Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 26 June 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Active Travel and Urban Planning Focusing on Cycling: Discussion

Mr. Brian Deegan:

Let us unpack this. The £1.5 billion is over ten years but I will spend it sooner if I can. So far, £160 million has been allocated. Not much has been spent so far - approximately £1 million. Much planning is involved with cycling. It should not take as long as it does but so much persuading has to be done. There are many different reasons for it and I will not give all the excuses.

It will probably be another year before we hit the ground with solid interventions and, after that, it is all about keeping that fed and keeping the machine going and it will grow exponentially. At the moment, we are trying to design the vast majority of schemes. We have a pipeline we can keep feeding and say that people want this.

People have asked for £300 million worth of stuff, designs we have on the table, and that helps when we go to the Department for Transport. Money is often a problem but it has never been the problem with cycling in the UK; the problem is getting people to spend it because there is so much drama involved and it is easy not to bother. If one pursues a cycling scheme, the communications budget will have to go up to defend all the negative comments it will attract. It is getting people into the habit of doing it, doing that first good thing that, afterwards, people ask for more of. My first ten-year plan in London was to get something that somebody liked and wanted more of. That was a milestone, which we only achieved four or five years ago with the east-west and north-south superhighway. I am at that point in Manchester. Do something good and then an amazing thing happens: people like the schemes. It might not seem like that on the way but the people in Waltham Forest would not go back to letting all those cars through after the trial that Dr. Aldred described. People will never go back. We will never go back to smoking in pubs again. It is that sort of thing. It is a cultural thing and behavioural change over time. We have changed within our lifetimes and it can change quickly. It took six years to get an iPhone in the hands of half the people on the planet. Stuff can happen.

I have gone a little bit off track there because I did not want to give all the figures for Manchester.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.