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London cyclistsCycling UK calls on Labour government to put “divisive rhetoric” around active travel to bed “once and for all” with “coherent and committed” investment for cycling
Cycling UK has asked the new Labour government to show its commitment to improving active travel in the country by allocating 10 per cent of the total transport budget to cycling and walking, while also moving away from the culture war and the “divisive rhetoric” around the topic stirred by the previous government.
To put forth a stark contrast from the Conservative Party that’s held power at Westminster since 2010 as promised by the Labour during its general election campaign and manifesto, the charity is asking for a “coherent and committed” investment in cycling for transport.
As first reported by The Guardian, the call from Cycling UK comes after a survey it commissioned, which looked into the reasons people don’t ride a bike, and found that almost half cited safety worries, especially amongst the older demographic.
The survey found that despite 92 per cent of UK adults knowing how to ride a bike, fewer than half do, with 48 per cent of people citing road safety as the reason why they do not cycle.
The charity stresses that while cycling is safer than many people believe and has become more so in recent years, the perception around it being a dangerous activity and not offering the same safety as a car or an SUV would, still is major barrier for many people to consider cycling as a means of transport or leisure.
Cycling UK believes, and as many research, studies and reports have shown, that this can be addressed by building cycling-focused infrastructure that segregate vulnerable users from motor traffic, such as cycle lanes.
The poll also found that almost 70 per cent people want to see more of bike lanes, despite the vocal opposition found on social media and even reported by many media publishers.
It has called on the Labour government to commit 10 per cent of the total transport budget to active travel, arguing this would bring huge dividends for public health and the environment.
Sarah Mitchell, Cycling UK’s chief executive, said: “The findings in this survey show that there is real appetite in the UK to encourage more cycling, more routes and the building of better infrastructure to ensure people are kept safe while cycling.
“The public recognise the benefits and are desperate to enjoy them. With political will and proportionate funding, we can make that future a reality.”
Mitchell called for any debate on the issue to be led by evidence, saying this was too often not the case under the latter stages of the previous government: “We are hopeful that this kind of divisive rhetoric will be put to bed once and for all.”
Under the Tory Government, active travel had become a major topic to incite this divisive rhetoric, with policies and infrastructure such low traffic neighbourhoods, 15-minute cities, 20mph speed limits, ULEZ, and bus and bike lanes bearing the brunt of the party’s attempt at stoking culture wars.
Conservative leader Rishi Sunak had already painted the picture of the Tories as being the party of the motorists, with the former prime minister and even declaring that there existed a “war on motorists” that needed to be fought and stopped.
> Rishi Sunak is “on the side” of drivers – What happened to Britain’s “golden age for cycling”?
In July last year, CyclingUK accused Sunak of seeking to exploit division over LTNs and urged him not to use low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) as a “political football” after he ordered the Department for Transport (DfT) to undertake a review of them.
The review itself became another scandal during the previous government’s chequered tenure, as it tried to bury the findings of the report that concluded that LTNs are effective in reducing traffic and generally popular among residents.
When the report was finally made public, London’s Cycling and Walking Commissioner Will Norman attacked the government for continuing with its “load of angry rhetoric against LTNs, 20mph & even bus lane cameras”, despite its own research proving the benefits.
The said rhetoric came in the form of a new guidance from Department of Transport (DfT) under the government’s ‘Plan for Drivers’, titled ‘Crackdown on anti-driver road schemes and blanket 20mph limits to put local consent first’.
The guidance says that councils will only be able to implement LTNs if they have the support from locals. Failure to do so could see future funding withdrawn and the government could take control of an authority's roads.
Louise Haigh MP, the newly instated transport secretary, said the publication of the guidance was “a blatant and desperate attempt to distract people from a government that has run out of road”.
Recently, Haigh was labelled as a “new convert” for cycling, as a few months after she made controversial comments about cycling, which she later described as a “light-hearted joke”, she finally got round to travelling through her Sheffield constituency by e-bike, which she says has the potential to “make all the difference” in encouraging even those wary of the city’s hills to cycle more.
In remarks to Department for Transport staff when she first took over the job, Haigh called efforts to make transport more environmentally friendly “the critical thread weaving through every priority”.
“A huge amount has been achieved through your work on the switch to zero emission vehicles and sustainable aviation fuels, and we are looking forward to building on that,” she told them.
“But we will also get straight to work on our plans to make public transport and active travel much more attractive choices.”
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after graduating with a masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Wales, and also likes to writes about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
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32 comments
IMHO 10% probably isn't enough.
Because we all know that they will allocate 10%, then define walking to the bus or train station (and the bus/train journey afterwards) as active travel (and then tell pedestrians its all the cyclists fault, cyclists that its the pedestrians, bus users its the cyclists, train users - its the busses, etc etc)...
IMHO you probably need 10% for cycling and 10% for walking (and probably another 10% for multimodal - i.e. stuff to support cycle->train->walk->tube->walk trip into city...)
It would be great to have more than 10% for a few decades to try to reverse the continued drive for motoring / rebalance things to a point where there are actually cyclists to improve the infra for.
Plus actively reducing the spend for "roads" would also help. It's not zero sum but if people have private modes of walk, cycle or drive and the latter has been made at least as convenient as the other two, they'll probably drive.
Unfortunately another "it's complicated". Cyclists have to use the roads most places (and will always use the streets) and are far more affected by e.g. potholes (or - in Edinburgh - semi-destroyed roads with plenty of gravel). And even if going "full Dutch" the roads will still need plenty of work (big money) to slow drivers where appropriate, or reduce lanes / width, or further discourage driving on the cycle path / footway...
Scotland set a reasonable target for this, but didn't reach it. Now because politics it looks like we've also pivoted towards "addressing the concerns of most people" which on transport I think mean "more car, less things which look like war on motorists".
...also you're right to be cynical - Scotland was already trying to reframe as "active travel" things which were e.g. public transport-adjacent. IIRC some councils found ways of somehow diverting that money for car infra (well - technically cycle paths ARE car infra - but things that were of essentially no benefit to cyclists).
Looking at continental models public transport has to be part of the picture as you note (multimodal). Another part of our focus on roads / private car mass-motoring has been running down that. So yes - and that should have its own budget (again maybe at expense of general "road" stuff) - it certainly shouldn't be half-inched from cycling!
https://www.wrexham.com/news/wrexham-woman-faces-four-hour-commute-to-tr...
Maybe there's a quicker mode of transport no one has thought of so far?
Two hours each way, including a 45 minute wait for a connecting bus, according to the article.
Even if she ignores cycling (as I'm sure she would), I bet she could walk eight miles in a similar time…
Changing the language is a good place to start. As has been mentioned before, if residents are asked - do you want quiet streets, where your children can play outside and walk or cycle to their friends' house, where there is reduced noise and reduced air pollution and where the risk of collisions involving motor vehicles is drastically reduced - then people will say yes. The local authority are talking to residents close to where I live in London about doing the above - but they are avoiding the acronym LTN. Even if asked to their face they won't say LTN. LTN has become a poisoned chalice through years of negative media and political rhetoric.
While segregated cycle lanes are the best option with the best will in the world they'll never be as widespread as we'd like. Certainly not soon.
However a quicker a cost effective (but never as good) option is immediately begin to educate the public about the changes to the Highway code. Then enforce them.
It astounds me the government can make these changes and then keep it a secret.
On another front all the talk of zero emission vehicles is a con. If people believe that everyone who drives now will have an electric car in the future they're fooling themselves. There simply isn't enough material needed for that amount of batteries in the world. We need a complete rethink on how we get about.
Yep. The UK is not well suited to building separate cycling infrastructure in many places without absolutely ruining the ability of cars to get about and whether we like it or not, most people need to get about by car. The best thing to do is indeed to educate drivers and enforce the rules. I personally have zero issue sharing the roads with good drivers. They get in my way a bit and I get in theirs a bit. Its fine.
'I personally have zero issue sharing the roads with good drivers.'
That's why you're one of the 2 or 3% who regularly make trips by bike.
Without radically improved infrastructure including protected cycle tracks, LTNs, bus gates etc, that's where modal share will stay.
Exactly what was said in Holland 50 years ago.
I feel sorry for Utrecht and Eindhoven. Neither of them are in a Holland.
Just spare a thought of the people of the cycling Mecca of Spalding who are though...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spalding,_Lincolnshire
the triumverate of cycle training destination; Mallorca, Tenerife and Spalding. every climb in Spalding has a hot contested KOM.
Is that like "a Swansea"?
or "The Gambia"?
I'm sure when I was younger, Ukraine was "the Ukraine".
Apparently, the term "the Ukraine" carries political baggage with it, so using "Ukraine" recognises their soverignty:
https://theconversation.com/its-ukraine-not-the-ukraine-heres-why-178748
I doubt most people need to get about by car. They might prefer it, choose it, go by default but given the the shortness of many journeys, it's a want not a need.
It's not just that to those with a car most journeys appear to need to be driven. We're looking out for "driveable" trips, attractions, places to live and jobs...
It becomes a vicious circle. People presume they need a car, don't see viable alternatives, so continue to lock themselves into car dependency.
Even if people don't see themselves as cyclists now, it's important that they see that others are doing it, and that it is a viable option.
Really? Really? Is this sarcasm? Where is so suited?
By "absolutely ruining the ability of cars to get about" do you mean "yeah it'll be a bit slower than the UK urban average speed * (but still faster and much easier than walking) and if 1000 folks want to blat through for rush hour / the school run it won't work"? If the latter, yes...
I can think of some places where those mediaeval builders already ruined the ability of cars to get about. But even that is fine though - they still do, and we put in bypasses (or knock down stuff to get them through).
Yes - it is far from quick or easy. Even in NL it took them almost a generation even to start chaning the direction of travel * and they've now had about 50 years of fixing the place.
But I don't think the UK is unique in it's infra - plenty of European places have "narrow streets". And on the other hand lots of the UK those have been reamed out, or we've built nice wide boulevards from when we entered the age of mass motoring.
The hard facts though is that any genuine change will require at minimum:
- a reversal of direction of travel (increasing traffic volumes - and indeed increasing volumes of some cars).
- some journeys becoming slightly less convenient (maybe slightly slower / less direct / fewer choices of routes / not so much completely free storage for your private vehicle on public infra wherever you like). Because if driving remains just as convenient for drivers then nothing will change. And it won't change for active travel, not even if we had the best behaved drivers in the world - because only we few will cycle (because easier by car, because most people just don't like cycling amongst lots of traffic / where speed differentials are high).
The good news is that as well as putting a tiny bit more pressure on people to drive properly we don't need to build separate cycle infra absolutely everywhere. In fact, much if not most of the distance covered by cyclists in the Netherlands will NOT be on separated cycle paths.
Further we can get much of this improvement by simple interventions like making local streets actually destinations rather than through routes ("LTNs") via things like "modal filtering" to stop rat running. Even simply changing the speed limits on signs (though the best way to set speeds is to have appropriate street design).
In general making it still easy and possible to get there by driving but just slightly less quick and direct.
* London average speeds apparently: 8.7 mph to 7.1 mph in central London. 12.5 mph to 11.6 mph in inner London. 20.3 mph to 19.3 mph in outer London.
** NL were in a far better position than the UK when they chose a different path. There were some extant cycling infra networks, lots of people still cycled, public transport hadn't been run down and altogether they were probably some decades behind the UK in terms of "making ways for drivers" although they had already started paving everywhere and knocking down stuff.
The best way to educate drivers about the impact of their driving on cyclists is to get them cycling.
It's always the choices we make, isn't it. Do we care enough about active travel and low (-er) carbon footprints, or not?
Where is?
The problem is that designing infrastructure to prioritise cars ends up crowding out other forms of transport. That might be fine in remote areas where it's not so practical to have effective public transport that's run purely for profit, but it doesn't work so well in populous cities and towns as the congestion soon becomes greater than any road design can handle. The only sensible way to deal with the congestion is to deprioritise cars and instead prioritise public transport and active travel.
The real question is whether we want to prioritise cars getting about or people getting about?
Depends how widespread you expect. Plenty of places in Europe (heck - even some bits of London) built it (imperfectly - but "just about good enough") and ... they did come. Seville would seem to be an example of "it wasn't there, nobody cycled, a rough-and-ready network was made and after a decade a substantial proportion of journeys are now cycled".
I think the (not so recent now) Highway Code changes are sensible, but a) they're not new law and b) are largely what should be good practice anyway. I think "more awareness of the Highway code" is exactly the kind of cheap intervention which will accomplish remarkably little, but it's pretty cheap so "cost effective".
Certainly our system of "driver education and testing" is woeful (once a lifetime - and there are those who never bother and receive little sanction). I don't think that more "ad campaigns" will make much difference though, any more than all those "please stop killing cyclists / motorcyclists / pedestrians" ones. More on that here.
Doesn't astound me. That's pretty much standard for politics. You end up implementing stuff you don't actually care about or even care for, because politics. Things take tons of time to actually get done. Meanwhile the mood changes, then you've got stuff in motion which actually you'd prefer people to forget about (or forget you started it).
Agree with "emit elsewhere, maybe a bit less" vehicles. Sadly I wonder whether (given lobbying, politics, reluctance to change) even replacing cars with cars 2.0 (now they're electric) might be a stretch? And never mind exotic elements in batteries - where are we going to get all the steel?
The problem Labour have got is that many of the things they should do will be massively unpopular with a large chunk of people. The other issue is that the Tories will have an absolute field day taking pot shots at them and their supporters will lap it up.
The Tories stayed in power for over a decade and somehow managed to pursuade huge numbers of people that policies and decisions that they themselves made were "forced" on them and that it was someone elses fault.
How "the war on motorists" has become a genuinely believed rhetoric is beyond me but you can be sure as hell the Tories will be screaming it from the rooftops when any green initiatives are put forward.
If Labour want more than one term they will have to pick their battles and get a lot better at firing back at the Tories for their lost decade.
Just sing "Gold Digga and 14 years, 14 years" at them.
"Lost decade" suggests we only suffered a lack of progress during their tenure, rather than the active regression in the national state of affairs.
Pretty much anything that they do to try and fix the problems of the last fourteen years are going to be massively unpopular with a large chunk of people. The Tories have already started moaning about the terrible state of the country and how it's all Labour's fault, why haven't they fixed it, etc, etc.
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