Councils across England are to share £200 million central government investment into schemes aimed at encouraging cycling and walking, with 134 projects set to benefit funding under the initiative which is being overseen by Active Travel England.

The Department for Transport says that £161 million will be spent on new footways, cycle lanes and pedestrian crossings in 46 local authority areas outside England.

In addition to that funding, 19 authorities – including in Nottinghamshire, Hull and Manchester – will also receive a share of £1..5 million for “mini-Holland” feasibility studies, to assess how the areas could be as pedestrian and cycle-friendly as their Dutch city equivalents.

Transport Minister Trudy Harrison said: “This multimillion-pound investment will ensure people right across the country can access cheap, healthy and zero-emission travel.”

Chris Boardman, who earlier this year was appointed Active Travel Commissioner for England, commented: “This is all about enabling people to leave their cars at home and enjoy local journeys on foot or by bike.
“Active Travel England is going to make sure high-quality spaces for cycling, wheeling and walking are delivered across all parts of England, creating better streets, a happier school run and healthier, more pleasant journeys to work and the shops.”

A further £35 million will be spent improving the National Cycle Network, which is managed by the charity Sustrans, including upgrades to 44 off-road-sections of its routes, and £8 million will go on an initiative to encourage more people to ride e-bikes through short and long-term loans, with a pilot scheme operated by Cycling UK launching last week in Greater Manchester.

The national cycling charity also gets £2 million for its Big Bike Revival scheme which enables people to get bicycles that have been left unused in gardens and sheds back in a roadworthy condition.

Xavier Brice, chief executive officer of Sustrans, said: “As custodians of the National Cycle Network, we’re delighted that the government is continuing to invest in these vital and much-loved walking, wheeling and cycling routes.

“This funding will see improvements made to the network in England, connecting cities, towns and the countryside, making walking, wheeling and cycling a safer, more convenient and more accessible travel option for everyone.

“The network is a national asset that is loved locally and continued investment will advance our work with partners and stakeholders across the UK. Together, we’re reimagining the ways in which we move around, empowering people to connect with others and helping everyone explore our shared environments,” he added.

One of the schemes that will be funded as part of the announcement is the 1930s cycle track in Leicester.

The journalist and author Carlton Reid, who has researched 101 such schemes across the UK that date back to the 1930s and 1940s and has published his findings on his Bikeboom website (link is external), where people can back the project, said he hoped more councils would seek government cash to enable them to restore such infrastructure.

Reid told road.cc that the scheme in Leicester, worth £2.2 million and relating to the 1930s cycle track on Melton Road, from Lanesborough Road to the city boundary near the outer ring road, “is one of 10 that were cherry picked for extra design work by John Dales and his team at Urban Movement.”

Deputy city mayor for transport and environment at Leicester City Council, Councillor Adam Clarke, said: “Around 18,000 people make daily journeys by bike in Leicester, but one of the biggest barriers to regular walking and cycling is the need for safe and easy to follow direct routes.

“Creating off-road routes - and more space for pedestrians - means everyone can travel safely by bike or on foot. It’s interesting to note that this is exactly the same issue that led to the creation of segregated cycle lanes in the 1930s.

“As heritage champion for Leicester, I love the fact that we’ll be reviving the city’s past while making travel around the city more sustainable for the future. Sustainable travel means less congestion, less air pollution, better health and a better environment for us all,” he added.

https://road.cc/content/news/100-cycling-and-walking-projects-get-ps200m-funding-292781

On 16/05/2022 18:37, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

> Councils across England are to share £200 million central government investment into schemes aimed at encouraging cycling and walking, with 134 projects set to benefit funding under the initiative which is being overseen by Active Travel England.

"We cannot point to a single cyclist that all this expense has saved"

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Spike

chrisonatrike replied to the little onion | 2394 posts | 23 hours ago
1 like

Amen brother. Sustrans have come on quite a bit (link is external) so I wouldn't pan them straight away. Sadly I would always scrutinise their suggestions closely though. That's because of their history of signing off (geddit?) on substandard stuff and instances of seeming to do whatever it took to get into pictures with councils or claim large mileages of infra achieved.

What is not surprising but is a bad sign is we're still saying things like "much-loved" (twice above). We say that about nice recreational walkways and not about the A9 or distributor roads do we? Just like government "encouraging" cycling. What we need is not "lovely" or "nice" or even "exceptional (link is external)" infra. Not hundreds of plucky individual efforts via volunteer effort costing the authorities peanuts. We need pennies in the overall transport pound - Scotland has started at 10p per overall pound. Even that is too low initially given the problems we've baked in. In 2015 the Dutch spent 3% of the transport budget on cycling (link is external) - more details here from 2010 (link is external) - but that was once they already had the best network in the world (link is external) and all the supporting systems and standards (link is external) in place.

We need proven adequate standard (link is external) infra rolled out using national templates and critera. It should be mundane because it's ubiquitous and er... standard. That means everyone can understand and trust it wherever they go. For example if you know people have been successfully using the round wheel for decades and someone comes by with a "cool" hexagonal one (link is external) you'd smell snake oil (link is external), right?

Charities are great but our railway projects are not devolved to model railway enthusiasts. Cycling infra needs to be delivered by the same cadre of career bureaucrats and civil servants we have building our other infrastructure. That itself will mean more costs initially for the UK because our current lot will need retraining. More important than that their bosses need to understand what's required and need setting new priorities. We need this to use existing systems so work shouldn't suddenly stop because the "cycling officer" has left and it'll take months or years to find another. Nor should the task be handed to someone who is totally confident in their ability to design for bikes because "they've done it for cars all their career and cycling design is simpler, just like pedestrian infra".

On 16/05/2022 07:37 pm, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

> Councils across England are to share £200 million central government investment into schemes aimed at encouraging fairy-cycling and walking, with 134 projects set to benefit funding under the initiative which is being overseen by Active Travel England.
>
> The Department for Transport says that £161 million will be spent on new footways, fairy-cycle lanes and pedestrian crossings in 46 local authority areas outside England.
>
> In addition to that funding, 19 authorities – including in Nottinghamshire, Hull and Manchester – will also receive a share of £1.5 million for “mini-Holland” feasibility studies, to assess how the areas could be as pedestrian and fairy-cycle-friendly as their Dutch city equivalents.
>
> Transport Minister Trudy Harrison said: “This multimillion-pound investment will ensure people right across the country can access cheap, healthy and zero-emission travel.”
>
> Chris Boardman, who earlier this year was appointed Active Travel Commissioner for England, commented: “This is all about enabling people to leave their cars at home and enjoy local journeys on foot or by fairy-bike.
> “Active Travel England is going to make sure high-quality spaces for fairy-cycling, wheeling and walking are delivered across all parts of England, creating better streets, a happier school run and healthier, more pleasant journeys to work and the shops.”
>
> A further £35 million will be spent improving the National Fairy Cycle Network, which is managed by the charity Sustrans, including upgrades to 44 off-road-sections of its routes, and £8 million will go on an initiative to encourage more people to ride e-fairy-bikes through short and long-term loans, with a pilot scheme operated by Fairy Cycling UK launching last week in Greater Manchester.
>
> The national fairy-cycling charity also gets £2 million for its Big Fairy Bike Revival scheme which enables people to get fairy-bicycles that have been left unused in gardens and sheds back in a roadworthy condition.
>
> Xavier Brice, chief executive officer of Sustrans, said: “As custodians of the National Fairy Cycle Network, we’re delighted that the government is continuing to invest in these vital and much-loved walking, wheeling and fairy-cycling routes.
>
> “This funding will see improvements made to the network in England, connecting cities, towns and the countryside, making walking, wheeling and fairy-cycling a safer, more convenient and more accessible travel option for everyone.
>
> “The network is a national asset that is loved locally and continued investment will advance our work with partners and stakeholders across the UK. Together, we’re reimagining the ways in which we move around, empowering people to connect with others and helping everyone explore our shared environments,” he added.
>
> One of the schemes that will be funded as part of the announcement is the 1930s fairy-cycle track in Leicester.
>
> The journalist and author Carlton Reid, who has researched 101 such schemes across the UK that date back to the 1930s and 1940s and has published his findings on his Bikeboom website (link is external), where people can back the project, said he hoped more councils would seek government cash to enable them to restore such infrastructure.
>
> Reid told road.cc that the scheme in Leicester, worth £2.2 million and relating to the 1930s fairy-cycle track on Melton Road, from Lanesborough Road to the city boundary near the outer ring road, “is one of 10 that were cherry picked for extra design work by John Dales and his team at Urban Movement.”
>
> Deputy city mayor for transport and environment at Leicester City Council, Councillor Adam Clarke, said: “Around 18,000 people make daily journeys by fairy-bike in Leicester, but one of the biggest barriers to regular walking and fairy-cycling is the need for safe and easy to follow direct routes.
>
> “Creating off-road routes - and more space for pedestrians - means everyone can travel safely by fairy-bike or on foot. It’s interesting to note that this is exactly the same issue that led to the creation of segregated fairy-cycle lanes in the 1930s.
>
> “As heritage champion for Leicester, I love the fact that we’ll be reviving the city’s past while making travel around the city more sustainable for the future. Sustainable travel means less congestion, less air pollution, better health and a better environment for us all,” he added.
>
> https://road.cc/content/news/100-cycling-and-walking-projects-get-ps200m-funding-292781
>

Awavey | 2568 posts | 1 hour ago
1 like
This very clearly highlights the difference in spending between cycling & motoring, 200million for all of England cycling vs 200million on some surfacing improvements on parts of the A12 & A14 https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/traffic/a14-and-a12-receive-national-highway... (link is external)

If you can ignore the highways guy refers to road users as customers, rolls eyes, it vaguely hints at some "dedicated safe spaces" for cycling.

reply quote

Avatar
Owd Big 'Ead | 130 posts | 5 hours ago
0 likes

Hopefully these schemes will be done to a higher standard than the shite Sustrans works to, but £200m goes nowhere in the big scheme of things.

If the government was really serious about active travel they'd be signing off a minimum of £2bn/year.

OF COURSE.

On 17/05/2022 15:46, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

> Avatar
> Owd Big 'Ead | 130 posts | 5 hours ago
> 0 likes

> Hopefully these schemes will be done to a higher standard than the shite Sustrans works to, but £200m goes nowhere in the big scheme of things.

> If the government was really serious about active travel they'd be signing off a minimum of £2bn/year.

> OF COURSE.

GET CYCLISTS TO PAY THE £2BN

STOP SPONGING OFF THE TAXPAYER

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Spike

HarrogateSpa | 1284 posts | 22 hours ago
4 likes
Are these the Active Travel Fund 3 allocations?

It's hard to work out what exactly this money is, which councils are receiving it, and for what schemes - because the article and the DfT press release it's based on are close to fact-free.

reply quote

Avatar
Awavey replied to HarrogateSpa | 2568 posts | 6 hours ago
1 like
Agreed, theres a nice youtube video about Active Travel England with Sir Chris of Boardman, https://youtu.be/khEQp_tPJOM (link is external) but not exactly filled with details about what any of this funding really means.

Heck I'd just like an update/review of what the hell happened in Active Travel Fund 2 allocations, alot of money was handed out,but I've seen very little change locally, or sign of it being spent.