We still haven’t received a written answer from the Council about the Marple Dale bridge. The word is that Sustrans, because they are duty bound to spend the Lottery grant, will pull out of some ‘Connect 2’ projects and support the full cost of others. It also sounds as if the Council are stalling over the provision of upgraded paths leading to the bridge. Following the spending review the Council will try to minimise its commitments and it seems very possible that Sustran will indeed pull out of this particular project.
The Council are due to publish their;
‘Local Strategic Partnership Climate Change Strategy, updating the 2009 Stockport Climate Change Strategy’.
The draft document outlines the possibilities for reducing CO2 emissions in the borough up to 2020. Cycling is referred to once (as ‘making a contribution’; advice on not over filling the kettle is more detailed).
To their credit house insulation improvements have been costed and according to their figures, an investment of £600 per person yields a yearly saving of 600kg CO2.
(Total emissions of CO2 per person per year in the UK is 11,000kg!).
As is often pointed out, improving home insulation is a cost effective way of saving CO2. It beats micro-generation schemes hands down. The Otterspool micro hydro generator will cost £7 investment per kgCO2 saved per year.
So how does cycling, the Cinderella of sustainable investment, compare?
Petrol produces 2.3kg CO2 per litre (it also produces respiratory irritants that foreshortens the lives of 24,000 people per year in the UK).
In rush hour conditions the average car will produce 0.26kg CO2 per km.
So over the course of a year I could equal the 600kg CO2 saving by cycling 4 miles per day (I actually average more than 10 miles per day) for which I have benefited from £1 of investment per person per year spent on cycling provision.
The Council’s estimate for improving house insulation across the borough is £153.9M and even the six micro hydro generation schemes will cost about £3M. These are big investment decisions so it is amazing how cycling is virtually ignored by local government planners. In Manchester it seems even the green cycle lanes painted along the sides of the road that cost £40,000 per kilometre, will now be too expensive.
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Perhaps it’s no surprise that the A555 extension to the airport and the A6 has been shelved. But what has surprised the local politicians is the ‘slap in the face’ from Whitehall for the A555/A6 bypass project. The Government have drawn up a list of 130 road schemes. The top five are fully supported and will go ahead. The remainder are under review. But A555 extensions to join the A6 at Hazel Grove to the airport is not even listed. To add insult to injury, in a reply to David Rutley in the house regarding the scheme, the Transport Minister, Philip Hammond said the situation was somewhat different in that it was to be part supported by PFI (private finance initiative). This was true of the existing central section opened in 1996 but this is not the case for the proposed extensions East and West. The minister’s inaccurate brief is another indication of the priority Whitehall puts on the scheme. The Council were considering spending £2M on consultants to work out a PFI supported road. Now the Council are looking at other sources of public funding to finance the road. They are even considering raiding a 'Local Sustainable Transport Fund'. Nice try!
What’s this got to do with cycle provision? The bottom line is that all three main parties have doggedly supported the scheme as the principal way to alleviate congestion in the area. Like Mom’s apple pie this has an implied general public support. If you commute by car in the area you will appreciate the very significant improvement in journey times during the Summer holidays and the abrupt worsening when the schools go back. The statistics bear this out with the Summer drop in car journeys reaching 30%. So we know that congestion is solved by removing 30% of car journeys. Cycling could and does remove this number of cars. UK, Italy and Austria are at the bottom of the league table with a cycle usage of less than 5%. Oxford, Cambridge and York touch 20% but the high proportion of impoverished students always helps the statistics. The problem is that UK cycle usage is ‘sub critical’ in the sense that cycling becomes less risky and more attractive the more cyclists there are. At an intermediate, ‘critical’, level drivers take more account of cyclists and modify their road craft to make cycling safer. This makes the top three countries, Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden four times safer for cyclists than the bottom three. Another comparison is the per capita yearly expenditure on cycle provision; £10 in the Netherlands compared to £1 in the UK. Yet another indicator that the UK is unnecessarily locked into car use is that Germany has a higher car ownership but also a higher cycle usage.
The Council are due to publish their;
‘Local Strategic Partnership Climate Change Strategy, updating the 2009 Stockport Climate Change Strategy’.
The draft document outlines the possibilities for reducing CO2 emissions in the borough up to 2020. Cycling is referred to once (as ‘making a contribution’; advice on not over filling the kettle is more detailed).
To their credit house insulation improvements have been costed and according to their figures, an investment of £600 per person yields a yearly saving of 600kg CO2.
(Total emissions of CO2 per person per year in the UK is 11,000kg!).
As is often pointed out, improving home insulation is a cost effective way of saving CO2. It beats micro-generation schemes hands down. The Otterspool micro hydro generator will cost £7 investment per kgCO2 saved per year.
So how does cycling, the Cinderella of sustainable investment, compare?
Petrol produces 2.3kg CO2 per litre (it also produces respiratory irritants that foreshortens the lives of 24,000 people per year in the UK).
In rush hour conditions the average car will produce 0.26kg CO2 per km.
So over the course of a year I could equal the 600kg CO2 saving by cycling 4 miles per day (I actually average more than 10 miles per day) for which I have benefited from £1 of investment per person per year spent on cycling provision.
The Council’s estimate for improving house insulation across the borough is £153.9M and even the six micro hydro generation schemes will cost about £3M. These are big investment decisions so it is amazing how cycling is virtually ignored by local government planners. In Manchester it seems even the green cycle lanes painted along the sides of the road that cost £40,000 per kilometre, will now be too expensive.
_______________________________________________
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the A555 extension to the airport and the A6 has been shelved. But what has surprised the local politicians is the ‘slap in the face’ from Whitehall for the A555/A6 bypass project. The Government have drawn up a list of 130 road schemes. The top five are fully supported and will go ahead. The remainder are under review. But A555 extensions to join the A6 at Hazel Grove to the airport is not even listed. To add insult to injury, in a reply to David Rutley in the house regarding the scheme, the Transport Minister, Philip Hammond said the situation was somewhat different in that it was to be part supported by PFI (private finance initiative). This was true of the existing central section opened in 1996 but this is not the case for the proposed extensions East and West. The minister’s inaccurate brief is another indication of the priority Whitehall puts on the scheme. The Council were considering spending £2M on consultants to work out a PFI supported road. Now the Council are looking at other sources of public funding to finance the road. They are even considering raiding a 'Local Sustainable Transport Fund'. Nice try!
What’s this got to do with cycle provision? The bottom line is that all three main parties have doggedly supported the scheme as the principal way to alleviate congestion in the area. Like Mom’s apple pie this has an implied general public support. If you commute by car in the area you will appreciate the very significant improvement in journey times during the Summer holidays and the abrupt worsening when the schools go back. The statistics bear this out with the Summer drop in car journeys reaching 30%. So we know that congestion is solved by removing 30% of car journeys. Cycling could and does remove this number of cars. UK, Italy and Austria are at the bottom of the league table with a cycle usage of less than 5%. Oxford, Cambridge and York touch 20% but the high proportion of impoverished students always helps the statistics. The problem is that UK cycle usage is ‘sub critical’ in the sense that cycling becomes less risky and more attractive the more cyclists there are. At an intermediate, ‘critical’, level drivers take more account of cyclists and modify their road craft to make cycling safer. This makes the top three countries, Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden four times safer for cyclists than the bottom three. Another comparison is the per capita yearly expenditure on cycle provision; £10 in the Netherlands compared to £1 in the UK. Yet another indicator that the UK is unnecessarily locked into car use is that Germany has a higher car ownership but also a higher cycle usage.
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