Pedal Power

Issue 159
July 2022

Improvements to River Soar Towpath

A grant of £885,000 towards a project by the Canal & River Trust to upgrade two kilometres of towpath alongside the River Soar in Loughborough has been approved as one of 11 such projects Loughborough Town Deal is awarding after securing £16.9 million of Government funding.

It is hoped that the improvements to the towpath will make a big difference for walkers and cyclists, and create a sustainable travel corridor in the town. The river towpath will provide a link to Loughborough’s industrial heritage, and make the town a more pleasant and greener place to travel around.

The Trust's plans for the River Soar will focus on the towpath between Moor Lane Bridge and Belton Road. Works are due to take place towards the end of the year. The plan is to upgrade the surfacing to provide a consistent high standard finish, remove barriers, improve signage, wayfinding and access points, as well as increasing the number of moorings to attract a greater number of visiting boats that will be able to access town centre facilities and attractions.

Cycling and walking funding

In May the Department for Transport (DfT) announced that 46 local authorities would receive £161 million for cycling and walking, but a handful secured half of it, and many got none. Locally Leicester City Council secured £2,175,000 while Leicester County Council failed to qualify for any funds.

'Be bold if you want funding for cycling and walking' has been the clear message to councils from Government for nearly two years. Some have listened, whilst others appear to have carried on regardless. In effect this has meant that Councils already keen on promoting walking and cycling have tended to win out while those who continue to give motoring the highest priority have failed to obtain funding.

Unfortunately this ensures that areas with high car dependency carry on along that track with no real incentive to promote active travel. However the DfT has made it clear that failure to reallocate road space to active travel can also have implications for councils’ wider transport funding, so just burying their heads in the sand and ignoring active travel may have consequences.

It will be interesting to see if the Government under a new Prime Minister is prepared to use sticks as well as carrots to promote active travel.

Ten common questions about cycling

Cycling UK has released its ten common questions about cycling, with answers. Health, collisions, pedestrians, reputation, road positioning and behaviour, regulation, tax, helmets, hi-vis are a snapshot of what’s covered. The document can be found here.

What deters women from cycling?

Based on an item on the Cycling UK website

In England, women typically take 15 fewer journeys every year than men, cycling 66 miles less. And a study conducted in 2021 revealed that

• 46% of women surveyed were not confident while cycling.
• 71% of the female respondents surveyed between 2011 and 2020 agreed that it is too dangerous to cycle on the road in England.
• More than half of 2000 British respondents (57%) to a YouGov survey were worried about sharing the road with lorries and large vehicles.
• 56% of women highlighted worries about being close passed by vehicles.
• More women (59%) than men (53%) said that drivers overtaking too closely to them would put them off taking up cycling.
• more women (46%) than men (40%) also answered that threatening behaviour from drivers towards them (swearing and so on) would discourage them.

Rachel Aldred, professor of transport at the University of Westminster and director of the Active Travel Academy has said about the low level of women cycling:

Cycling and Walking Strategy lacks cash

Based on an article by Roger Geffen on the Cycling UK website

The Government's long-awaited unveiling of England's Second Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS2) on 6 July 2022 went almost unnoticed.

It spells out the objectives to be achieved and the financial resources to be made available for achieving those objectives (as required by the Infrastructure Act 2015). However, there is still a glaring mismatch between the increases in cycling and walking the Department for Transport (DfT) is aiming to achieve, and the funding available to Active Travel England (ATE) for doing so.

Some of the CWIS2 objectives have been carried over from the first Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS1) – notably the ambition to double cycling 'stages' from 0.8bn in 2015 to 1.6bn in 2025 (a 'stage' can either be a whole trip or part of a trip).

There are also two new longer-term objectives:

• to increase the percentage of short journeys in towns and cities that are walked or cycled to 50% in 2030 and to 55% in 2035;
• to deliver a world-class cycling and walking network in England by 2040.

Unfortunately, DfT has inserted the word "short" into the first of these objectives and set a related shorter-term objective for the percentage of short urban journeys that are walked or cycled to 46% in 2025, from a pre-pandemic level of 42%. It has defined "short journeys in towns and cities" as journeys of under five miles that both begin and end in a town or city. This new definition, and the inclusion of the word short, suggest a low level of ambition and that the available funding will continue to be concentrated largely in urban areas.

Evidence from the Netherlands indicates that the average trip on an e-bike is about 60% longer than the average trip on a conventional pedal cycle. E-cycles could significantly increase the contribution of cycling to tackling the climate crisis, by enabling people to switch from cars for longer or hillier journeys, and in more rural areas.

This is precisely the wrong moment to reinforce the perception of many rural councils that promoting day-to-day cycling and walking is only really viable in urban areas. What puts people off switching from driving to cycling isn't the conditions on that town's streets, but the far worse conditions on the single-carriageway A or B roads linking that town to other nearby towns and villages.

The DfT now estimates that total spending under CWIS1 is £3.245bn. This amounts to an annual average of £13.80 per person outside London – although it was just £1.33 if we only count the ring-fenced funding. The equivalent figures for CWIS2 amount to about £19.90 per person per year, or £6.90 if we only count the ring-fenced funding.

However, even if we include the non-ring-fenced funding, England is now spending less than £20 per person annually, which means it's still lagging behind the levels of ring-fenced spending in Wales (£75m or £23.66 per person in 2021/2) and Scotland (£155m or £21 per person annually in 2021/2, rising to £320m or £58.50 per person in 2024/5).

The Government is still sitting on evidence that to meet its 2025 objectives would require an average of £1.2bn to £1.6bn annually – or about £25-£34 per person – starting in 2020.

Although the funding is almost certainly insufficient to meet the 2025 targets, at least it is finally in the right order of magnitude. It's worth recalling that the ring-fenced funding is 80 times what DfT allocated when it set up Cycling England in 2005.

The Government has now adopted some very good cycling infrastructure design guidance. This should in theory ensure that the available funding is spent on high-quality cycle provision. In practice though, we still need to train large numbers of transport planners and traffic engineers to understand and apply the guidance properly! This will be a major challenge for Active Travel England (ATE).

We also have the recent changes in the Highway Code rules, and particularly the new rules which clearly state that pedestrians and cyclists generally have priority over vehicles turning across their path at junctions. Traffic engineers used to fear that they could be at fault if they designed a cycle track to have priority across the mouth of a junction. Engineers can now prioritise cycle tracks across side roads (as is normal in many European countries) knowing that this is clearly backed by the new Highway Code.

The Government plans to revive the Local Transport Plan (LTP) process, as the main mechanism for allocating funding for local transport improvements. LTPs will be expected to include high-quality cycling and walking network plans, otherwise the council risks forfeiting all of its transport funding.

The role of Active Travel England will be to ensure that those design standards are consistently adhered to. ATE will also play a key role in ensuring that new developments are located and designed to support active travel.

The crises of congestion, air pollution, physical inactivity and the climate won't wait while the funding catches up. It is vital that what is now available is spent well.

Bike storage solutions

Bicycle storage can be a real issue for those who live in congested places and in accommodation with little space. However, with racks and wall hooks, there are many ways to store your bike whatever space you have available. Sustrans has produced a useful review of the solutions available in the market that can be found here .