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news
London cyclists (Ayad Hendy via Unsplash)Conservative government “pursued poisonous culture wars” between cyclists and drivers, says new transport secretary – as Labour vows to “take back streets” for all road users
Labour’s Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has vowed to “take back streets” for cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers, after accusing the previous Conservative administration of pursuing “poisonous culture wars against road users of all descriptions”.
Haigh, who promised in July to invest “unprecedented levels of funding” in cycling as part of the new government’s plans to place active travel at the heart of its health and environment policies, was responding to a question in the House of Commons from Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse on the road safety concerns currently discouraging young people from cycling.
“Road safety is one of the main reasons why young people do not cycle,” Hobhouse, the MP for Bath, said in parliament during Thursday’s transport questions.
“This is particularly true for cities like Bath where historic infrastructure makes it very difficult. What will the government do to help young cyclists particularly to make it safer, and make roads safer in Bath?”
“I’m grateful to her for raising that point and it sits at the heart of our ambition to develop the new road safety strategy,” Haigh responded.
“The previous government pursued poisonous culture wars against road users of all descriptions. We are determined to take back streets for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers. And that will be at the heart of our new ambition for the road safety strategy.”
> Labour government to invest "unprecedented levels of funding" in cycling
The Transport Secretary’s criticism of the Conservative approach to active travel whilst in government echoes the plea made by Cycling UK in July for Labour to move away from the “divisive rhetoric” that had plagued road safety and cycling infrastructure discourse in recent years, exemplified by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to stop the so-called “war on the motorist”.
“There is real appetite in the UK to encourage more cycling, more routes, and the building of better infrastructure to ensure people are kept safe while cycling,” Cycling UK chief executive Sarah Mitchell said in the wake of Labour’s general election victory in July.
“The public recognise the benefits and are desperate to enjoy them. With political will and proportionate funding, we can make that future a reality.”
> Is cycling ‘woke’? Cycling and culture wars discussed with a Conservative aide
Mitchell also urged the Labour government to ensure that all road safety policies are evidence-based, something the charity said was not always the case during the latter stages of the previous government, whose swingeing active travel cuts imposed in 2023 were found to have been at least partly influenced by conspiracy theories and disinformation circulating concerning low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), 20mph speed limits, and the 15-minute city concept.
“We are hopeful that this kind of divisive rhetoric will be put to bed once and for all,” Mitchell said.
In 2023, Cycling UK accused Sunak and the Conservatives of capitalising on this divisive rhetoric as part of the government’s ‘Plan for Drivers’ – which, among other things, involved launching a pre-election consultation asking motorists if traffic fines for being “caught out” driving in cycle lanes were “fair” – and using active travel measures such as LTNs as a “political football” to sow division between road users and win votes.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph in July 2023, then-PM Sunak said he was on the “side of drivers”, and claimed that “the vast majority of people in the country use their cars to get around and are dependent on their cars.”
In response, Cycling UK’s Mitchell insisted that people want to reduce their dependency on motor vehicles and that interventions such as LTNs enable them to do just that, and that it was “lazy to label LTNs as anti-car”.
> Rishi Sunak is “on the side” of drivers – What happened to Britain’s “golden age for cycling”?
From the cycling charity’s point of view, things have already appeared to improve since Labour took office in the summer.
Louise Haigh (Parliamentary portrait)
In August, recently appointed transport secretary Haigh pledged, despite very little emphasis on active travel during the election campaign, that the government will invest “unprecedented levels of funding” in cycling and walking, as well as developing a new road safety strategy.
Speaking to Laura Laker for a piece in the Guardian, Haigh explained how active travel would form an important part of the government’s approach to improving health and the environment, adding that “walking and cycling and moving more are essential to solving both of these in the immediate term and in the long term”.
“There's lots of evidence to show that will reduce the number of GP appointments by hundreds of thousands, if not millions,” Haigh said. “We absolutely want to make sure that we invest at unprecedented levels.”
However, before taking on her new role, and providing a welcome boost to active travel campaigners, the MP for Sheffield Heeley was also on the receiving end last November of some criticism for comments she made about cycling, after she responded to a question about whether she was a cyclist herself with the reply, “God no, have you been to Sheffield?” – a response she later insisted was a “light-hearted joke”.
Since then, Haigh has made a point of being photographed cycling on several occasions, including on an e-bike ride though Sheffield’s hills with three-time Olympic gold medallist and South Yorkshire’s active travel commissioner Ed Clancy and, most recently, on the Trans-Pennine Trail (N62) with author and journalist Laker and Active Travel England chief Chris Boardman.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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You think the expansion of the 20mph speed limits have been a failure? You do know that the numbers of serious injuries on London's road network have fallen since these lower limits wer introduced and the LTN schemes widened don't you? In what way has Sadiq Khan been a failure?
Not creating space for more drivers, and stopping them speeding and killing people. Funny kind of failure, but that's how some people view the world.
There is real appetite in the UK to encourage more cycling, more routes, and the building of better infrastructure to ensure people are kept safe while cycling
Meanwhile, the police are doing everything they can to discourage cycling, with the increasingly widespread police belief that there's no such thing as a close pass per se (Lancashire has never prosecuted anybody for the proxy offence of careless/ dangerous driving, and it's doubtful if they have ever done anything beyong sending the entirely worthless advice letters; we all know about Essex/ the Met/ Gloucestershire etc. where they're backsliding at an increasing rate and expecting the cyclist to demonstrate that they were 'inconvenienced' before they will accept even a pass at 10 cms away as being 'wrong' in any way).
How about a publicity campaign, reminding everyone of their responsibilities to each other? But focussing on bad driving, dangerous driving, not giving a shit about anyone else driving? Roads aren't dangerous in themselves, it's the arseholes behind the wheel that are the problem. And, in a few cases, behind handlebars.
Sounds too much like "Share the roads"...
There are definitely dangerous roads, compare an American intersection with a Dutch roundabout.
I was involved in a dicsussion on HackerNews the other day with someone in the U.S. who didn't like the idea of replacing a four-way stop junction with a mini-roundabout. Personally, I think the mini-roundabout is better in every way to a four-way stop, but would be open to any reason as to why the four-way stop is preferred. (They brought up the issue of snow on the road hiding the mini-roundabout, but there would still be the appropriate signage anyhow).
https://x.com/RedDwarfHQ/status/166890577101721600
Erm… TBH I think that the drivers are doing just fine, Louise
There's a war on, don't you know?
Yeah, I thought the same.
You say that, but they're still killing several hundred of each other every year.
The vast majority of the killing and injuring is done by drivers. So not really each other.
Um - yes - that's how the 'each other' bit works.
But drivers are killing a lot of other motor vehicle occupants. As well as people not in motor vehicles and people not even on the road...
EDIT mdavidford got there already.
Warm words are welcome. Good deeds even more so.
Exactly. Let's see some serious money allocated to active travel.
Indeed. For the time being at least it is refreshing to have someone in government who at least claims to want things to be better being pushed to follow through by constructive opposition.
Keeping up the pressure will be critical.
Money is definitely a key "sign of change" and if we're still spending billions on new road infra (never mind fixing old stuff) and beans on walking and cycling then nothing has changed.
... However I think Chris Boardman makes a good case in this talk here (thanks mattw) that money is almost a "symptom" of change - or the least important part. Long term (and these changes are on the order of decades) changing the conversation, the people and the "institutional culture" is fundamental. A campaign can land a chunk of cash - but while we have a shared mental model of "obviously 'good' means prioritising driving, minimising motor journey times and maximising motor traffic capacities" things will not progress. That needs to have reached politicians, councillors, planners and even road builders.
I hope I'm wrong but Scotland may be showing this. Here the political agreement with the Greens meant that all of a sudden there was a commitment to properly funding active travel (10% of the road budget). Unfortunately what didn't happen was a larger group of politicians connecting emotionally (or even in a calculating manner) with "safer streets, nicer places, less journeys driven".
For one we never actually reached the point where all the cash was released (and there were quibbles about trying to get it to fund things which weren't strictly active travel). Because this didn't get as far as "hearts and minds" after the recent sudden change in political landscape there's a danger this could evaporate again. (And people won't go back, because we avoid "failure").
This administration has the opportunity missed by the previous one to join up the departments to address the fact that capable people just don't want to drive with due care and attention.
The attitude and behaviour is the most powerful lever, far more effective than infrastructure.
The Departments for
- Health
- Transport
- Justice
- Culture, Media and Sport
Need to work on Active Travel enabled by a Reform to media regulation equivalent or better than the Equality Act, Protected Characteristics so that no click bait journo nor social media troll can foster the toxic nonsense that is usual today.
Having solved attitude and behaviour they can all do their usual work to make Active Travel the default transport choice.
When the Hierarchy of Responsibility is the reality of travel on and around the public highway we will have reform worthy of that name (nothing to do with a political party).
In Denmark, it already is, so it's fully achieveable.
The gold standard is: safe enough for your Mother to ride...
You clearly never met my mother.
Yep 100 days in couple of bitesized soundbites and photo ops, not even an announcement reversing the rules the DfT put in place for LTNs and 20mph zones to make it easier again for councils to implement them.
Here's a video of the question and answer.
https://x.com/Wera_Hobhouse/status/1844325754236014812
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