Thursday 1 September 2016

Letter from Olympians - pretty close to spot on!

Just a couple of quick thoughts before I dash out to work.

This is in the news. Open letter from British Cycling, being widely promoted by Chris Boardman, about Olympic cyclists calling for an increased spend in transport cycling (to a still modest 5% of transport spend).

So its from British cycling and its notable that there aren't many names from the velodrome cycling team not there. Some no don't want to get into anything political, some have done so and got stung by saying stupid things before, maybe a couple of them don't agree. But I think it more likely from assorted tweets and instagrams that some are also just way too busy doing media and indeed just partying after another successful Olympics.

The only thing I'll add is that you can't just throw cash at transport cycling - it can go wrong. You've got to have oversight that leads to sufficient quality infrastructure that actually makes a change and, all too often, cycle funds sit there in local authorities bank accounts until they can leverage them to fix junctions for motorists. UK councils leverage cycle infastructure funds for generic road building/fixing projects, they don't leverage generic road funds for cycling.

So if this is to be anything other than cosmetic, it has to have just a little bit more detail - the funds have to be protected and targeted towards high quality infrastructure.

Otherwise, I have to say, this is tremendous news. Good stuff, British Cycling!

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