Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

Safe cycle route plan on road where rider killed was dropped from £102m infrastructure funding bid

Oxfordshire campaigners have fought for years for a traffic-free route on B4044

Plans to fund a safe cycle path on the road where a cyclist died earlier this month were scrapped at the last minute after local councillors said they believed its inclusion would make a bid for government road funding less competitive, road.cc can reveal.

John Howes, 58, was hit by a van driver on the B4044 near Farmoor near Oxford on 28 October, and died of his injuries on 1 November. The driver was arrested on suspicion of drug driving and subsequently released under investigation. 

Councillors at Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) originally hoped to fund a cycle path or ‘community path’ between Witney and Oxford on the B4044 via an application to the Government’s Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) following a seven-year campaign for the path. However, in March, the cycle path was removed from the bid, amid fears it could jeopardise the overall application. The then cycling minister, Jesse Norman, refuted this, however, saying the cycle path was within the remit of the HIF.

John Howes died the same day part of the £102m funding bid, the dualling of the nearby A40, was announced as successful. Five days later, on 5 November, councillors announced they were looking for other means of funding the route.

Cyclist killed on Oxfordshire road where campaigners have battled for years to have a safe cycle path (+ video)

Government fund "discriminating against cyclists"

In March the leader of Oxfordshire County Council, Cllr Hudspeth, wrote to campaigners explaining after talks with officials in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) he understood “the cycle path reduced the business case of the bid,” which related to infrastructure for new homes, and said although he realised this was “not a good outcome for cyclists” he concluded “it’s better to get the main element of the bid rather risk nothing at all.”

Cllr Hudspeth told campaigners he believed there was a “misalignment of government departments that are discriminating against cyclists”, and wrote to Jesse Norman about it.

In the letter, sent to Norman on 20 March, Cllr Hudspeth said there “appeared to be a disconnect between our aim for improving cycling opportunities and the reality of the bid” and urged Norman to “restore cyclists’ faith in the government’s commitment to cyclists” by working with the council to fund the B4044 cycle route.

However, in a letter dated 24 April, Jesse Norman told Cllr Hudspeth he had spoken with the department and said “cycling and walking and other forms of green infrastructure do fall within the scope of the fund”, adding “there was no intention to advise on removing this specific proposal from the bid on the basis that it was an active travel scheme”, and saying government advisors don’t advise bidders on what to include in their applications.

The Housing Infrastructure Fund, Norman said, is intended to “support physical infrastructure that can be shown clearly to unlock and maximise the delivery of new homes”.

Councillor in tears over death of well-loved postman 

Fellow Oxfordshire councillor, and the council's Cycling Champion, Dr Suzanne Bartington, told road.cc she was in tears when she heard about the death of Howes, who she described as a well-loved local postman, and an experienced cyclist who had cycled Lands End to John O’Groats (LEJOG) twice.

“It’s so, so awful; it’s tragic,” she said. “We have been saying something like that is going to happen.

“I deliberately go the long way to avoid that road. I have had several near misses.”

Bartington believes there is “a fundamental problem with the HIF itself”. It “needs to be substantially altered to really prioritise safe protected active travel”, she said.

Layla Moran (Lib Dem), who is seeking re-election as MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, wrote to Cllr Hudspeth in April claiming the council “has previously stated that it did not judge the path essential to the delivery of new homes, as required by MHCLG and confirmed in [Jesse Norman’s] letter.” She asked why the B4044 path was not “properly integrated” into the bid, leaving it, as a spokesperson from Moran’s office put it, “at the mercy of central government”.

“They had a golden opportunity to integrate it into the plan,” the spokesperson said.

Campaigners "furious" over worrying trend

At the time Cycling UK’s Roger Geffen expressed concern over the removal of the cycle path from the bid, which he called part of a “very worrying” trend. 

“It reinforces our concerns that housing pressures are resulting in development that will increase car-dependence,” he said.

In a consultation prior to the bid the B4044 community path, and improvements to a National Cycle Network link, received 76% and 71% support respectively, higher than any other element of the consultation. Dualling the A40 received just 53% support.

Campaigner Ian Leggett, who has headed the campaign for the B4044 community path since its inception, told road.cc: “I’m absolutely furious. It’s completely predictable; we have been saying for years that this is the kind of thing that’s going to happen.

“It feels a bit like Grenfell Tower, thousands of people have signed petitions, have pleaded with the county council, they have been to public consultations and everything gets ignored until there is an accident and somebody gets killed.”

Leggett describes the road as narrow and winding, and although it has a 50mph speed limit in his experience drivers regularly exceed those speeds.

"None of that money is ever going into cycling infrastructure"

“There’s a generic issue here about how do we get more government money going into cycling infrastructure?" said Leggett. "In this part of the world there’s a huge housing boom going on. There’s some money available for the housing infrastructure fund but as far as we can see almost none of that money is ever going into cycling infrastructure, it’s going into new roads.”

Leggett’s campaign believes the path could be built for £5m; Cllr Bartington says it’s closer to £15m. In 2012 Bike Safe commissioned a Sustrans report that estimated the cost to build the route at just £800,000.

Leggett said the campaign has “fantastic local support”, and his campaign group, Bike Safe, raised more than £100,000 for a business case report “to convince OCC to back the path, to pay for topographical surveys, environmental impact studies and to produce detailed technical drawings”.

Leggett says he has had five meetings with OCC since March, after promises of finding other ways of funding the route, but he cancelled the sixth meeting as he felt too little progress was being made.

Oxfordshire County Council told local press this week they are still looking to fund the route.

The MHCLG were contacted for comment.

Add new comment

10 comments

Avatar
ConcordeCX | 4 years ago
2 likes

I hope that the relatives can sue the people who took the decision for punitive damages well in excess of what it would have cost to make the road safe for cyclists. Then let them reflect on their 'business case'.

Avatar
growingvegtables | 4 years ago
5 likes

"... the cycle path reduced the business case of the bid ...”

 

As good a definition of useless fuckers with their heads up their uselessly short-term behinds, as you'll get.

 Useless fuckers, the lot of them - council, DfT, and the shambolic clowns who call themselves the "government".

Avatar
dassie | 4 years ago
1 like

This is one route where it would be relatively easy to to install the long desired dual use path.  There is perfectly adequate room to use (on North side of B4044), and apparently Oxford University landowners had already agreed to the construction in principle.  Shows OCC in a very poor light I'm afraid.  Very sad for the family and friends of the victim.

Avatar
burtthebike | 4 years ago
0 likes

The briefest search on Oxford County Council's website, transport planning section, found this:

"The role of Transport Development Control is primarily one of ensuring that highway safety, convenience and amenity are not compromised through developments. We do what we do because we believe unregulated development can lead to:

avoidable fatalities"

And

"There are many aspects of a consultation response, which relate to this, including:

assess the transport and highway implications of new development within the framework of government and council guidelines and make recommendations to the Local Planning Authorities as to whether the application should be permitted or refused on transport grounds

secure the upgrading of existing and provision of new transport infrastructure to mitigate against the impact of the development proposals
secure contributions to improve transport provision in a wider context to account for the cumulative effects of new developments
promote our sustainability objectives by encouraging walking, cycling and public transport"

"The generation of traffic by a development is essentially a form of externality produced as a consequence of its existence. By the principle of polluter pays, developer contributions are required in order to deal with, such negative consequences, as can be mitigated for and additionally under some circumstances what gain can be made to invest in future-proofing development."

"However, we are aware that many people do not consider walking or cycling due to concerns about safety and personal security. The AHTS aims to address these issues positively"

"Connecting Oxfordshire: Volume 41Connecting Oxfordshire: Local Transport Plan 2015-2031Active & Healthy TravelStrategy"

 

All of which would appear to be complete and utter BS.

 

 

Avatar
hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
3 likes

I don't understand how including cycling facilities reduces the "business case" of the bid. Surely the return on investment for cycling facilities is far beyond the return you get with roads.

This sounds like a political move to me - Labour and Conservatives hate cycling.

Avatar
burtthebike replied to hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
1 like

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don't understand how including cycling facilities reduces the "business case" of the bid. Surely the return on investment for cycling facilities is far beyond the return you get with roads.

This sounds like a political move to me - Labour and Conservatives hate cycling.

This is a tory dominated council, with 30 seats compared to labour's 14, so not quite sure how you deduce that they both hate cycling when it is the tories who decide everything.

They clearly didn't need to drop this path when the minister confirmed that it met the criteria, so yes, the tories do hate cycling, as has been demonstrated so many times over the past ten years.  Lots of praise, fine words and hollow promises, but nothing on the ground; just like all their promises.

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to burtthebike | 4 years ago
3 likes

burtthebike wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don't understand how including cycling facilities reduces the "business case" of the bid. Surely the return on investment for cycling facilities is far beyond the return you get with roads.

This sounds like a political move to me - Labour and Conservatives hate cycling.

This is a tory dominated council, with 30 seats compared to labour's 14, so not quite sure how you deduce that they both hate cycling when it is the tories who decide everything.

They clearly didn't need to drop this path when the minister confirmed that it met the criteria, so yes, the tories do hate cycling, as has been demonstrated so many times over the past ten years.  Lots of praise, fine words and hollow promises, but nothing on the ground; just like all their promises.

Mine was a more general complaint about Labour (and Tories) not prioritising active travel (and I couldn't be bothered to lookup which one was to blame for this case). As I currently have more disdain for the Tories, I'm glad that at least we can pin the blame on them for this one.

Avatar
CyclingInBeastMode replied to burtthebike | 4 years ago
1 like

burtthebike wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don't understand how including cycling facilities reduces the "business case" of the bid. Surely the return on investment for cycling facilities is far beyond the return you get with roads.

This sounds like a political move to me - Labour and Conservatives hate cycling.

This is a tory dominated council, with 30 seats compared to labour's 14, so not quite sure how you deduce that they both hate cycling when it is the tories who decide everything.

They clearly didn't need to drop this path when the minister confirmed that it met the criteria, so yes, the tories do hate cycling, as has been demonstrated so many times over the past ten years.  Lots of praise, fine words and hollow promises, but nothing on the ground; just like all their promises.

My home city has been Labour run for all but one stint in the last, oh I don't know, 100 years, both local and MP, they've done begger all in that time to increase cycling yet have spent £300M+ on upgrading a road to go to the docks through the city centre effectively pushing people on bikes off the road because it's now too dangerous and with the latter upgrade will have HGVs travelling at 40/50mph, there is some 'infra' but as per it's disjointed, narrow, stop start and meandering, it was actually part of the first upgrade that cycle infra was put in along the length of the road from the city centre along the new dual lane to the docks but Labour didn't bother checking that this was put in place and there's feck all for the latest pushing cyclists and peds out the way spending.

Check around the country, Labour are no better than the Cons for the most part, what does Corbyn have as part of his NHS and tax saving strategy that should have cycling at its forefront, what nothing at all, that's right, they are equally shit when it comes to adressing one of the biggest solutions to so many problems!

Avatar
the little onion replied to hawkinspeter | 4 years ago
2 likes

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don't understand how including cycling facilities reduces the "business case" of the bid. Surely the return on investment for cycling facilities is far beyond the return you get with roads.

This sounds like a political move to me - Labour and Conservatives hate cycling.

I suspect it is because cycling infrastructure can impede drivers. For example, where a segregated cycle path has to cross a side road, or where road space has to be reallocated. So if the overwhelming priority is to ensure that motor traffic is not impeded, at least on paper, then cycling can weaken the business case. This is only if certain assumptions are made about what the business of road infrastructure is.

 

Here in Yorkshire, the infamous City Connect project was weakened because of a council insistence that it does not impede motor traffic in any way. Thus parking spaces for cars were given a higher priority over cycle paths. 

Avatar
hawkinspeter replied to the little onion | 4 years ago
2 likes

the little onion wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don't understand how including cycling facilities reduces the "business case" of the bid. Surely the return on investment for cycling facilities is far beyond the return you get with roads.

This sounds like a political move to me - Labour and Conservatives hate cycling.

I suspect it is because cycling infrastructure can impede drivers. For example, where a segregated cycle path has to cross a side road, or where road space has to be reallocated. So if the overwhelming priority is to ensure that motor traffic is not impeded, at least on paper, then cycling can weaken the business case. This is only if certain assumptions are made about what the business of road infrastructure is.

 

Here in Yorkshire, the infamous City Connect project was weakened because of a council insistence that it does not impede motor traffic in any way. Thus parking spaces for cars were given a higher priority over cycle paths. 

Well that doesn't sound like a business case - more of a blinkered "get cars to join a traffic queue as quick as we can" case.

Latest Comments