The Labour leader of Wirral Council has hit back at a Conservative member of the local authority who claimed that the “Active Travel Taliban” is behind plans to introduce a new continuous cycle lane in the borough against residents’ wishes, and that the project is a “monumental waste of taxes” – as the Labour councillor accused his Tory counterpart of “spreading unwarranted misinformation” about the plans and argued that “such derogatory remarks have no place in a civilised society”.
Last week, Wirral Council Conservative leader Jeff Green branded the Labour-run local authority’s plans for a protected cycle lane connecting Birkenhead and Liscard, which will be discussed this week in a meeting of the council’s environment and transport committee, as “bonkers” and claimed “there is no desire” for the active travel infrastructure in areas it will pass through.
The proposed 3.5-mile new cycle lane, which forms phase one of a wider active travel project hoping to link Birkenhead to New Brighton, will “make streets safer for local people and provide high quality facilities for pedestrians and cyclists”, says Wirral Council.
The proposals, which were approved in 2022, but have so far failed to develop beyond this initial phase, aim to tie into a broader regeneration scheme and help “deliver a sustainable left bank of the Mersey which includes increased levels of journeys being undertaken by active modes as a key part of the vision”.
Funded by active travel grants awarded to the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, a recent Wirral Council environment committee report said that the £10m scheme needed to be delivered between 2027 and 2032, or Wirral could face “losing out on a significant funding opportunity”.
A recent consultation exercise received only 366 responses, with 45 per cent of respondents supporting the plans, compared to 44 per cent who voiced their opposition, and 11 per cent who were neutral on the issue. In Birkenhead, 75 per cent of respondents were in favour, but in Liscard 62 per cent opposed the plans.
However, over 50 per cent of residents who responded to the consultation either agreed or strongly agreed that the council should improve roads, cycle lanes, and footways to “help people who wish to walk and cycle achieve a more active lifestyle”.
However, speaking after the results of the consultation were published, local Tory leader Green claimed that the “majority” of residents were “against the scheme”, describing some of the project’s design elements – such as floating bus stops – as a “recipe for disaster”.
“In February, I was invited by Cllr. Ian Lewis to meet with him, and the Leader of the Council, and the Royal National Institute of Blind People, and hear their concerns over this proposal,” Green said last week.
“It was clear then that the proposals for so-called floating bus stops and sharing the pedestrianised Liscard Precinct with cyclists is a recipe for disaster.”
> Warning government considering ban on floating bus stops “could stop new protected cycle lanes”
He continued: “Following complaints from local councillors, the Town Hall was forced to re-run the consultation and the results are, frankly, damning.
“The views of residents are clear – this is a monumental waste of taxes. A scheme that does not command the support a majority of the people most affected is not, in my view, viable. Wirral Council does not ‘know best’ – we exist to serve our residents.
“And in spite of the ‘Active Travel Taliban’, residents remain opposed to the loss of parking, pedestrian crossings, and trees that this scheme would require.”
Green’s Conservative colleague Lesley Rennie also said the cycle lane “will be a disaster for residents and all road users”.
Green’s claims and inflammatory language were widely condemned on social media by cyclists and active travel campaigners, who heralded them as evidence that “the Tories are wildly out of touch with reality”.
Responding to what he described as the local Conservative Party’s latest attempt to “rally yet again to block/delay local active travel infrastructure”, Ed Lamb, a Green Party councillor for the Wirral, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “As I’ve said at a couple of recent talks, some elected folks just do not ever want this stuff to happen – even if they have voted otherwise in the past!
“They are not serious about regeneration, health, climate, and we are allowed to ignore them. On Wirral there is no overall control. Tories often hold a lot of sway on committee items. This one? Let’s hope not…”
And following Green’s comments, the council’s leader Paul Stuart noted that the government grant-funded project is still subject to a “thorough” review before it is approved, which will seek to ascertain its “value for money”, and that the scheme “encompasses more than just a cycle lane”, Birkenhead News reports.
“Characterising this as a foregone conclusion and inferring that council taxpayers are funding this scheme only serves to spread unwarranted misinformation,” Stuart said.
“Cllr Green fails to acknowledge that this grant money is earmarked explicitly for projects of this nature. Failing to explore grant funding opportunities in Wirral would constitute a squandered opportunity that would otherwise require the grant funding to be returned before any serious consideration has been given to schemes it has been awarded for.”
He continued: “It is not acceptable that Cllr Green resorted to labelling any individual, including our residents, as ‘Active Travel Taliban’. While people will have differing opinions, such derogatory remarks have no place in a civilised society.”
10 thoughts on ““Such derogatory remarks have no place in a civilised society”: Councillor slammed for branding cycling campaigners “the Active Travel Taliban” and for “spreading unwarranted misinformation” about bike lane scheme”
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Cyclists not being road users, of course…
Rendel Harris wrote:
Cyclists not being road users, of course…
People like Green and his ilk barely think that cyclists are people, I suspect…
I’m not surprised there’s
I’m not surprised there’s resistance to spending money on cycling infrastructure if this is what passes for a bike around those parts.
Fake views! That cyclist is
Fake views! That cyclist is clearly casting a shadow…
And I can see why some people
And I can see why some people might be less than happy with certain aspects of the pedestrian provision – good luck getting a double-stroller or a wheelchair along there…
Also notable in the video is
Also notable in the video is the moment where one of the AI cars decides to cut a corner, across the cycle contraflow, with a cyclist approaching in the other direction – I thought the technology was supposed to save us from that sort of thing!
mdavidford wrote:
It’s remarkable how it’s just as good as human drivers now!
mdavidford wrote:
But but that is to keep pedestrians safe (from silent, deadly cyclists) when they emerge from their cars…
Another new democratic
Another new democratic principle espoused there:
AFAIK never stopped any council before… and as usual notice that depends on who you’re choosing as “most affected”.
I do know there’s reasonable concern by the RNIB which we could usefully address (before we actually have any cycle infra worth the name). Certainly before they get caught up by the more cyclist-allergic fringe groups.
I suspect some of this comes from footage / reportage of near-misses and occasional collisions – this is salient, but what people simply don’t see (or discount as the “baseline”) is the fact that people are currently getting hit by motor vehicles every day.
Even more – the sad fact is that under our current system far more people being run down and killed by drivers on the actual footway than are killed in incidents with cyclists in total (yes – there are of course far more people driving…).
I’d suggest the only sensible way forward is to try to get some of those “sometimes not thoughtful enough” people now driving cars to be riding bikes. The only way that’s proven to work to increase modal share beyond a % or so is by (where necessary) adding dedicated cycle infra. So some kind of compromises may be needed.
I’m not completely clued-up on how it is for folks in NL or Copenhagen; I have read one account (TBF living in the capital so a busy place) saying that they don’t find it relaxing. However it cannot be harder than informal road crossings as long as we don’t build rubbish (see examples of crossing the cycle path and bus stop bypasses there).
As for bus stop bypasses I think this is in part “behaviour change”. Appreciate that those “most affected” are those for whom life is harder – but it’s just a change in where you wait, and a second of potential conflict crossing the cycle path. For designers – just avoid the “Copenhagen style” ones where people get off the bus immediately into the cycle path (although I’m not aware this is causing a massacre there either).
It may sound counter
It may sound counter-intuitive, but I think the way to make floating bus-stops safer is to have more of them. We need them to be normal enough that they have standard designs with enough space for passengers, so people know how to use them, and that includes cyclists slowing down to check for pedestrians, and stopping if required.
I totally agree about the point on the so routine it’s forgotten about danger to blind and visually impaired people from motor vehicles needs to be included in the conversation.