A £104 million funding package has been made available to the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (WWCT) by the British government, to be spent on improving walking and cycling routes around the country, making them safer and more accessible for more people.
The health and societal benefits of encouraging people to cycle are well documented, but, just like last year, we’re left wondering whether this sum is even close to being enough to achieve meaningful updates to a network that the charity charged with looking after them admits are in need of much improvement.
The WWCT is a Bristol-based charity, formerly known as Sustrans, which is responsible for developing, maintaining and improving the National Cycle Network (NCN), a web of signed cycling routes that roll across the country, covering a total distance of 12,739 miles (20,501km), which was initially launched with a £42.5 million National Lottery grant 30 years ago, in 1995.
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The funding package was announced at the Active Travel England’s (ATE) ‘Making Active Places’ conference in Manchester on Tuesday by transport secretary Heidi Alexander, when the Government positioned it as part of what they described as a ‘record investment’ in non-motorised travel, saying the sum builds on their commitment to establish the basis of a national active travel network by 2030, which will benefit millions of people across England.
In reality, the funding package (which is utterly dwarfed by the £27 billion investment the government recently pledged to spend upgrading the country’s motorways and A -roads) had already been earmarked for use in improving active travel routes as part of the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy, but what will be interesting is how and where the WWCT choose to spend the money, and how far it can possibly be stretched.
According to the announcement, the cash will be spread across hundreds of projects aimed at establishing more traffic-free routes, improving surfaces and making crossings safer, and there was also talk of consolidating local active-travel plans into a single national digital platform.
Cycling Weekly subsequently asked the charity for more details on how it intended to use the £104 million.
“Funding will be allocated to projects across England, benefiting a wide range of communities,” said Carole Patrick, National Cycle Network Director at Walk Wheel Cycle Trust.
“Major projects under development include upgrades to the English portion of the Avenue Verte [the National Cycle Network route linking London and Paris], as well as new walking, wheeling and cycling routes that make use of opportunities created by the HS2 corridor.
“The National Cycle Network is an incredible resource. However, it faces challenges. Many routes need to be improved to make them more inclusive and the network is vulnerable to climate impacts. This funding will allow us to make it safer and more accessible – moving on-road sections to new traffic-free paths, removing barriers, resurfacing and widening paths, and making the network safer for women and girls.”
This last goal relates to a gender gap that the charity has identified through their Walking and Cycling Index, published annually each March, which clearly and persistently shows that twice as many men are regularly cycling as women, and that women and girls feel less safe while riding bikes than their male counterparts.
In March this year, Patrick wrote about how the WWCT are working to build safer active travel networks that are better designed for women and girls, with campaigns to achieve improved lighting being a big focus.
These are laudable objectives, but concerns remain about how realistic such goals are with such relatively modest levels of funding.
