhaps they will Bicycle Repair People stationed around town.

Better late than never.  But they haven't gone so far as to  say to drivers you should  cycle short distances instead of driving, to save the environment!

For it is common news that many of those who succumb to the virus have underlying  health issues, including respiratory illness, caused by pollution, with traffic one of the biggest contributors to fouling the air we breathe.

Between 7 and 9 million people die globally every year from illnesses caused by pollution and governments really couldn’t care less, counting this as a cost against production.

But since the advent of this plague, governments are waking up not so much to acknowledge that climate change threatens our extinction, but because the poorly regulated growth economics which has contributed to this and which underpins our very way of life -  or death if  you prefer -  has ground to a halt. 

So, on yer bike.

Crucially, though, £2bn on its own will not be enough. Cycling UK say between £5bn and £6bn will need to found over the next five years if the road infrastructure is to made safe for cycling.

It’s a huge undertaking if this is to be done properly.  All those roundabout to be ripped out and rebuilt, all the cycling-specific traffic signals which will need to be installed where cycle lanes cross main roads. All those contra-flow cycle lanes to be installed in those outdated one-way systems, the Bain not just of cyclists, but of drivers, too.

And what about those kerbs rounded off to allow traffic to turn into side roads without slowing, which puts pedestrians and cyclists lives at risk.
Can't see it happening.

I note in the news that the government is to it make it a strategic legal requirement to make changes to the highway – the pop up cycle lanes for instance. Are they talking about the trunk road network and/or the Local Authority road network.

This is important because historically, government, aka the Department for Transport, has only ever had the power to manage the few thousand miles of trunk roads and certainly not the 250,000 miles of the local roads network under Local Authority control.  
As one local councillor explained to me, the mechanics of government do not allow Westminster to tell Local Authorities what to do with roads under LA control.

Which is a pity, because it is these roads which carry the most traffic. I’m not sure what the present stats show, but as I understood it, 71 per cent of all journeys made are five miles or less, many of them suitable for cycling.

So, unless the government has got the LAs by the balls, and can now order them to make the changes necessary, this scheme risks going off at half-cock.  Because the LAs have never been legally bound by DfT decisions which have always been advisory for LA’s to ignore if they so wish and generally do over cycling matters.

With few exceptions, LAs have made a complete mess of any cycle infrastructure they could bother themselves to install, and their engineers have ignored government approved guidelines.

Watch this space.