MICROMOBILITY
PHOTO BY JAN-VAN-DER-WOLF ON PEXELS TALKING TRANSPORT (AND TRAILS)
The second half of 2024 delivered plenty in the way of adjustment in sentiment, budgets, and policy across the UK for cycling when viewed as a transport form. Mark Sutton explores where progress has been won and where work remains…
England After 14 years we have a new Government. However you feel about that, there has been some positive change when it comes to both the sentiment and the funding around active travel. We’re not at the ‘unprecedented’ levels of funding promised by the now jettisoned Louise Haigh, but the page does at least seem to have been turned on the last transport minister, Mark Harper, and his indulgence of conspiracy theories around 15-minute cities and low traffic neighbourhoods. So, what’s new and on record? We do know there has been a £100 million figure floated in the Autumn Budget document that will sit on top of the already known £50 million spend for the year to come. A 200% increase sounds like a lot, in this economic context perhaps it is, but £150 million is still below peak Conservative Government active travel spending, though not by much.
50 | February 2025 To put it in the language that the Labour Government may
come to appreciate as it juggles the books, cycling has a very high return on investment, widely considered to be about 5 to 1. So, for the £150 million planned, the positive externalities on things like the nation’s health, congestion and pollution reduction, and plenty more the return rings to a rough tally of £750 million. Actually, it’s higher, by the Department for Transport’s calculations society gains £5.62 for every £1 spent. Ex-Cycling UK man Roger Geffen, now in charge of Low Traffic Future and with a hand in the Transport Action Network’s legal challenge to the Government’s spending cuts had this to say about why funding is an open goal for the current Government’s agenda. “The figure for international schemes is higher even than our estimates for the UK, £6.28 for every £1 invested. I suspect this is because active travel schemes increase in value, the
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