Transport for London board member slammed for not understanding road funding

Transport for London (TfL) board member Brian Cooke has come under fire from cycling campaigners after tweeting that cyclists should be registered and licensed and contribute "virtually nothing" toward paying for the roads.

Mark Sutton at BikeBiz has the full blow-by-blow which started with Cooke responding to Hounslow Cycling's report of a bus that had hit a cyclist. Cooke tweeted: "more reasons for compulsory registration and insurance for all cyclists".

When he was called on this, and learned that councillors had called for this road to be subject to a 20mph limit, Cooke demanded "what evidence says 20mph would help?"

He was offered plenty of evidence and his tweets became increasingly agitated as he was accused of being anti-cycling. Among other things, he called Twitter user JustMandyH a "rude lying cow."

In another exchange, over road funding, he claimed that only motorists paid towards roads, and said: "Cyclists as cyclists pay virtually nothing toward road funding."

Roads are funded from general taxation, of course. The 'Road Fund' set up to directly pay for roads, was abolished in 1937, and only ever paid for a fraction of the costs of roads.

Cooke claimed that the posting saying the bus had been driven into a cyclist was "entirely speculation without evidence".

Here's the tweet with pic of bike under wheels of bus:

Bus driven into bike outside Feltham police station. Councillors have said this road should be 20mph. pic.twitter.com/4XE1dHX9dQ

— Hounslow Cycling (@HounslowCycling) January 7, 2015

The previous week Cooke was involved in a spat with racer Tom Staniford, whom he called a "liar" and threatened to sue for "deformation."

Cooke has subsequently deleted his Twitter account.