Can Labour fulfill their promise to build Active Travel network?

 

FEW can have missed that historic recent announcement, stating that Labour is to invest unprecedented levels of funding to build cycling networks?

The designers of Royce Road junction, Manchester
one of the few in Britain to incorporate traffic light controlled
crossings for cyclists and pedestrians

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After decades of hollow promises from previous governments, the new transport secretary Louise Haigh has promised a properly funded Active Travel network.  It takes the breath away!

But will it happen?

When Labour won the General Election in the summer they inherited an economy trashed by the outgoing Conservatives, according to the financial experts.

As a result, says Labour, they have already had to cut back on spending, notably and controversially on the fuel allowance, to try and balance the books. So will they have the necessary £billions for cycling?

Besides, we should wait until cycling experts have examined the proposals before we get carried away with enthusiasm.

Nevertheless, this is what I had hoped for from Labour, since their landslide victory in this year’s General Election consigned the gobshite Conservative government to oblivion.

Too strong a word,  gobshites?

Oh, I don’t think so, because they have left us in the shit, literally, with our rivers and streams and coastal waters now polluted with raw sewage.  This is courtesy of the water companies created by the Conservatives when they sold off the utilities decades ago. It followed that the newly created water companies would prioritise dividend payments to investors over maintaining infrastructure. So, Gobshites, all of them. Dam their eyes.

But back to cycling.

No government, Conservative nor Labour, has ever put up the £billions necessary to fund the creation of a national cycling policy.

But I do recall a couple of landmark decisions these past 30 years, which have provided cycling with a leg up.

I refer to Labour creating Cycling England - some 20 years ago - with a £5m first handout which led to the development of “cycling towns”.

 That investment was to put flesh on the so called National Cycling Transport policy launched typically without any money by the Conservatives in 1996.

And Cycling England did wonders with the little money they were given by Labour (£5m to start with, increasing a little each year).  This raised cycling’s profile in some 27 towns and cities over a number of years with small but nonetheless effective schemes – a cycle lane here and there – covered cycling parking for a school in one town, provision of hire bikes in another.

Each small scheme proved that if you provide for cycling, people will cycle.

Sadly, Cycling England was shut down by the gobshites when they came back to power some years later.

They did redeem themselves somewhat with the creation of the Active Travel Policy, which has seen the appointment of Olympic champion Chris Boardman as commissioner in 2022.  But they only did this because of relentless pressure over the years from Cycling UK and other campaign groups.

But again, it was all smoke and mirrors, for the funding provided was never going to be enough to meet the government’s own target to increase cycling and walking.

It was the sort of trick the Conservatives routinely pulled. They announce grand schemes, such as the 40 new hospitals promised by Boris Johnson, and make speeches of cycling along “sun dappled” cycle lanes but without any meaningful funding to see them through.  

In was quite deliberate, to create the impression things were being done when nothing much was being done at all.

Haigh pointed out the strange anomaly that exists; whereas a transport charity Sustrans has created and maintains the 12,700 miles long National Cycle Network (NCN) – a mix of traffic-free paths and quiet roads winding about the land - and yet governments run the national road and rail networks.

It’s worth adding that the NCN, created by visionary John Grimshaw, was intended also as a catalyst for networks to be built in the towns and cities it passed through.  This has never been achieved.

Haigh told The Guardian we are in a climate crisis and a public health crisis. Getting people walking and cycling is essential to solving both those issues.

It is utterly essential to develop a national integrated transport policy, she said.

It has taken over 50 years of often frustrated campaigning to get to this.

What next?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Private Eye on the British Cycling-Shell deal

You can always count on satirical magazine Private Eye to expose embarrassing issues businesses might want to keep quiet.

In this case it is British Cycling under investigation (Eye issue 1630, August 16-29). Specifically the story is the ongoing controversy about their controversial eight-year sponsorship deal with Shell, the oil giant which continues to invest heavily extracting fossil fuels despite science warning this will further contribute to climate change.

The Eye reported that the campaign group Extinction Rebellion had asked cycling’s Olympic hero Chris Boardman to lobby BC to drop its Shell sponsorship, when they protested at the National Cycling Centre on the eve of the Paris Olympic in July.

Protesters carried placards declaring: “Shell lie, Cyclists die” and “Chris, Hate Shell”.

The BC-Shell deal caused a furore among BC members, and led to resignations.

The Eye reminds us how in 2022, Shell UK offered the “green” sport an eight-year partnership, claiming the deal “would help British Cycling ‘accelerate’ its journey to net zero”, the supposed point at which climate change might stabilise if we cut back on using oil.

But how Shell imagined that would improve their image when they were set to invest a further £46bn in fossil fuels by 2030 is anyone’s guess, the report said.

Whatever Shell was investing in green policies was far outweighed by the £Billions they were spending on oil extraction, environmental groups claimed.

In past blogs I have commented on how the oil Industry has also invested heavily in PR campaigns to discredit the science on climate change, despite their own scientific research 70 years ago informing them that burning fossil fuels would lead to the present scenario.

It’s all tied into growth economics, of course, allowing us earthlings to press on regardless burning oil and speeding towards our own destruction. Once the money starts rolling in – or medals – we cannot stop!

Remember the DuPont story also discussed here recently, covering the story of how the American chemical giant knew early on that the shit they created to make Teflon and other water resistant products would eventually poison everyone on the planet exposing us all to potentially life-threatening illnesses.

Just as the oil industry carried on regardless, so too did DuPont, polishing their “green” credentials by sponsoring bike racing.  There was money to be made.

And British Cycling’s excuse?

Well, clearly they needed a big spender like oil rich Shell to bankroll their expanding organisation and maintain their winning ways.

Ever since the days of Sky funding which turned BC into the top UK sports organisation funding demanded they adopt an insatiable quest for international success and specifically for Olympic gold.  They fear failure to deliver will lead to loss of income and redundancies. In some ways success has become a millstone around their neck.

But the pressure is mounting on British Cycling.

The  Eye reports that besides Shell’s sponsorship, BC has also received £10m in funding from UK Sport who have warned them that the Shell “hook up” is a “reputational risk” for them all.

Since then BC has waded further into polluted waters, signing a funding deal with Lloyds Bank, themselves under attack from activists for funding fossil fuel and arms companies.