Works begin in January to make Manchester a nicer place for cyclists

I agree with Escalinci above.

Could Road.cc please change the headline? And if that headline was briefed to you I would be glad to have the details: Cllr.c.paul [at] manchester.gov.uk. But surely it was not?

£64m is the 6-7 year spend to 2017-18 in Greater Manchester on cycling measures. It is hard to compare directly but perhaps around one sixth of the spend in Inner London which at 3.3 million people is a similar population to ours (2.8 million, rising rapidly).

As London has been spending money at similar levels for a decade we have a lot of catching up to do. We have the ambition. Give us the means to deliver it please. We have more than a million would be cyclists ready to give it a go. More than a million!!

There is certainly not "£1 billion to make GM a nicer place for cyclists" but return of investment of around £1 billion PER YEAR at 10% mode share makes spending far more a no brainier.

There are also not six major new cycle routes going into the city centre, certainly not £1bn being spent on them. Chris is right on the tranformative ways that money could be spent. Only the university corridor route down into Didsbury can, I believe, be described as 'major' with the capacity to allow many who wouldn't currently consider cycling to do so.  There are two upgraded canal paths into the city centre, but I don't think even tfgm in all their optimism want a route with a blind, cobbled turn under an unlit bridge path less than 2m wide to become a 'major route' for cycling, for all the problems it would cause. London readers, imagine if Regent's Canal was being called a cycle superhighway.  

The other schemes, that I'm aware of, are not much of an improvement over existing provision.  It is a lack of money for the most part, but it's just a lack of care at this point when you see a major junction redesign which is clearly expensive anyway but includes no segregated space for cyclists, like a56 junction off to Trafford Park in Stretford, or the second city crossing which has made a key north-south link uncyclable, but they've proceeded to put down a few cycle symbols around the tram tracks anyway, presumably because they think that appeases somebody.  So a lot of that £1bn is going into projects which are having a detrimental effect on the growth of cycling.

It's very easy for people who don't cycle, or even those who do, after having spent what are after all millions on cycle projects, to feel very good about having done a lot 'for cyclists,' the hardy bunch who are already cycling in the current conditions.  Only a couple times the number of young men my age cycle regularly in the Netherlands compared to here.  The number of primary age children and elderly is something like 60x! I think when evaluting the merits of a design, it's what we're doing for them we need to be thinking about.

This headline is ridiculous. £1 billion might be going on sustainable transport modes but of this only about 6% is on LSTF and CCAG works. The guided bus way and cross city bus may have some benefits for cyclists but some parts e.g. Portland Street have not been well designed and indeed some of the proposed lanes may be removed there. The second city crossing won't help directly, in fact the retained cycle route is for experts only - unless there are some substantial changes on parallel routes and city centre permeability as a result. Of course we can all hope that there is modal shift from solo cars to sustainable modes including active travel and passenger transport. But I repeat: The headline is ridiculous.

We would need around a £1 billion to cycle proof 350 or more miles of A roads to Wilmslow Road Corridor standards, and to deal with built up areas to Mini Holland standards, and for skills sessions and parking and travel change and all that.

The work with Greater Manchester and six other UK conurbations coordinated by Sustrans not only showed that the UK public would back £25+ per person per year of the transport budget going on cycling, and a Dods parliamentary panel that MPs were almost on the exact same figure, but this work also showed the massive non transport benefits and savings available in return for an effective investment.

£108 m a year of health savings (and many lives extended) even at just 2% of trips made by bike, extending way beyond £0.5 billion per year when we reach 10% of all trips, targeted for 2025. And on top of this tremendous savings, perhaps the same again, to the Greater Manchester economy if congestion can be reduced, air quality improved, and local multipliers start to take hold in our conurbation.

If we were able to find this investment from transport and health and economy and so on - perhaps in the form of paying down a Big Bang financed by prudential borrowing as we have done for Metrolink infrastructure - in the order of a billion pounds this amount could be returned EVERY SINGLE YEAR once we reach 10% of all trips by cycle. This ought to be very compelling for fundholders and decision makers. If it were done in five years rather than 10 or 20 the progress and also the total return would be so much better.

Let's make the case for a billion to improve cycling and thereby encourage the huge percentage of our people who know it makes sense and who would be up for active travel if it were safe.

But in the meantime .. Whoever came up with the headline .. It's ridiculous. Did I mention that?

It sounds as though it might be good. I've watched Manchester's 3D fly-through videos before, and that's time I'll never get back, so I'll skip this one if you don't mind.

So long as only a white line is installed I expect to see motorists parking on it. When will Manchester council realise that only concrete bollards stop motorists.

We're talking about a city where motorists commonly take up the entire pavement when there's double yellow lines and most significant junctions have no pedestrian crossing.

Perhaps it's be a good idea for GMP to start enforcing some traffic rules too