Cinderella comes to the ball

No not me ...  but over the past couple of days its been really noticeable how cycling policy -- the great Cinderella of policies - has suddenly started to make an impact.  Cycling policy has always suffered from being marginal, long-term, unsexy and unloved by politicians (except for Ben Bradshaw who claimed credit for putting in the cycle path across Kensington Gardens which certainly wins my vote as the single policy intervention of the past decade which has most contributed to my quality of life -- and for the cost of a couple of signs and a few miffed spaniels...).  In theory everyone knows that cycling offers a multiple whammy of benefits -- good for climate change (no impact); good for air quality; good for health (as long as you can do it in relative safety - and why cycling was omitted from the 1990 Environment strategy -- as the author put it succinctly at the time "too many stiffs"); good for wellbeing -- the commute into work is the low point of the day for most people; good for increasing the coping capacity of public transport.... and unless your bike gets nicked too often, good for creating a sense of community....but until recently cycling has had to make do with the crumbs from the roads budget; got less than the rounding on the NHS budget and been an also ran from any other budget.

So major news now that not only is London planning to put major investment the way of cycling - and aiming to create some routes that join up rather than leave you frustratingly dumped into major traffic without a sign, but that DfT and DH are putting in £ 140m over three years -- almost ten times the initial budget given to Cycling England when it was set up three years ago - and that comes on top of Sustrans winning a very organised campaign for yet more money from the Lottery. so all good news - and a big change. All we need now is a really coherent policy on the congestion charge to stop the one step forward, half step back that we have seen with the western extension (possibly the most regressive policy ever seen giving Chelsea residents license to drive for a fraction of the cost of anyone from Brixton and Hammersmith) and the muddled proposals on graduated charges. To misquote Orwell, in cities all cars are bad -- just some are more bad than others...and that would be quite a good principle for restructuring the charge.

But quite a shock to see the contrast between cycling in London - where huge progress has been made - and cycling here in Chichester where only the brave few venture out on their bikes. This is positively American interms of car culture... the only redeeming feature being that 4x4 penetration is relatively low. And the really striking thing here is just how much city centre prime real estate is devoted to car parking. So if Chichester could become the next York, or Hull or, or... not only coudl it cut its car dependence, it might create yet more places to build on int eh city centre....

and as for me -- its such gorgeous biking weather that I am desperately missing my spring commute through the Kensington daffodils and Hyde Park croci. Hip is not yet quite flexible enough to manage an exercise bike -- has to be the next big breakthrough moment.