Cycling

Boosting cycling is win-win | Christian Wolmar | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

One thing is sure. Cycling will not play a big part in the hustings for the election. There may be the odd mention of "cycling and walking" which, wrongly, are coupled together as green methods of transport, but there will be no serious discussion of how cycling could be an important contributor to two principal policies of government, supported generally on all sides: improving the environment and health.

It is really a no-brainer. Boosting cycling is a win-win situation. Not only does it reduce congestion in urban areas and reduce CO2 emissions, but it is an enormous fitness benefit. It presses all the right buttons. Just to give one example, investing in cycling typically has a benefit-cost ratio of well over two – in other words, for every pound spent, society benefits to the tune of two or more. And that is on very conservative assumptions.

Yet, while all the main party transport teams parrot their support for cycling, little is happening on the ground. There is the odd cycle lane, which often delivers its hapless users into a main road full of 40-tonne HGVs and the occasional "shared use" path but cyclists are still, on the whole, treated as pariahs which get in the way of the big tin boxes that dominate the urban scene. Cyclists are, for the most part, there on sufferance rather than being welcomed as part of the solution to the congestion crisis in our towns and cities.

So if any candidates knock on your door, what should cyclists be demanding? First, that the existing funding of £60m per annum for Cycling England – the body charged with promoting cycling across the country – be maintained and expanded (I declare an interest here as a member of its board). It has already shown in half a dozen cycling demonstration towns that European levels of investment in cycling pay rich dividends with a 27% increase in cycling in just three years.

But a pro-cycling policy requires rather more than a bit more cash. Cycling is not in the DNA of government, or even transport policy, and it needs to be there. Cycle provision always appears to be a tacked on to highway schemes rather than an integral part. You only have to look at the terrible design of most cycling facilities such as the infamous – but thankfully now removed – cycle path in Harlow, which had half a dozen "cyclists dismount" signs within a couple of hundred yards to show that many highway engineers have no understanding of the needs of people on two wheels rather than four.

To break this mould, the new government should put cycling at the heart of urban transport policy. It is no good, as Boris Johnson suggests, to consider the needs of all modes of transport equally. Road space must be taken from cars and handed over to cyclists, showing that precedence is being given to people on two wheels because of all the environmental and health benefits they bring with them.

In Copenhagen, a city where cycling already has a modal share of over 30%, the traffic lights are set to the speed of the average cyclist, not cars, so they can flow through without stopping. When a British politician stands up and says this type of system should be installed in all our towns and cities, then they will get my vote. The crucial point is this: the European cities where cycling is the norm rather than the exception did not get like that by accident or because of their cultural inheritance. They got there because of long-term pro-cycling measures which have become universally popular. It's time to make a start here.