Author name: Steven Edwards

Cycling UK says that the government is suppressing the findings of research into active travel funding from scrutiny by Parliament, maintaining that the data shows that current levels of spend are insufficient to achieve its own targets for growth in cycling and walking.
The claim was made by the national cycling charity’s policy director, Roger Geffen, as he gave evidence to the House of Commons Transport Committee’s inquiry, Reforming public transport after the pandemic.

Another year of dangerous Royal Parks roads?
The Royal Parks has received almost 18,000 responses to consultations across changes to five of its iconic parks in London that were subject to trial restrictions to motor traffic over the last six months. And good news is that in every consultation, a strong majority of respondents supported the moves to restrict motor traffic from the park. That’s in part thanks to you and LCC’s campaigning on this issue.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that a well-planned reduction of road space for private cars does not add to congestion,” it says.

Governments should review how much road and parking space is allocated to the different transport modes. “Reallocation of road space and changes to road layouts that give more space to cyclists and pedestrians should be used as a strategy to manage car use.” 
Growing use of micromobility has strengthened the case for reducing road capacity for cars, the ITF believes.

London mayor Sadiq Khan is pressing the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to approve the reinstatement of a protected cycle lane on Kensington High Street when councillors consider the matter this month.
Kensington and Chelsea installed temporary cycle lanes  on the street with light segregation last September following pressure from Transport for London and the Government. The Prime Minister’s transport adviser Andrew Gilligan took a personal interest in the scheme. 

If you don’t build it, they won’t come
The 1989 film, Field of Dreams, is one of those from which a particular line has become a popular saying: “If you build it, they will come.” This is, as pedants like me will tiresomely remind people, a misquote of the original: “If you build it, he will come.” The ‘he’ in this case is the deceased father of the lead character (Ray, played by Kevin Costner), and the line is uttered by an ethereal voice only he can hear. The ‘it’ Ray had to build in the film was a baseball pitch, so that a ghostly ballgame could take place. The ‘it’ most often referred to in contemporary discourse on streets is cycle tracks, with the ‘they’ being people on cycles who would not otherwise travel that way.

But in 2021, in a climate and clean air emergency, what should it look like and who should it be for?
There are better greener and cleaner options than a motorway, like this recently proposed walking and cycling bridge, which has been greeted enthusiastically by local people.
The Silvertown Tunnel scheme in contrast is vehemently opposed by locals on environmental and economic grounds. First outlined by Boris Johnson in 2012 and developed by the same team that worked on the Garden Bridge, this is a dysfunctional scheme which has been pushed through initially on the grounds of assisting economic growth in East London but now of lessening congestion and pollution.