It appears that the government has announced £291 million for active travel - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/almost-300-million-to-gear-up-new-walking-wheeling-and-cycling-schemes
Is this something to get excited about? It seems a lot of money to me (although perhaps not in the grand scheme of things) & assuming that it's actually spent on what it's meant to be spent on, will it make a significant difference or just result in a few more bits of fragmentary, un-joined up paths?
I'm starting to see news stories about local allocations too https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjw450d90v7o
The breakdown is supposedly:
- £222.5 million to local authorities for the development and delivery of local walking, wheeling and cycling schemes, alongside community engagement and training
- £30 million to provide Bikeability cycle training to children
- £30 million to the Sustrans charity to deliver improvements to the National Cycle Network, a UK-wide network of signed active travel routes
- £8.5 million for Cycling UK, Living Streets and Modeshift to deliver walking, wheeling and cycling initiatives in schools and communities
The trouble is that at least some of it ends up paying for expensive road upgrades that were needed anyway or are of no benefit to cyclists.
e.g.
New pedestrian and cycle bridge to be installed on A33 Relief Road - Highways News
www.highways-news.com/new-pedestrian-and-cycle-bridge-to-be-installed-on-a33-relief-road/
There was already a cycle (shared use, but not on a route you'd walk anywhere on) path on both sides of the road.
The better of the two cycle paths is actually on the other side of the road to the new bridge, but had the problem of having to do a diversion under the road, up to road level, across the river, down and back under the road. A bridge on that side would have been an actual benefit to users.
This however will force you to ride on the shitty side with shitty junctions to get across, shitty lorry's parked in the shitty layby, on the shitty pavement that's breaking up. None of which will get fixed.
This was paid for out of the post covid active travel funding IIRC.
The net gain is going to be an extra lane on the carriageway when they widen it into the space previously used by the shared use path. It's a bus lane, but still.
So that's almost 10% of your seemingly generous national funding for cycling spent on a project to widen the A33 for cars and busses.
I'd rather they had spent the money on sorting out the magic paint on Shinfield road, adding some paint to Wilderness road (to link the dangerous cycling infrastructure on Shinfield Road with the equally dangerous infrastructure on Wokingham Road).
I think the South West is getting shafted, as per.
Less than 10% of the budget for the largest region in England, by far.
Forum's eaten my damn post again.
In summary; there's no cost/benefit analysis done on these projects for cyclists and active travel.
Need a new bus lane, rip up an existing cycle path and build it elsewhere, no benefit to cyclists but this sort of funding will pay for it.
Need new flood defenses, put a bike path on top of it and active travel funding will pay for it
Need potholes fixing, do it for the cyclists and active travel funding will pay for it
Got some S105 funding for a new cyclepath, get the active travel funding to pay for it instead and you can spend it on something else.
Reading has a reputation for some of the worst implementations of cycle lanes anywhere, there was a campaign BY CYCLISTS a few years ago to have some magic paint removed because it was demonstrably worse than nothing at all (cycle lane, through the dooring zone past a row of shops, that disappeared at every pedestrian refuge pinch point). There's currently a £26million project which IIRC is funded by the post covid active travel funding, the net result of which will be a new bus lane and a worse cycle lane than there was before.
The forum's not eaten your post, I can see it, although obviously you can't at the moment.
If it's any help you can view the complete thread using the Topic Overview option (downward pointing arrow up at the top of the thread next to the icons).
£291M sounds like a lot of money. In reality you can spend that remarkably quickly if you are trying to build infrastructure. With no real standards to conform to, it will be quite possible to slap down paint in such a way that actual active travel is not encouraged but lip service is paid. Moreover without any legislative obligation to maintain anything that is built, a lot of what gets created will become unusable or at least unwelcoming within a decade and then future plans will be scuppered by "there's already a path there nobody uses" arguments.
Correctly done you could achieve a lot with £291M, I won't hold my breath.
£291 million sounds like a big investment, but the real question is how effectively it will be used. Given past funding allocations, there’s always a risk of fragmented, unconnected projects rather than a truly integrated active travel network. It’s promising, but execution will be key. If it’s spent wisely, it could move the needle on active travel adoption. If not, it’s just another headline-grabbing but ultimately ineffective spend.
The UK never seems able to do a good middle ground on active travel infrastructure. It is either woefully poor, or massively expensive and over complicated e.g.
https://www.blogpreston.co.uk/2023/07/broadgate-cyclops-junction-opening-event-being-held/
We had a few weeks cycling in NL last year. Almost every major junction in every NL town had a simple version of the cyclops junction. How did they manage that? It would never have happened if each one cost £1.8 million as per the example above.
We had a few weeks cycling in NL last year. Almost every major junction in every NL town had a simple version of the cyclops junction. How did they manage that? It would never have happened if each one cost £1.8 million as per the example above.
Roads are pretty expensive to build. The difference is that NL probably built / builds those as standard when they build a road. So it comes out of the road building budget and probably costs only an incremental amount on top of the basic British roundabout. Whereas we make it something special that has to be paid for out of special budgets and only gets done when the council realizes it can use active travel funding to pay for some redevelopment that was needed anyway.
£291 million sounds like a big investment, but the real question is how effectively it will be used. Given past funding allocations, there’s always a risk of fragmented, unconnected projects rather than a truly integrated active travel network.
An interesting experiment would be to spend the whole lot on one mid sized town. Somewhere big enough that the local population actually work locally but not so big that the project is diluted. Preferably one with a decent existing infrastructure. Preferably one that's not completely flat. With rubbish congestion. And preferably reasonably northern. Preston springs to mind but there's probably others.
Build a proper network of arterial cycle routes to link together the existing good bits.
Then once "build it and they will come" turns out to be true. It can be used as a case study every time someone tries to argue that:
It wont work because of hills
It wont work because it's grim up north
It won't work because cars and congestion.
etc.
The problem is all the research says proper levels of cycle commuting save governments money on healthcare and on road maintenance, lead to improved productivity, etc. But actually demonstrating that it's better than spending £200million on yet another bypass is impossible.
£291 isn't enough (it's about 200m of LTN 1/20 compliant lane per council area) but I've heard through the grapevine there is more on the way including multi-year settlements.
Active Travel England should be involved in vetting bids to prevent some of the more egregious abuses.
Without wanting to sound like a broken record, please get involved in your local walking/cycling/wheeling group - even if its just reading the odd email to see what's happening local to you the more people involved the better.
Preston springs to mind but there's probably others.
Preston is meant to be doing good work on this already, which doesn't mean they've not identified a site for the new hospital which is in the middle of nowhere near the motorway. But agreed, what really needs to happen is one decent sized town/small city to go all in.
The problem is all the research says proper levels of cycle commuting save governments money on healthcare and on road maintenance, lead to improved productivity, etc
There was something that ATE released a couple of weeks back about messaging - it's better to talk about health and wellbeing rather than the environment (even if the two go together). Peter Walker makes the point (in Bike Nation) that being active in middle age makes it less likely people will need social care when elderly. But the problem for councillors is that even if they want to do the right thing (which is far from a given, even when representing parties who are pro-Active Travel), it takes a lot of willpower to keep going in the face of death threats from an angry minority, as happened round here.
£291M sounds like a lot of money. In reality you can spend that remarkably quickly if you are trying to build infrastructure.
Of which £200m is spent on consultancy, feasibility studies, consultations and not a lot on actually providing anything
Call me cynical
So roughly 30% of the proposed A428 improvement budget (which will cost more than budgeted because road building). Forecast to save a whole 10 minutes travelling time when opened which will slowly diminish due to induced demand.
Preston is meant to be doing good work on this already, which doesn't mean they've not identified a site for the new hospital which is in the middle of nowhere near the motorway. But agreed, what really needs to happen is one decent sized town/small city to go all in.
I lived there for ~3 months working during Covid. I was really impressed with how well used the Guild Wheel was, and apart from a few crappy junctions fir the brief of being useable form ages 8 to 80. Admittedly this was during Covid so there wasn't much else to do, but it was still nice to see. Sort out a few of the radial roads and it could be pretty nice.
Wow £691 Million Great British pounds Eh (sarcastic)... So about £4.20 per person? Really investing in the Health of the nation now ain't We...
Didn't we spend something like £6 Billion quid on major Roads last year? (double that once you add local authority spending)...
£291m isn't a lot when it's divided into multiple schemes etc.
It'll probably go on schemes like the one we're having built in Cardiff right now: a cycle lane on top of a bank the length of Rover Way. Sounds good as it'll be a double width two-way path separate from the road and, amazingly, will avoid a lot of junctions so it will be a straight ride from Rumney and Tremorfa to the Docks and linking up with the cycle infrastructure around the Bay area and even linking up with the Taff Trail and the new cycle lanes that go to Barry and the airport!
Except that it's a route that no-one would dream of using as it's three times as far compared to going through the city centre, goes behind the bad Gypsy camp (there's two good ones nearby), cuts through the land that camp uses as a dumping ground and to tether their horses, regularly has strong sidewinds, goes past a massive metal recycling/processing plant (puncture city...), goes through a waste water treatment works and you'll have to cross the busy entrance to the Docks which is constantly in use by big lorries. It'll be finished then turn into a nice 'access road' for the gypsies within a few days.
