Stop Killing Cyclists – The Demands
Around four years ago I read an article written by Carlton Reid suggesting that companies that make money from cycling should throw their weight behind cycle campaigning. As with pretty much everything in the world of campaigning, it hasn’t happened. We are still around the 2% mark for the share of journeys that are cycled in the UK every day, compared to around a third of journeys in the Netherlands.
There are areas in the UK that are leading the way such as Cambridge, Oxford, Waltham Forest and Hackney. With other cities that are taking a different tac, for example Nottingham is making considerable changes with the introduction of their work place parking levee.
Yet cycling is still a minority mode of transport.
We know that every aspect of life is improved by safer cycling. Local economies benefit and the benefit to cost ratio of safe cycling infrastructure can be up to ten times higher than for motor vehicle infrastructure. People who cycle are physically and mentally healthier which makes them more productive. In turn this reduces the strain on our overburdened NHS, a triple positive. Creating choices that don’t include driving for commutes reduces pollution and therefore disease that is brought on by illegal air quality, also diminishing the need for NHS interventions.
All this information we’ve known for years, yet we don’t do anything about it. We know the Dutch have been changing their entire country to favour modes of transport that are kinder on society; they’ve been doing so since the 1970’s. Seville and Pontevedra have been racing ahead in the past decade or so, removing motor traffic and creating safe space for cycling. It doesn’t take long to redesign urban areas.
We haven’t got long. We have very little time left to stop the Climate and Ecological Emergency from engulfing our civilization. The speed of environmental breakdown is accelerating as we pass numerous tipping points. We have very little knowledge of when these feedback loops will become so severe that they will start a one way journey to an inhospitable planet.
Transport is the largest emitting CO2 sector and has been since 2014/15 in the UK. To paraphrase Chris Boardman, we are swimming in evidence that safer cycling will have a fantastic effect on every part of society. Yet still we carry on worshiping our motor vehicles, knowing that they are stealing the future from our children and increasingly from ourselves.
Last year the amount of people cycling on the roads in the UK dropped.
Our house is on fire, we have a duty to the following generations to salvage what we can. Yet we seem incapable of making the changes we know will help us transition from a carbon intensive transport system to carbon free transport. Electric vehicles are not the answer; they cost an incredible amount of carbon emissions to create. Public transport and cycling is the answer to the overwhelming majority of national journeys.
Stop Killing Cyclists have joined forces with Extinction Rebellion for this years National Cycling protest on the 7tth September. Their demands have been brought sharply into focus. Our new prime minister, who said that his biggest success whilst he was London’s mayor was starting the Cycle Super Highway network, has decided to appeal to the motorist vote by cutting fuel duty.
This year the government spent £121 million on safer cycling. The widening of one road in the South West has a budget of £2 billion. The reality is we need £6 billion to be spent on safe cycling, in line with the UN’s suggestion of 20% of the transport budget; this is Stop Killing Cyclists first demand. This amount of money will ensure that few car journeys are made and more miles are cycled.
Fuel duty has been frozen for the last eight years, which has kept 10’s of billions in tax from the treasury. A prime minister of a government that has declared a climate emergency who then cuts fuel duty is a prime minister who is shockingly out of touch with the severity of our situation. Stop Killing Cyclists second demand is to stop the freeze on fuel immediately. The government needs to incentivise cycling and public transport, and disincentivise motor transport concurrently.
The third demand is to make villages, town and city centres car free. Growing up on Dartmoor in the 1970’s I was able to cycle around the village and walk to school on my own a few years after I learned to cycle. I could do this because it was safe. I started campaigning after reading Carlton Reids article and realising that my daughter couldn’t travel to her primary school on her own because the road she had to cross was far too dangerous. Two families were hit by drivers on separate occasions, whilst walking on the pavements outside the school. I campaigned for the council to widen the pavement and make the road one way, which has made the children’s walk to school far safer than it has been for a long time.
It isn’t just everyone in the cycling industry that should be supporting these demands; it is everyone who wants a habitable future for themselves, their children and their grandchildren.
Event: National Funeral for the Unknown Cyclist
Words by Caspar Hughes, formerly of Rollapalooza, now of Extinction Rebellion. Shared without permission, but with the assumption that this powerful message is crucial enough to be shared as loudly and frequently as possible.