Cycling UK plead with transport secretary Schapps

The time is fast running out to build on the increase in cycling since lockdown, say Cycling UK, who have written to transport secretary Grant Schapps urging him to fulfill the government's promise to fund the national cycling and walking plan.

This from Cycling UK…….

With only a week until parliament rises for its summer recess on July 22, Roger Geffen, Cycling UK’s policy director, said he was concerned that many of the proposals announced by the government in May, including publication of a national walking and cycling plan, have still not been delivered. Cycling UK believes that if action is not taken soon, a golden opportunity to build on the increase in cycling since lockdown began could be lost.

Mr Geffen welcomed the action taken so far, including £250m in emergency active travel funding (EATF), the first £45m of which has recently been allocated to allow local authorities to rapidly reallocate road space for cycling and walking.

However, in his letter, he points out that a promise to deliver a national cycling plan in early June has not been kept, and no further announcements made on when it might be coming.

This anguished call for action to fund cycling  has become a regular pantomime in which Cycling UK plead for government to fulfil its promises, in this latest case,  to  fund a multi-£billion national cycling plan.

Not that I view Cycling UK as pantomime characters.

Cycling UK are a serious outfit who, over many years, have presented many sound reports on the benefits to be had from making the roads safer for cycling.

Each time the government promises action and fails to deliver.

It’s the government ministers refusing to take the issue seriously who have made this into a pantomime. But there’s nothing funny about. You might leave with tears streaming down your face, not of joy, but from sheer despair at the utter stupidity of the brain dead. 

We must hope that Grant Schapps, Transport Secretary, will break tradition this week and respond positively to the plea from Cycling UK, the national cyclists’ organisation.

And not  turn a deaf ear, like previous ministers.

Soon, we Cycling UK members can expect letters asking us to write to our local MPs to bring pressure to bear.

It’s the same story every time

And nothing has ever happened.

Government agrees to the excellent reports setting out why the roads need to be made safer and how cycling can benefit the health of nation and they promise the earth.

Then do nothing. Why? Because for some reason known only to themselves, they appear not to want to encourage too much cycling!

Happens every time.

Here are a few previous examples of government inaction.

Get Britain Cycling Report, 2013. 

This excellently presented report was presented by their own, the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group. It was endorsed by the Prime Minister, David Cameron who then refused to give it cabinet backing but instead passed the buck to local authorities who neither have the funding nor, in many cases, the political will.

Between 2013 and now, the Government has tinkered with pushing forward a national policy for cycling and walking, the intervening years punctuated by urgent reminders by campaigners to get on with it.

There was talk of a cycling and walking strategy in 2016, with all sorts of piss poor figures being bandied about: £64m to encourage more cycling (2017); a pitiful £6.5m to boost cycle ambitious cities (2018).

When you consider that Manchester needs £1.2 billion to build their 1800 mile network you will  understand that a national cycling strategy won’t be going far on the few £million the government talks about.

One of the best/worst examples of government duplicity came way back in 1996, when the historic national cycling strategy was launched by the Conservative Party to great fanfare but with no funding.

It was useless anyway, because a cycling strategy on its own can’t possibly work without strategies for other transport modes as well. And Britain has never had a transport policy, never mind an integrated transport policy.

The only man to dream up an integrated national transport strategy was Labour’s John Prescott in the 1990s but because he wanted to cut back on car use he lost his brief and his white paper was torn up.

The Tories, however, are totally responsible for the current impasse.

Can Schapps snap them out of it?

POPPING BACK TO TRAFFORD AND REIGATE

BBC’s World at One last Thursday featured Manchester’s cycling Czar Chris Boardman and  MP for Reigate Cristopher Blunt to explain why pop up cycle lanes in their respective areas had been cancelled only days after installation. (see previous blog).

Boardman said the Trafford facility taken out was only a short section of a 3.5mile cycle lane – the longest in the country, he claimed – and it was done because it was found to be unsuitable for that location. No problem, he said.

As for Reigate,  Mr Blunt also claimed that the placing of the cycle lane on the High Street had also proved to be unsuitable. He was asked if he supported the installation cycle lanes in general and he replied “yes” – through clenched teeth, it sounded like.

 A local cyclist has told me that the Reigate High Street is dominated by through traffic – it is on the A25 - and a cycle lane on the High Street was therefore unlikely to reduce the impact of local traffic which wasn’t so high on that stretch of road. Alternative routes for cyclists to access the High Street exist.

Meanwhile, a quarter of the 16,000 mile national cycle network has been “declassified” because these supposedly quiet roads shared with motor traffic have now  been declared unsafe for cyclists by Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity. Many of the shared routes were not fit for purpose from the outset.