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Cycle Superhighways plans - Victoria embankment.jpgChancellor offered to pay Mayor to rip up London's East–West Cycle Superhighway says leader of Ealing Council
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has urged the Mayor of London to decommission the city’s East–West Cycle Superhighway, according to the leader of Ealing Council. Julian Bell is reported by BikeBiz to have said that Sadiq Khan refused Philip Hammond’s offer of cash to carry out the work.
The East-West Cycle Superhighway runs along the Embankment through Westminster, near the Houses of Parliament. Distaste for such infrastructure would be no great surprise coming from Hammond, a man who as Secretary for State for Transport declared in 2011 that he was “ending the war on the motorist”.
It was also while serving in that role that he oversaw the abolition of Cycling England, an independent body set up in 2005 by the Department for Transport, to "promote the growth of cycling in England by championing best practice and channelling funding to partners engaged in training, engineering and marketing projects."
In 2015, former All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group (APPCG) co-chair Dr Julian Huppert claimed that Hammond had wanted to remove cycling from the remit of the Department for Transport after the Coalition Government was formed in 2010.
Bell, a keen cyclist, is said to have made the claims at a "Cycling Cities" event in London on Monday. He has since retweeted a link to the BikeBiz story.
The event was promoting a Dutch history book about cycling provision in a number of European cities. Co-author Ruth Oldenziel, a Dutch historian of technology, had been invited to speak by London Travel Watch.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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Yes, rip out the bike lanes. And the trees, and the car lanes. Turn the Embankment into a landing strip for Trump Force One. Then he could fly over to feel up the Queen and be back in Washington before Ambassador Farage has fully lost the aftertaste of saggy hairless balls (that stuff on the top of the head had to come from somewhere.) That's Britain's future outside of Europe and first-in-line to lick the American jackboot.
Bell needs to get his own house in order. I live in Ealing and cycle provision is disgraceful. Really, really bad.
Ealing is one of the boroughs that successfully applied for Mini Holland status and took a huge amount of political opportunistic flap from Tory MP and councillors trying to block Bell from implementing it.
But thankfully due to great campaign by local cyclists, overwhelming public support overturned Tory MP attempt to scupper it .
There are some lousy Labour boroughs on cycling but this one sounds like it is better than others.
Ealing is one of the boroughs that successfully applied for Mini Holland status and took a huge amount of political opportunistic flap from Tory MP and councillors trying to block Bell from implementing it.
But thankfully due to great campaign by local cyclists, overwhelming public support overturned Tory MP attempt to scupper it .
There are some lousy Labour boroughs on cycling but this one sounds like it is better than others.
Ealing is one of the boroughs that successfully applied for Mini Holland status and took a huge amount of political opportunistic flap from Tory MP and councillors trying to block Bell from implementing it.
But thankfully due to great campaign by local cyclists, overwhelming public support overturned Tory MP attempt to scupper it .
There are some lousy Labour boroughs on cycling but this one sounds like it is better than others.
Ealing is one of the boroughs that successfully applied for Mini Holland status and took a huge amount of political opportunistic flap from Tory MP and councillors trying to block Bell from implementing it.
But thankfully due to great campaign by local cyclists, overwhelming public support overturned Tory MP attempt to scupper it .
There are some lousy Labour boroughs on cycling but this one sounds like it is better than others.
Ealing is one of the boroughs that successfully applied for Mini Holland status and took a huge amount of political opportunistic flap from Tory MP and councillors trying to block Bell from implementing it.
But thankfully due to great campaign by local cyclists, overwhelming public support overturned Tory MP attempt to scupper it .
There are some lousy Labour boroughs on cycling but this one sounds like it is better than others.
Ealing is one of the boroughs that successfully applied for Mini Holland status and took a huge amount of political opportunistic flap from Tory MP and councillors trying to block Bell from implementing it.
But thankfully due to great campaign by local cyclists, overwhelming public support overturned Tory MP attempt to scupper it .
There are some lousy Labour boroughs on cycling but this one sounds like it is better than others.
Using the current popular method of repeating something so often it MUST be fact?
Or possibly something gone wrong with your browser.
He may not be the most pro-cyclist mayor ever, but he's not stupid. If he accepted that, he knows that he'd be blamed, rather than the other lot.
Hammond looks like the most boring person on Earth.
I have no comment to make execept not altogether unsurprised after initial shock at hearing about this on Bikebiz last night.
I am grateful for the small mercy that this article doesn't carry the image of the jaded Hammond with the dead and soulless stare of a quiet and dangerously deluded individual.
No active, sustainable travel going on here. Nor for previous side-kick and pro-free-car-parking-for-all Pickles.
Biggest surprise to me is that the totally-ineffective-so-far Khan turned him down*.
As posited on Twitter, the timing of this suggests to me that it's designed to make Khan look better. 'Look how much we're doing for you!' without doing anything for cycling that the previous administration didn't begin. Especially seeing as the CC post is still empty.
*if in fact he did.
Maybe it's best if we get rid of the free parking MPs and Peers get at the Palace of Westminster. that way they would have to travel by public transport, cycle or walk.
I would expect better transport policies would come about by this.
While we are at it, and they refurbish the Houses of Parliament, rip out their bars too, and downgrade the food facilities to match what "normal working people" are offered as food. Ishould imagine there'd be outcry from teh government (and the licencing bodies) if any company offered to install a bar that operated outwith the normal licencing hours for their staff.
I never understood why they still have their own restaurants and bars in the Houses All subsidised out of the public pocket, of course. Austerity, eh?
Food etc. is subsidised is because the vast majority of the people that work in parliament are on minimum wage or below (interns etc). The quality of the food in most of the facilities isn't any better than you would get from a standard refectory type eatery. If a subsidy wasn't provided for food many of these people simply wouldn't be able to afford to work there and parliament would grind to a halt (it was a real eye opener working there - finding that so much of parliamentary business and constituency business is underpinned by such a poorly payed workforce, most doing it because they believe they can make a positive difference). Whether this subsidy should be allowed for members (who are only a small proportion of the people working in parliament) is another matter, and personally i think they are paid enough to pay a more 'commercial rate' for their meals.
Bars and other such 'entertainment' is obviously a separate issue. That said, many companies do have private bars that operate for their staff outside of normal hours (and many private members clubs are allowed to operate in ways that public bars would never be allowed).
Very few MPs do actually drive into the Palace of Westminster. If you hang around the parliament exit in westminster underground station then you will see large numbers arrive by tube. You do have a large number that get cabs from their London pads into parliament, which is a vast expense.
I don't have a problem with the food and bars in Westminster, as the hours are often late.
But given that the overground car park at the Palace of Westminster is always full and I expect the underground one is similar, too many MPs and Peers drive as it's free to park there.
Sucessive Governments have aimed to reduced congestion, they could start with their workplace.
I reckoned they should have taken over Battersea Power Station, done it up as 1 bed flats and made MPs live there rather than offering expenses for a place of their choosing. Add in a rule requiring them to take public transport or a bike to work and we'd have a lower expenses bill AND MPs who might have a bit more perspective on how the masses live.