Almost half of the money will be set aside so cities can bid for money to improve their streets for cyclists
The government is to unveil what it is billing as the biggest ever one-off investment boost for cycling infrastructure, totalling �62m, almost half of which will be set aside so cities can bid for money to improve their streets for cyclists.
Another element will be a �9m investment to provide almost 20,000 more cycle parking places at rail stations, as part of efforts to persuade people to swap their cars for a more joined-up network of sustainable travel.
The entire package will be announced in the Commons by Norman Baker, the junior transport minister with responsibility for cycling.
"This is the biggest ever daily investment in cycling," Baker told the Times.
Baker said he expected cities to send in their bids by summer: "We are keen to get a move on. The intention is to spend it as soon as possible."
The DfT announcement comes amid mounting pressure on the government to build on the momentum brought by Bradley Wiggins's Tour de France win and more cycling success at London 2012 to boost the tiny numbers of Britons who use bikes as their main transport.
Just over 2% of people do this, placing the country lower than all but a handful of EU nations such as Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus.
Baker is among people due to give evidence to an inquiry into boosting cycling set up by the all-party cycling group of MPs and peers.
The inquiry is likely to call for more wholesale and ambitious investment in cycling. While the new money is welcome critics point out is amounts to the cost of about two miles of new motorway.
The train station scheme, which will increase the number of designated bike parking spots nationally from 50,000 to 70,000, will cost �9m, of which �7.5m comes from the Department for Transport (DfT) and the rest from rail companies.
"The intention is to join up different modes of transport, so people have a sustainable choice from when they leave their door to wherever they finish up. Part of that is to make sure people can cycle to the station and leave their bike there," Baker told the Guardian.
"What I've observed, all around the country, is the moment you put in new bike spaces they get filled up immediately. There's clearly the demand."
An expansion to secure bike parking at stations has long been demanded by campaigners as a way to help people travelling longer distances use a bike rather than a car as part of their journey.
Considerable early efforts were made by Lord Adonis, junior transport minister in the last government, which committed �14m to this in 2009. Such combined journeys are becoming increasingly popular, even if the UK remains some distance behind more established cycling countries ? just one station in the Netherlands, Utrecht, plans to expand its bike parking to take 22,000 cycles.
Baker said there was considerable top-level support for cycling in government.
He said: "There have been expressions of interest in cycling from both the prime minister and deputy prime minister. There is a recognition of a value of cycling at the very top. I wouldn't tell you that if it wasn't true. Certainly, when I've put forward schemes for funding they have been funded. People across government recognise the value of cycling."
However, Baker said he did not agree with witnesses to the all-party inquiry who have called for a concerted, centralised effort to build safe, segregated cycle infrastructure, rather than the current system in which DfT money is passed to councils to spend.
It would be difficult, he said, for ministers to decree how bike lanes should be built: "Ultimately a cycle lane is normally a local facility and there's a limit to how far central government should be telling councils what they do in their own patch. We can set an example, we can provide funding streams, and we can hope local government does the rest."
And while he said the government was ambitious about cycling, Baker said campaigners calling for Dutch-style levels ? where around a third of journeys are made by bike ? were unrealistic. "If we reached Dutch levels I'd be ecstatic, but I can't see us getting there," he said.
"I went to Leiden railway station and there were, I think, 13,000 bikes there that morning, which is just a different world from all other European countries. The Dutch have been fantastically successful. It is by and large flatter in Holland than it is in the UK, which is certainly an advantage, and it's more compact, so there are differences."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/30/cycle-parking-places-rail-stations
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