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Cyclists in London talking in cycle lane - copyright Simon MacMichael"Many Tories sincerely hate bike schemes": Stop bashing cycle lanes and LTNs, former Boris Johnson adviser tells Conservatives — as "enormous noise on social media" doesn't mean they are "vote losers with the general public"
A former adviser to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak has urged the Conservatives to stop bashing cycling infrastructure projects such as bike lanes and low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) — arguing that despite "enormous noise on social media" and many Tories feeling "hate" towards them, it doesn't mean that they are "vote losers with the general public".
Andrew Gilligan was a transport adviser to Johnson during his time as Mayor of London and later a special adviser to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Writing a lengthy piece for Conservative Home, Gilligan argued that "Conservatives won't win in London by opposing bike lanes and low-traffic neighbourhoods".
He went on to point out that bike lanes and LTNs being removed "would make very little difference to congestion or bus delay", as they are "not the cause of it", and "if we actually want to reduce congestion we have to tackle the real causes of it". For that he said the causes are "the same as they always were: traffic, parking, and roadworks".
"Bike-haters point out that congestion has risen even though motor traffic miles in London are about the same as they were ten years ago," he wrote.
"But the rise of the delivery van and SUVs – now 60 per cent of new car sales – means that motor vehicles are bigger and wider, taking up more space. The borough of Kensington is the large SUV capital of Britain – which helps explain why it has such terrible traffic, despite almost zero bike provision.
"Many of my fellow Tories sincerely hate bike schemes, and our friends sincerely hate these schemes, and road changes create enormous noise on social media. But none of that means they are vote losers with the general public."
For evidence, Gilligan highlighted that a report commissioned by the last Conservative Transport Secretary Mark Harper found that a two-thirds majority of people support schemes, while "that for all the talk of divided communities, 58 per cent of those in LTNs didn’t even realise they lived in one".
He also suggested this summer was "only the latest of half a dozen elections – parliamentary, mayoral, and local – where campaigning against traffic restrictions has failed for the Conservatives".
Gilligan said that during the 2021 London mayoral campaign "we underperformed significantly in most wards where we opposed cycle schemes". Likewise, in 2022 borough elections, he suggested campaigns opposing LTNs, namely in Dulwich, had failed and proposed a "controversy-acceptance cycle" for the low-traffic schemes.
"What usually (not always) happens is that through traffic is indeed displaced at the start, but after a few months traffic around the LTN also falls as fewer people make short local journeys by car," he wrote. "Traffic isn't like water running downhill, where if you block one route, it finds the next easiest. It's the product of people's choices. If you make it easier and nicer not to drive, fewer people will drive.
"That's why these things usually (again, not always) go through a controversy-acceptance cycle: opposition at the start, if often from a minority, which disappears after a year or two. Uxbridge, whose 2023 by-election marked the sole success of our party's campaign against traffic restrictions, went Labour this year as the controversy-acceptance cycle reached its later stages.
"None of this is to say that every single scheme works, or is perfect, or should stay in. None of it means the same approach is right everywhere. Outer London is different from the inner city, where public transport is good, the vast majority of journeys are not made by car and most people do not even own cars.
"And none of this is to say that the schemes that do work and do stay in – the majority – have no drawbacks for anyone. They do. Almost all policies do. Very few policies leave everyone 100 per cent happy.
"We've always accepted that in this party. Rescuing Britain in the 1980s would have been impossible without accepting it. But one of the reasons the country is now stagnating again is the growing impossibility of tackling its core problems, of making any kind of change that annoys or upsets anyone.
"The traffic schemes we did in London under Boris Johnson did annoy and upset some people. But they were an attempt to tackle a core problem: the capital's inexorably growing, economy-choking demand for road space.
"There are only four ways to do that. You can build more roads, which in most of London is physically and politically impossible. You can build more railways, which are vastly expensive, take decades, and only serve parts of the city. You can charge for using roads. Or you can do what we did, making better use of the roads you've already got by encouraging forms of transport, like buses and bikes, which take up less space per passenger."
Ultimately, Gilligan's piece concludes by suggesting the "growth of SUVs and vans, and the fact that electric vehicles are almost untaxed, means that in the end, we’ll need road charging".
> Is cycling 'woke'? Cycling and culture wars discussed with a Conservative aide
He continued: "That would, as my think-tank Policy Exchange has found, cost most people less than they are paying in fuel duty now. Some would pay more, but a properly designed scheme would give the economy a huge boost by cutting congestion.
"I don't mind if you think that's un-Conservative – and you'd rather live with traffic and stagnation instead. But it's an abdication of responsibility. In the end, we have to be about solving problems and governing seriously, not just pretending there are easy answers."
The Conservative Party spending too much time bashing cycling projects was an issue raised by Labour's Transport Secretary Louise Haigh in October. Haigh has since resigned following reports that she pleaded guilty to a fraud offence over a decade ago, and was replaced by Heidi Alexander, however during a brief stint in government she accused the previous Tory government of having pursued "poisonous culture wars against road users of all descriptions".
Following the landslide election win, Cycling UK too urged Labour to move political discourse away from the "divisive rhetoric" that has plagued road safety and cycling infrastructure discourse in recent years.
"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. "The public recognise the benefits and are desperate to enjoy them. With political will and proportionate funding, we can make that future a reality."
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 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.
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".
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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22 comments
This is all well and good, but will it persuade any dyed in the wool tories? I think not. Facts don't persuade people with opinions, especially when those opinions are deeply entrenched and reinforced almost daily by the media attacking cyclists.
"There are only four ways to do that. You can build more roads, which in most of London is physically and politically impossible. You can build more railways, which are vastly expensive, take decades, and only serve parts of the city. You can charge for using roads. Or you can do what we did, making better use of the roads you've already got by encouraging forms of transport, like buses and bikes, which take up less space per passenger."
Can I hear as Amen? Amen.
Pretty much most of this article is quotable and would meet with approval in more enlightened places too. And probably plenty in the current "let's just not change things because it's too hard / too expensive / I think our supporters are wildly anti" camps. (If they were promised this wasn't a trap and they wouldn't be held to their thoughts on this).
Translating that into action though? Really hard apparently.
EDIT: also not convinced - after some promising interest at the start - we'll get much from the current government because "priorities". (If only renationalising was a guarantee of much improved rail! I suspect not without far greater spending though, which when the government next changes colour would no doubt be reasons to reverse things).
People who are physically active and take part in sport are an afront to capitalism. They spend time exercising when they could be working or shopping. Sport activities often require access to open spaces, swimming pools, running tracks etc. Spaces that could be built on and pools which are seen as a drain on resources. In a capitalist society, the ideal citizen is overweight (indicating that they contribute to economy profits and don't exercise much) and their leisure interests are watching TV (while eating and drinking junk) and driving to retail parks in their SUVs, basking in McDonald's breakfast fuelled farts. Their hatred of cyclists is partly a result of pangs of guilt, which reminds them that they should be more active themselves.
...and don't forget that such individuals often have a pleathora of health issues related to their lifestyle 'choices' that only pharmaceutical intervention can save them from leading to yet more profit for capital. To paraphrase the sainted Magaret, the trouble with capitalism is that eventually you run out of everything.
Remember when Star Trek showed the joys of a post-scarcity (almost) utopian future. And then they decided that was unrealistic and turned it dark…
If only I could spell 'plethora'....
It's called the Shitthropocene.
I don't think this accounts for Tory cyclophobia. Most LTNs and cycle infrastructure is aimed at utility cyclists cycling to work or the shops.
Nah. It's simple worship of the motor car as a symbol of success and status.
I'd venture to suggest that people who take part in sport typically buy at least as much overpriced and probably unnecessary crap as anyone else. They just buy more sport-related overpriced and unnecessary crap instead of other overpriced and unnecessary crap. A quick rummage through the '5 cool things' threads here should confirm that.
There was an Occam-razor lyin' about in the shed, next to the run -amok axe, so I picked it up and took a swipe at this issue with it.
It immediately cut this chunk out: the gutter press enjoys the use of scapegoats and pariahs, which it first creates then villifies. They excite the tribal as well as the other habitual otherers, so this sells more guttersnipe-ramblings.
Another swipe at that chunk revealed another constituent-chunk - that cyclists are prime meat for scapegoat and pariah status as they are easily identifiable and can be regarded as lesser-beings in The great Chain of Economic Status hierarchies, since a bike costs less than a car (even today)*.
Were the gutter press to praise cyclists as "warred-on" and to condemn motorists as the polluting potential murderers & maimers many become, the sheople would soon change "their" opinions to match.
* Some bikes now cost more than the second-hand car of the lower orders. This mixes in a bit of socio-economic class hatred to the matter, especially if the riders of loony-price must-have bicycles also dress in £1500-worth of fashion label clothing. It's all useful in bolstering the gutterpress hoots of rage at their chosen pariah/scapegoat.
I don't think the tories are any more anti-cyclist than anyone else. It just suits them politically to sound like that. David Cameron (anyone remember his famous Lexus incident?) and Boris (Boris Bike) Johnson were keen cyclists. Politicians two priorities are (1) what will win them votes and (2) what will lose them votes. Given the amount of anti-cyclist feeling in the country knocking cyclists is a vote winner; pure populism.
I disagree, Tories have a history of hating anything they think represents "something for nothing", be that cycling, alternative energy sources or unemployment benefits. Cycling has always been associated with socialism from its early days, a means of liberation for the working classes allowing them to get out into the countryside and transport themselves to work without paying capitalist enterprises (train and bus companies, petrol companies) and so breeds suspicion. Anything that falls outside their capitalist model they don't like. Hence the reason one hears so often from the Mail and the Telegraph about us "not paying road tax" - it doesn't make the slightest difference to them in any substantive way but they simply can't stand the idea that cyclists get something for nothing (and get fitter and get there faster than people who've spent tens of thousands on their cars).
Bit of a tangent but what's the connection between "something for nothing" and alternative energy sources?
Resources that don't need continually to pay for raw materials produced by the big petroleum and mining companies. Obviously they're not free but, for example, once solar panels have been installed and saved enough money to pay for their installation (typically 5 to 10 years in the UK) then the user is effectively getting free electricity and not having to pay an energy company. The capitalist model is predicated on a small cohort of individuals and companies controlling the available resources and selling them to the population in return for their labour; if a means is established whereby the population can access resources for themselves for little or no cost, that strikes at the heart of the system. You only need to look at the way substantial numbers of Tories object to wind farms, solar panel grants et cetera to see that they are very cognisant of the existential threat to their preferred societal model that alternative energy sources provide.
Well ... I guess they could just be objecting to all those new-fangled panels / windmills covering our once green and pleasant land?
I know the emphasis varies between party but aren't all the main parties capitalist (inc. Greens nationally IIRC, not sure about the Loonies or Binface)? You don't hear much from the Anachists, Communists, Theocratic types (outside of terrorist incidents), the direct Monarchic rule lot (insert other schemes of choice) here in the UK?
Further, isn't almost everybody signed up to pretty much the same basic model of capitalism in practice eg. running ourselves on debt (on the positive side one could say "making a bet on the future being at least as good as the present" and having a financial stake in that)? And government also using borrowing to keep afloat, "growth" is not just a good but required to keep us going etc.?
I think 'anarcho-capitalism' is also a thing, and arguably much approved of by the extremely wealthy…
The problem is that Capitalism is like an accelerating train.
Whilst we're on it, we're making faster progress and no-one wants to jump off it as they'll get left behind. However, somewhere ahead on the line is a huge blockage that we'll hit (i.e. ever expanding growth and consumption is impossible on a single planet). Meanwhile, the train passengers are all pushing and shoving to try to get to the front of the train - if they can see the blockage ahead, then they can jump off just before hitting it (c.f. billionaires buying private islands to avoid the inevitable collapse of civilisation). The people at the very front, meanwhile, are trying to keep the train accelerating and going ever faster (c.f. oil companies doing everything they can to keep people burning oil).
2024 is set to be the year when more UK electricity was generated from renewables than fossil fuels. FF's share of generation has more than halved since 2010 and coal has been banished entirely (what mining?). Gas boilers are about to be banned in new homes; existing homes will follow. A greater share of EVs is being mandated among new car sales and IC will also be banned.
I've got some - I'm not sure Tories hate them though. At one point they were throwing money at wealthy homeowners to feed their solar into the grid - a deeply regressive subsidy I'm glad they stopped. I've a heat pump too, to run off my free solar energy, and got £5k (for nothing) from the Tory government to install it.
Tory opposition to wind and solar farms is about their visual impact (and the effect that might have on rural voters). Otherwise the UK wouldn't have become a global leader in offshore wind under them.
Not to say they couldn't have done more, and in my professional life I have often argued (likely to little effect) that they should have done.
Presumably if they're being delivered by a charismatic entrepreneur all is good?
I really think "tribalism" - possibly driven by some overarching feelings of what is important * - does most of the explanation of which colour people look for (or avoid) on ballot papers etc.
As for "party x hates cycling" while we see a lot of stories about Conservatives here a) just one site b) there were more of them in power for the last decade or so (government and councils I think).
As a sanity check it's worth looking at others both anti and pro - Labour has certainly had a few nutters, SNP here the odd one also. As parties I'm not aware that either is particularly fussed over active travel. (A partial exception - Labour in Wales seems to have got that "more car" is not the way forward, having reduced some default speed limits and made some commitments to reduce road-building).
The only generally positive lot I am aware of are the Greens - and IIRC not *all* of them are totally on-message.
* Can't recall source but in the US some research was done suggesting how people rate the importance of respect for tradition vs. individual freedom vs. fairness seemed to be a predictor of how they clustered politically?
I should add - while flailing about the Tories did consciously pivot to "pro driver" for a bit (didn't help them). OTOH presumably for the same chasing the public reasons Labour quickly followed - though hopefully now in power will forget that as just slogans!
On the flip side some of the last governments did see the creation of Active Travel England and an attempt at a national road safety body (the RSIB - like we have for rail, air travel etc.). But funding announced was then cut for the former, and the latter never got set up.
It's a London centric view imo, in my neck of the woods it's the Tories who are spending money on cycle infra & LTNs the other parties (Labour, Lib Dem & Greens) object to.
Perhaps because it's just easier to be anti things when you're in opposition, which most Tories in London are thesedays.