Cyclists in England could see an end to the “perverse outcomes” that deliver “half a cycle lane and then you’re chucked out onto a dual carriageway” as the Transport Secretary says long-term funding for cycle routes could be in the pipeline from next year.

Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh, told the Transport Select Committee today the £100m allocated for cycling and walking in the recent Budget was the “initial direction” to achieving her previously promised “unprecedented” levels of funding. However, she said, routes have to be delivered with local people, to detoxify the narrative, adding it’s “too important that we get it right”.

Haigh also said traffic deaths and serious injuries have been “normalised for too long”, and if people were dying in any other way “we’d be treating it as a pandemic.”

Conservative MP for South West Devon, Rebecca Smith, asked Haigh about earlier pledges for “unprecedented levels of funding”, and about linking up funding for cycling, and connecting stop-start routes themselves.

In response, Haigh told the Committee: “It’s exactly that, that the Integrated Transport Strategy is wanting to address because it’s so frustrating for people to see half a cycle lane and then you’re chucked onto a dual carriageway or a very unsafe stretch of road, and we need to make sure that whatever is delivering those very perverse outcomes at a local level are properly addressed and part of the reason for that is the stop start approach.”

There was disappointment in the cycling world after the recent budget saw £100m allocated to walking and cycling – a figure that’s generally accepted as too low to deliver the government’s aims for active travel. 

However, Haigh suggested next year’s spending review, expected in spring, could see a change in tack. She said: “I think the initial direction was set in this first phase of the spending review where we reversed the cuts of the previous government to active travel and provided £100m to Active Travel England [ATE].”

At present while rail and roads enjoy multi-year funding settlements, cycling and walking have long been bedevilled by stop-start funding that make routes hard to deliver. These can end up costing more as councils and delivery bodies lose staff at the end of a funding cycle, and then rehire them when more money becomes available. More complex, larger projects cannot generally be planned and delivered within a single year. An Integrated Transport Strategy, Haigh told the Streets Ahead podcast in August, could include long-term cycling and walking funding for the first time. Cycling charities estimate England needs to spend £50 per head, or 10% of the transport budget, to grow active travel. 

Haigh says she hopes to build on the “fantastic job” of cycling delivery body, Active Travel England, which is led by Chris Boardman, with the body “going out to local authorities and skilling them up”, to write bids for funding and to deliver cycling and walking infrastructure.

However, she added, it’s important that routes are delivered with local people, saying “it’s too important that we get it right”.

“I think the lessons from Covid was that the money was out the door and they required it to be built too quickly and it lost the support of local communities in some instances, and it’s really important that things are done with local people otherwise it can get into a very messy culture war that can become very unpleasant and toxic.

“I was very clear in the summer that we are certainly ending any toxicity or politicisation of this issue because it’s too important that we get it right but as we look to the second phase of the spending review we will hopefully move to those multi-year settlements in order to end that stop-start and constant rescoping which not only delivers poor outcomes but ends up costing the taxpayer more as well.”

On pavement parking, when asked by Labour’s Arthur Scott, MP for Edinburgh South West, about banning pavement parking, Haigh said she wanted to tackle the issue as quickly as possible.

Said Haigh: “We’re considering what options we have available because we want to make sure that any measures are not burdensome on local authorities and are done in the most effective way but I am really committed to responding to the consultation – I think it was two governments ago – as quickly as possible and I’ll write to the committee in the coming months as we respond to the consultation”.

On road collisions, Haigh took a strident tone, saying: “I really think one death on the roads is too many. I think we treat road safety in a way as if it was a natural accident. I think if the numbers of people being killed or seriously injured on our roads were killed in any other ways, we’d be treating it as a pandemic and I think we have normalised it for too long.”