Lilian Greenwood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lilian Greenwood on 2016-02-04.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding has been allocated to cycling safety from 2015 to 2020.
Mr Robert Goodwill
The Department’s SR15 settlement includes over £300 million for cycling over the life of this Parliament. There is no specific budget within this funding denoted ‘cycle safety’ since a variety of cycling schemes do and will help in various ways to improve cycle safety. Several projects can however be noted:
– We are providing £50m over the next four years to support Bikeability cycle training in schools; £11m was provided in 2015/16. This funding will help to increase children’s road awareness, encourage active travel and improve future motorists’ empathy for more vulnerable road users. We expect to train a further 1 million children with the new funding settlement.
– We are spending £114m from 2015 onwards on the Cycling Ambition Cities programme which will accelerate their development of local cycling networks, including increased protection for cyclists at junctions.
– In addition, through the Road Investment Strategy, Highways England will spend £100m through to 2020/21 to make around 200 locations on our major road network more cycle-friendly.
Much more widely, however, other Government funding streams will also contribute to projects which could deliver improved cycle safety. Through the Local Growth Fund, the Department estimates that an investment of at least £270m is planned by local enterprise partnerships for cycling infrastructure. Local authorities could also use sums from the £1.3bn Integrated Transport Block to 2019/20 for cycle safety schemes.
It should also be noted that spending on road maintenance can benefit not just motorists but can also lead to safer conditions for cyclists, and a record £6.1billion is allocated to local highway authorities between 2015 and 2021 for road maintenance.
Regarding cycleway maintenance, from 2018/19 the plan is to change the formula used to allocate local highways maintenance capital funding so that it also takes into account footways and cycleways as well as the roads, bridges and street lighting, which it is currently based on. Once implemented, around 9% of the funding for local highways maintenance will be based on footway and cycleway lengths.
