MPs and peers call for new Highways Act to support active travel in England

wtjs wrote:

I would be very annoyed if there was a subsidy for idlers' (or 'relaxed cyclists content to let the bike take the strain on hills' to avert the reflex anger) e-bikes, and none for proper bikes- setting aside the suspicion that any subsidy simply induces sellers to put the price up by almost as much as the subsidy

As a 70 year old idler living in the almost entirely unflat Forest of Dean with three ebikes so far, I'm hoping that was sarcasm.  Are you just as angry at the subsidies for ecars, so that your taxes go towards encouraging driving by idlers much more idle than us ebikers?

Not this again. This was all covered previously - ebikes are good for those of older years, folk with with hip problems, knee problems and recovering from prostate cancer treatment (which given your age you need to start to think about).
or would you rather all these folk got in their cars?

hirsute wrote:

Not this again. This was all covered previously - ebikes are good for those of older years, folk with with hip problems, knee problems and recovering from prostate cancer treatment (which given your age you need to start to think about).
or would you rather all these folk got in their cars?

Don't forget those of us that travel 9 miles a day to get to and from work, and up steep hills too. Used a regular bike for years to do this and the amount of cooldown and cleanup after so I don't spend the day stinking makes it impractical.

soon, Autumn was the only timeline they mentioned publically, and the changes had to be laid before parliament for 40 days, so even if they did it now they might not come in till next year anyway,  but it will soon be conference season too where they kind of avoid putting stuff out that requires MPs to be in the chamber to debate/vote, so it might not be till end of October you see anything. They did publish a load of changes to the HC last week, but presumably only ones not requiring changes in law, mostly about rules for motorway driving.

but there are some cycling and walking stats being published tomorrow.

brooksby wrote:

eburt is not allowed to reply with, 'when they finish the comprehensive road safety review'

It would be redundant now you've done it for me.

And when will the msm notice and publish the changes everywhere; I'm not counting the gammon press and the "cyclists' mafia ruling the road" stories.

theyve mostly published the changes from last week, and there are ways in government of making papers print this kind of stuff if needed, they havent been printing all the minutiae of covid guidelines just because theyve got blank pages to fill.

if parliament approves it and the changes becomes law, then Id expect at a minimum the DfT to carry out a national media campaign.

There were extra characters

https://allpartycycling.org/resources/inquiries/reaching-our-active-trav...

A mass bike ride is always a good idea.

I'm not a fan of 'either or' arguments, when in reality there isn't a single sum of money and a binary choice between project A and project B. In any case, the MPs who make up the APPGCW aren't paid extra to belong to the group.

As a not yet 70 year old living in the Forest of Dean I would say that going by the huge number of ebikes being ridden by blatantly fit instead of real bikes  I would suggest that any subsidy ought to avoid ebikes completely. All that would do is encourage more of the things. Excellent kit if you need such a thing but if not then both an extra drain on the worlds resources and only a half way stage between sofa and cycling. 

Though Always better than the eSUV, let alone the ICE version.

mattsccm wrote:

As a not yet 70 year old living in the Forest of Dean I would say that going by the huge number of ebikes being ridden by blatantly fit instead of real bikes 

"The blatantly fit" 

Your diagnostic skills put Doc Martin, famous for his ability to identify any malady at twenty paces, to shame.  Lung cancer, emphysema, leukemia, recovering from surgery?  No problem for you, and those shirking malingerers should be kicked off their ebikes and made to crawl the tracks instead.  The laughing emoji doesn't make it funny.

I would suggest that any subsidy ought to avoid ebikes completely

Almost, but not quite, what I wrote- which was that there should not be subsidies for e-bikes without the same subsidy for proper bikes. Pretty uncontroversial, I thought. The usual suspects, eburt and hirsute again demonstrated their inability to concentrate long enough to comprehend, and a propensity to dream up arguments that weren't put in order to oppose them. I don't seem to be angry at all, as there are no subsidies for e-bikes and I suspect there won't be any.

Funnily enough it was the label you use to describe ebike users. Or do you still not get that ? Did you forget that you had to bump one of your own threads just to stir up ebike controversy ?

And if you really wanted to be uncontroversial, you would have written

"I would be very annoyed if there was a subsidy for e-bikes, and none for proper bikes- setting aside the suspicion that any subsidy simply induces sellers to put the price up by almost as much as the subsidy"

But you didn't, you decided to be controversial and then pretend you weren't.