Campaigners call for more investment to deliver NICE recommendation that roads prioritise cyclists and pedestrians

Listened to R4 news, Today, this morning, and there was a very long segment about NHS plans to reduce illness by better diagnosis and earlier detection, but not a single mention of the NICE report from a couple of days ago about preventing illness by Active Travel.  Just bunged the following off to the Today R4 news prog.

"Your coverage of two items, the very recent NICE report and the NHS plan, both concerned with illness prevention, could not have been more different, with the first being dismissed with a short report and damning with faint praise, while the second gets a very long segment and serious interviewing.  Utterly incredible that the NICE report wasn't referred to in the NHS article this morning, it was only a couple of days ago.

If the NHS and the government is serious about reducing illness, then there is no better way than that proposed by NICE, Active Travel, but you seem to ignoring it in favour of better treatment, but as we all know, prevention is better than cure, so why aren't you covering it?"

If we are to have cycle routes in cities, they need to be 2.5m wide in each direction, have absolute priority at all junctions, hiowever people on bikes turning into side streets/roads do need to cede way to pedestrians crossing (though motorists NEVER do this despite the HC).

IMHO simply making roads one way only for motors and turning over the other half of the highway as bidirectional for cycling would be massively cheaper, virtually instantaneous (and hugely more functional and direct than segregated lanes as they are in NL) for people on bikes whilst making it a massive deterrant to driving, especially if you stop roads up for motors so people cannot simply cut across town 2-3 miles.

Personaly I'm against segregation in the way it's being suggested, removing motors from the existing infra (the roads) as much as possible and taking at least half of it back on through roads is by far a better solution AND safer IMHO.

Dutch infra has a massive problem were its infra crosses roads, they have over 60 deaths a year at these intersections, that's in a country where people actually beleive the motorists are great (statistically they are worse than in the UK!!). Dutch infra is often circuitous, despite all the bragging 74% of people do not use cycles to get about, their rate of cycling is much, much less than the UK in 1949 when 34% of all road miles (not just journeys) were done by bike!

It strikes me that the issues  in the consultation launched yesterday bear a remarkable similarity to the physical activity and the environment guidelines NICE launched last year.  Why consult now?

Great that so many organisations have got together to push this (where's Sustrans?) so that it has broad support.  The government has been saying for many years that it wants to increase cycling for all the usual reasons, but continually refuses to fund it properly, witness the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy, so ably summed up by CUK as "very little strategy and even less investment"

I trust everyone on this site will be writing in as suggested, and posting the link on facebook and anywhere else we can encourage more people to do the same.

Edit: Done!  Took two minutes, including editing the letters to ask for a fixed amount of transport funding, 20%, for cycling and walking.