I've been trying to think why we are facing such an uphill battle to get proper funding for cycling when we all can see a clear case for it.
So putting on my devil's advocate hat for a bit I thought I'd try to think of it from the other side and why politicians aren't seeing it the the same way.
I'm not doing this to depress ourselves, just to see if they are rational and whether there are things we could do differently to counteract these.
This is the list I came up with - interested in others thoughts - these are just my musing so may not be backed up with fact but that may not matter if we are facing a perception battle...
- health benefits are long term, difficult to measure and save money in someone else's budget / when someone else is in power
- cycling is on the increase even with limited investment so can gain political benefit cheaply anyway - why spend more?
- cyclists all run red lights / go on the pavement - don't deserve funding until they behave nice
- we've built a cycle path but they don't use it
- seen as a niche activity so not many votes in it
- cycling/cyclists are split into different schisms that all want different things (roadies/mtbs/commuters/kids etc) - not many people call themselves cyclists but lots do cycle and even more own a bike.
- cars are so convenient (except in traffic jams caused by other people's cars!) why would you cycle? Cycling doesn't work for everyone/in every situation (which is fine) but then neither do cars (although is the perception that they do?)
- they don't pay road tax / don't wear h****ts/hi-viz etc etc ad nausea
- can't take road space away from 'traffic' so most infrastructure isn't quality
- cyclepaths aren't as shiny as a new bridge/dual carriageway. No big ribbon cutting event.
I also think that with say dualling the A9, it probably resonates with a lot of the population that maybe have driven that road (very occasionally) and have had a bad experience or can empathise with being stuck in a traffic jam so are broadly supportive of it (so marginal benefit for lots of people) vs cyclepaths where the benefit would be more localised in geography and type of person who would benefit (so significant benefit but for a subset of population). I thinks that without getting into a cost:benefit analysis (which most people don't), there must be more political benefit in making most people a bit happier than a few people a lot happier.
This brings us back to the vicious circle that people don't cycle because they don't feel safe without proper infrastructure and we don't get (much) investment because not many people cycle.
We know there have been attempts to show examples of where good infrastructure does lead to high active travel volumes (Jim Orr and Keith Brown's trip to Amsterdam), but is this providing enough evidence to change their thoughts and for them to convince others?
What is stopping them?
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