dan_bo
How much does it cost to Oldham?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/07/road-safety-cycling-bus-budget-cuts
why am I not surprised?
why am I not surprised?
short sighted policy changes
- Thread starter dan_bo
- Start date
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... and all the savings made by these cuts will probably be needed to pay for the increased health service budget for all those people with health problems because they don't walk or cycle.
Typical short-sighted, lack of joined up thinking, rant, rant, rant.....
Typical short-sighted, lack of joined up thinking, rant, rant, rant.....
OP
OP
dan_bo
How much does it cost to Oldham?
Yeah- i'm more concerned about the public transport funding myself.
srw said:
I agree with Dellzeqq. From a local campaigning point of view the LTPs have their very clearly set out things in them, it's just that councils faff around till towards the end of it and they say "well we sort of fulfilled that, give us some more money". A lot of the LTP for cycling here is a kind of wish list.
Spending money on schools getting results isn't necessarily rocket science. You could spend the money on bikeability which there are plenty of fans of, even ones that dislike sustrans. If you're spending money on physical infrastructure, it could be successful as you're dealing with a very simplified, amplified route.
dellzeqq said:
You might be right, dell - certainly I would think that most of the money spent on cycling infrastructure projects (at least here in London) is wasted. Re-reading the Guardian article suggests that the cuts would be in what it describes as "cycle schemes" and I am presuming these are infrastructure projects rather than soft schemes such as bike training and promotion? I would certainly think it is short-sighted if things like the Bikeability scheme are cut.
domd1979
Veteran
- Location
- Staffordshire
Most regions have underspent on their funding allocation for major schemes (anything above 5 million quid), most major scheme spending is on road building. Would seem sensible to divert spending from major schemes to local to ensure the smaller scale stuff isn't hit. One region (can't remember which one now) has diverted some of its underspend to local authorities to spend on smaller schemes already.
jonesy
Guru
srw said:
They are talking about two different kinds of expenditure- capital and revenue. It is the capital budget that funds infrastracture (cycling 'schemes'); whereas cycle training, travel plans etc are usually funded from revenue budgets. The cutbacks being discussed appear to be in capital spending on 'schemes' which, as both dellzeqq and marinyork point out, are very often poor value for money. Sadly this applies to a lot of sections of the NCN, where money has been spent building off-road routes that are too remote, inconveniently located or simply too poor quality ever to attract large numbers of cyclists. But there is no contracdiction in criticising low value for money infrastructure spending while supporting high value for money cycle training.
srw
It's a bit more complicated than that...
jonesy said:
No shoot, sherlock.
But Dellzeqq and marinyork were equally vehement in their denunciation of spending. Dellzeqq is particularly (and rightly) contemptuous of innumeracy and inaccuracy (and I know I've left a hostage to fortune in my spelling at this time of night) - let's get a bit of precision.
I challenge anyone to go to Buckinghamshire and the Phoenix trail. Here is a classic Sustrans route - offroad, inconvenient, shoddy track surface, riddled with barriers. It's heaving at weekends.
jonesy
Guru
srw said:
So why imply that I did say that? One could equally say that it is a short step from what you've said to the usual tedious "off-road cycle paths are wonderful and the NCN is beyond criticism" position. But I wouldn't, because I don't take either position. The fact remains that an awful lot of the NCN is never going to get a lot of use, and I know Sustrans staff who recognise that. In recent years they seem to have switched their focus to more local routes that actually serve population centres, which I greatly welcome. Cycling is primarily a short distance mode of transport (look at the DfT travel statistics), so long, meandering routes that don't serve lots of short trips along the way are never going to be heavily used.
I was actually talking about the LTP. I'm guessing dellzeqq was too, as he has experience of campaigning on these issues, as do I, with considerably fewer years. I described the LTP as a wish list of schemes and think that entirely conveys how seriously the council takes them. Some of these include pretty large schemes going upto about a million pounds, others are in the thousands or tens of thousands of pounds.
