More than 100 cycling and walking projects across England to share £200 million in funding

Agreed, theres a nice youtube video about Active Travel England with Sir Chris of Boardman, https://youtu.be/khEQp_tPJOM 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.

Hitch Hiker's guide again: "what about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "well, we’re having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. “Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It’s the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look "All right, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "you’re so clever, you tell us what color it should be."

I think I need to take another bath... 

I've never understood who the Sustrans target cyclists are. I remember riding down the omnipresent (and pictured) NCR 5 some years ago from south of Birmingham to Oxford, and it directed you along a bridleway which was just a gate into a field with no obvious track, when there was a perfectly servicable lane 50 metres on.

I've never been confident enough in what's provided to plan a route based on them. It's not like they have provided a guide. In fact I note that Sustrans show someone riding route 5 on a narrow-wheeled touring bike with heavily laded panniers on a rough shale track, which is not the sort of touring cycling I would ever have planned to do.

https://www.sustrans.org.uk/find-a-route-on-the-national-cycle-network/r...

IanMSpencer wrote:

I've never understood who the Sustrans target cyclists are.

 

I strongly suspect that they are the imaginary shrodinger's cyclists, simultaneously confident riding on 60mph country roads but also needing so much protection they need to be directed along circuitous meanders across muddy fields. These are created purely for the imagination of funding meetings at councils, so that Sustrans can hoover up some money and stick up some blue signs, thus justifying their continued existence.

The ideal situation is that cycling infrastructure is safe for a competent 8 year old to use with minimal supervision, on a wet tuesday in february, on a 'normal' bike, along with their 75 year old granny who is on a electric assist trike. 

One of those 1930s routes is near me and its rubbish, not only is it now a classic cycle lane on a path that crosses multiple driveways and side roads. That it exists at all means all drivers treat you like rubbish for daring to ride on the road instead.

Any money spent just on promoting it, because youll never fix the quality issue with it now without demolishing a bunch of houses, is basically flushing cash down the drain.

Amen brother.  Sustrans have come on quite a bit 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" 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 - more details here from 2010 - but that was once they already had the best network in the world and all the supporting systems and standards in place.

We need proven adequate standard 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 you'd smell snake oil, 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".

Sustrans need greater funding and empowerment, rode a section of one of their routes this weekend, surface was broken with tree routes in multiple places and clearly had been neglected for at least a decade.

If this didn't put someone off the next bit would, due a land owner refusing to sell / alllow the natural continuation of the route, it takes a detour which includes over 300 m at 10%. 
 

Grahamd wrote:

Sustrans need greater funding and empowerment.......

No.  It needs to be abolished and the government takes it over and funds it properly and gives it proper powers to persuade reluctant land owners to co-operate.

When every other form of transport infrastructure is government funded, why is cycling expected to get by on charity?

Hopefully Chris Boardman can get this sorted too...

When you put like that I have to agree.

eburtthebike wrote:

While this is welcome, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what is required to create joined up networks in our towns and cities.

And Sustrans routes have often been anything but 'joined-up'. The routes in Shropshire (e.g. 44, 81) are convoluted, very hilly in places and use narrow, winding lanes - far from practical for everyday transport.

Meanwhile the council approves edge-of-town and out-of-town residential and business developments with no cycling access.

eburtthebike wrote:

I've just read that both the EU and UK are re-defining natural gas as "green" for the purposes of investment deals.

Like the 'green steel' and the bullshit talked about biogas and electric cars like they solve anything. A clubmate told me yesterday that a fellow cyclist has taken delivery of a new Tesla for his company car. Tax breaks mean he's no longer paying the £800/month he paid on his previous car. Quite ridiculous.

By contrast, e-bikes are dismissed as 'leisure toys' (or 'cheating' by insecure strava devotees) despite the many anecdotes of people changing their travel habits once they start using one. But any incentives and promotion will be all in vain until we can make roads more pleasant to ride on or separate infrastructure a realistic option for day-to-day travel.