In ‘Potholes and Pavements’, journalist Laura Laker offers a travelogue of her exploits exploring the National Cycle Network as well as furnishing its history. In the course of her journey, Laker documents the network’s founders, its heroes – and their stamina; the good quality and still patchy sections of the network; the perpetually poor maintenance in many places; and the fight to secure minimal amounts of funding.
The charity Sustrans, which runs the National Cycle Network, describes it as “… a UK-wide network of signed paths and routes for walking, wheeling, cycling and exploring outdoors”.
Laker outlines its early 1980s origins with the initial efforts to make use of disused rail lines, beginning with what became the Bristol and Bath Railway Path. From this modest beginning, a 13,000 mile network exists today, albeit one of variable quality despite the long effort to obtain funds for section after section.
Touring the National Cycle Network
There cannot be a meaningful policy package for health promotion in the UK which does not include increased spending on the active travel (used to describe a means of travel that involves a level of human activity) that The National Cycle Network promotes. There can also be little doubt that improving public health through active travel will save resources in the NHS. At present, just £1 per person per year in England is spent on cycling. This compares with Scotland (£58); Wales (£28) and Northern Ireland (£7).
As Laker takes us on her tour of the National Cycling Network, she reveals what an arduous, and at times educational, experience it has been to create and sustain the network. Her insight indirectly demonstrates the profound inadequacies of English ‘car culture’ politics – soaking up funds that are needed for active travel, the challenges of achieving Vision Zero for accidents, and creating a more physically active population.
Support by a charity … or the state?
That the National Cycle Network is run by a charity shows us how cycling is held at a distance from government and demonstrates how marginal the regard for cycling by successive administrations has been. Such neglect proves to be inevitably short-sighted as car-dependency can be seen as an unhealthy addiction – too much car use generates obesity and ill-health. As a corrective, more cycling (and walking) can prevent many common poor health conditions from arising at all. In addition, cycling can contribute to longevity. We have, however, yet to see a government that places active travel on a footing where its clear health promotion value is being taken seriously.
Signs on the National Cycle Route – North Yorkshire – Wikimedia – (c) Vavasharp
Healthier people are bound to be more productive in every sense, but we lack real evidence of government – or many local councils – accepting and acting upon this. To harness the benefits of active travel we need hard cash from the new government, joined-up cycle routes – both within our settlements and between them – as part of rational long-term policies for health. These would also inevitably encompass cutting the carbon emissions which contribute to climate change, reducing deaths from air pollution, and decreasing pressures on the beleaguered and underfunded NHS.
Since more than half the trips taken on the National Cycle Network are actually made by walking, its sometimes just as hard to separate cycling and walking as it is to differentiate wheelchair use and the employment of mobility scooters when the physical need for secure space for all these modes of transport is similar, and a lot cheaper than building roads. However much the physical infrastructure may need to be created, it is also true that trains in particular need better space for bikes – to assist longer journeys for cycling enthusiasts.
Societal changes since the pandemic and statutory rights to remote working and flexitime, covering as large a proportion of those in work as possible, could well contribute to a culture where more local journeys are being made without a car. As Covid lockdowns demonstrated, more people will cycle (and walk) wherever they feel it is safe enough to do so, implying traffic reduction is at the heart of active travel expansion. As it stands, we live in a country where 71% of journeys were under five miles in 2022. For many, these could be walked, cycled, or made by bus
Lower traffic levels for more cycling
Laker refers to the overblown reactions to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods as part of what appears to be an engineered backlash against communities protecting themselves against unwanted through traffic. It is certainly hard to see, here in Oxford, why anyone who owns a home in the city would dislike quieter roads or the increased property values they bring. The more generous the space allocated to walking and cycling, the quieter a community can be, and the higher the quality of life experienced by local residents.
Perhaps we could argue that, in principle, most residential communities could assert their need for lower traffic levels on air pollution, noise and public safety grounds. But what is true in any settlement should be guaranteed in the long-term with a more extensive National Cycling Network linking communities throughout the country. Perhaps it’s far better to spend resources on this, and pavement and road repairs, than on new roads inducing more journeys. But a new Labour Government with no current commitment to increase active travel funding offers itself up more as a target for cycling campaigners than a collaborator in rectifying the overall neglect of decades.
Network futures and issues to be addressed
Laker’s own journeys around the National Cycle Network demonstrate that it is not joined up in many locations and is in need of consistent investment and repairs. But let us be clear that this isn’t even being done for our battered pavements throughout the country at present. My extensive reading of transport documentation has not yielded a figure for pavement repairs in England or how long it would take.
It is, in some places, only been possible to create sections of the National Cycle Network by using disused rail lines. Might this be a problem if a government committed to a rail renaissance embarked on a programme of re-opening disused lines as part of traffic reduction efforts? The rail user, like the cyclist and the pedestrian does not feature enough in local or central government investment.
It often seems as if those who drive are assumed never to move in any other way. This is clearly nonsense, but neither of our major political parties have distinguished themselves by demonstrating this is not the case. A National Cycle Network of quality, joining together communities and linking with very good standard cycling routes within communities, appears to be a long way off at present.
See Steve’s other recent transport-related writing at: https://westenglandbylines.co.uk/author/stevedawe/ and more extensively at Cowley Area Transport Group: www.catg.org.uk.
