In 2015 Cycling UK Policy Director Roger Geffen was awarded an MBE for his work lobbying for cycling. He said at the time that as pleased as he was to receive the award, he'd much rather the government gave cycling more money than give him a gong.
And he here is, still at it seven years later as Cycling UK once again swing into action for the local elections next month in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Local elections are key because it is the local authorities who will build most of the cycling infrastructure and it is up to them to bid for the pot of gold offered them under the Active Travel Policy for walking and cycling. Even though this money never goes far enough. It's the Treasury who decide what how much money the Department for Transport has to play with. And they have always been tight.
Each year government has edged closer and closer to coming up with the money, but only providing £millions when really they should be paying out about £5 billion annually over, I think, five years or so. Funding has never been enough to make a real difference.
It will cost somewhere in the region of between £5
and £7billion a year to begin to do a decent job across the country.
So it follows that the government’s latest
announcement, a £2billion as part of their Active Travel Policy ain’t enough as impressive as it may sound. For it is to be spread out over the life of this parliament.
To put it into perspective, Manchester’s 1800 miles
of cycling and walking routes was costed to need £1.5billion!
Divide the £2bn between 145 local authorities in
England alone works at a shade under £14m each. Then factor in Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and logic declares it
won’t go very far - couple of 100 metres of cycle lane in each town, probably! But not all towns will bid, and if they do, they'll have to convince Boardman they know their onions.
So if he plays his cards right and is selective in choices, limits the number of towns who can be trusted to a do a decent job and we might see some half-decent work.
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Why not throw £2bn at one city and build a decent network there?
I can’t for the life of me figure out why they can’t
pick one major city and throw all the money at that, build a super network. And
show what can be achieved.
Give a £billion of it to Manchester. They have a city network plan ready to go.
Creating such an example would surely mean other
cities demanding the same. As it is the funding is spread far too thinly.
It is what it is.
Best to make a start and hope that more funding will become available if enough local councils come to recognize how providing for safe cycling and walking improves the quality of life.
I was fishing about on the internet and found a detailed report on the costs involved in building cycling infrastructure, presented to the Department for Transport. They published it but added their own get out clause, by saying they may not necessarily agree with it. You can see why, the costs are much higher than the DfT is prepared to accept.
The report, entitled Cycling City Ambition, is written by the sustainable transport research group Transport for Quality of Life.
Key lessons
It makes fascinating reading.
In a section headed: Key
lessons for policy-makers and practitioners, the costs involved become clear.
“Ambitious cycle infrastructure requires significant
investment. The cost of the most effective types of scheme was about £1-3
million per km for cycle superhighways, and £0.2 million per kilometre for
traffic-free towpath routes. To build comprehensive networks of cycle routes in
towns and cities will require substantial investment over a considerable period
of time. This in turn requires local authorities to prepare a pipeline of
schemes that are ready to go as soon as funding is available.”
Those
figures alone make it clear that if a huge number of towns/cities apply for funding, only a small number of roads can be a given a
decent cycling make-over from that £2bn.
This
has been the story for decades. The funding provided is never enough.
I
sometime wonder why I bother to write about this state of affairs. Maybe I
imagine I am still working for a magazine.
And
who cares? I’ve never seen much, if indeed any, discussion on the state of the
roads among Facebook cycling groups who generally prefer to share nicer stories.
Who can blame them when the news is mostly doom and gloom? Generally they prefer nostalgia, posting personal photographs and stories of epic bike rides and seeing how many likes they get, posting pictures of themselves and even of
meals!
That
said, they often share concerns about the current affairs, including the war in Ukraine, and Prime
Minister Johnson gets a kicking from time to time.
Anyway,
I can’t let go of the roads stuff.
Can’t reach
Boardman
What
I would like to do is to speak to the man behind the
proposed Manchester Network, former Manchester Cycling Tsar, and the 1992 Olympic
Champion Chris Boardman, now Commissioner of the government’s Active
Travel Policy, with instructions to get a grip of local authorities.
I can think of no better man for the job.
His task now is to encourage and advise/ cajole
local authorities on implementing cycling routes and to threaten them with
withdrawing funding if they mess it up.
If we know anything it is that Local Authorities are capable of producing crap cycling facilities.
He'll be having none of it. When Boardman was at the peak of his racing career, the French dubbed him the "professor" because of his scientific approach to training and racing. I imagine that's how he approaches many tasks, calmly appraising a council's targets and assessing whether or not their plans for implementing cycling infrastructure are realistic. And either giving them the thumbs up or down. No messing about. And if they fuck up, taking their funding away.
I’ve given up trying to get a comment from Boardman because I've never been able to make contact. Everyone wants a piece of an Olympic champion so to preserve their sanity they tend to go off the radar.
I was there waiting for him in1992 when he stepped off the plane from Barcelona with that Olympic gold medal. And I was there at Manchester to report his fantastic victory in the world individual pursuit championship in 1996, and in 2000 I reported on his Athletes Hour record also at Manchester.
The last time I saw him was at a Cycling Weekly
sportive in Surrey about eight or 10 years ago. Always he was a cheerful and
chatty guy.
What’s happened to him? Too busy, probably.
The closest I got to him last year was when his PA gave me his home address to enable me to send him a brilliant book I thought he would appreciate. I couldn't believe his PA did that - she must have asked for his permission!
It was entitled "Are Trams Socialist? - why Britain has no transport policy", written by Christian Wolmar. No idea if he received it.
Never heard? Perhaps I should doorstep him!
I'd like to know if Manchester got their £1.5bn. When I asked their transport people if they got their £1.5bn, they managed to avoid answering the question.
I think I’m safe in saying they never did get that sum. They did get funding for the government’s pop up cycle lanes in 2020, and also received £16m towards the permanent network, to work has been underway. But that won't be enough to complete would be the first proper cycle nework in the UK.
Anyhow, I've swerved off the main topic here, which is the forthcoming local elections when for the umpteenth time of asking, Cycling UK are imploring its members to lobby their councillors ahead of the local elections in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.
The aim is to get councilors to commit to supporting Active Travel and persuade their councils to do so.
I was reminded of how poor most cycling facilities are in the UK when I was watching the Amstel Gold classic
from Holland on Eurosport recently.
You couldn’t fail to notice the beautifully laid
out roads and junctions, with cycle lanes distinguished by light reddish tarmac
and a broken white line. And at each junction the cycle route was clearly laid
out, unlike the vast majority of junctions in these sceptic isles.
As we are well aware good cycle lanes in the UK are
few and far between. Here and there they include good examples such as the
segregated cycle route down the Embankment in London, also across
Blackfriars Bridge. Cities around the
country, including Manchester, have good work to show off, but nothing you can yet call a network.
Over the
past few decades we have seen funding gradually increasing to millions of
pounds and although this sounds impressive to you and me, it is well short of
the billions required.
And so it is that the funding provided has so far
made very little difference and numbers of people using the bike for utility
trips – not to be confused with the increase in leisure cycling – hardly lifts utility
bike use above two percent, where it has remained for decades. In Holland the
figure is around 28 per cent.
So here we are in 2022, with the latest campaign to
get government at all levels off their arses and put flesh on this Active Travel Policy. Will it just be another white elephant? Not if Boardman has anything to say it won't.
Here's Cycling UK:
“With elections just around the corner we are
calling on candidates to be bold and actively support building more cycling
infrastructure that will help millions more people to cycle. Cycling UK’s new
report is a sales pitch for cycle lanes, providing evidence to candidates and
governments of the many proven benefits that cycling infrastructure provides.”
And to underline
their case there is yet another thoroughly well-presented report, presented
thus.
“A new
report, published by Cycling UK, clearly sets out the significant benefits
of creating cycle lanes and other cycling infrastructure.
‘Getting there with cycling’ amasses a mountain of evidence from
scores of research studies, reports and real-life examples to back up the
claim that now is the time for governments and councils to rapidly build
cycling infrastructure across the UK.”
With local elections in Wales, Scotland and parts of England, and
Assembly elections in Northern Ireland on 5 May, the document aims to convince
candidates that people want cycle lanes, they will use them when they are
created, and they can help to solve many of today's challenges.”
