Wow.
"The network – named Beelines, in homage to Manchester’s civic symbol of the worker bee – includes 75 miles of Dutch-style segregated lanes and will be the largest joined-up network in the UK.
The plans, published on Wednesday, have a combined cost of around £500m and represent a first step in £1.5bn planned investment.
Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester’s mayor, has allocated £160m of the government’s Transforming Cities fund to the project’s first four years, bringing the total spend on cycling and walking in Greater Manchester to around £15 per head. This funding is at the levels seen in cycling Meccas such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam and higher than in any other UK city, according to Chris Boardman, the region’s walking and cycling commissioner.
He said he was “absolutely unapologetic” that his plans would take space away from cars and could make motor journeys slower in what is already a traffic-snarled region.
“If you want to make people change their habits you’ve got to give them a viable alternative and in some cases that’s reprioritising streets and that’s what we are doing,” he said in an interview with the Guardian.
“We’ve given way too much priority to the vociferous minority,” said Boardman, referencing motorists. “We’ve wrongly prioritised road space.” Studies in New York found that 80% of people on roads were pedestrians on the pavement, which “gave engineers the courage to change street design” he said."
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