Let me set a gloomy picture. In early September, letters were sent out to select US state governments informing them that their federal funding for cycle and pathways was being withdrawn – and it was awash with pro-car sentiment.
In Boston, funding was withdrawn from the city’s plans to improve foot and cyclepaths out of fear that it would change the city’s “current auto-centric configuration”. A San Diego Country road improvement project featuring new bike lanes “appears to reduce lane capacity and a road diet that is hostile to motor vehicles,” and so the project’s $1.2 million grant was rescinded.
And in Alabama, a project converting street lanes to trail space was deemed “hostile” to cars and “counter to the Department of Transport’s [DOT] priority of preserving or increasing roadway capacity for motor vehicles.”
“If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail,” the President told the United Nations General Assembly last month, in a sentiment indicative of his wider beliefs about climate change – a “con job”, pedalled by “stupid people”.
Current active travel spending in Northern Ireland was revealed last month to be an estimated £35 million short of what is needed to fulfil its commitments to the Climate Change Act. Only 1.1% of journeys less than a mile were taken by bike, as opposed to their target of 20% in NI. And the infrastructure designed to promote this kind of travel has fallen short, too, with just 30% of a 330km greenway target completed by April 2025, with one more year to go.
But, a relative hope on the horizon came this summer, when the Court of Appeal found that Treasury cuts to active travel funding in March 2023 under the previous Conservative government were unlawful. The ruling also means that ministers can’t disregard duties set by Parliament, no matter how “inconvenient” they may be. This may guard against US-style funding cuts happening in the future, though the Treasury was not made to pay back the £200 million previously promised.
To the backdrop of this, the government was quietly writing up their 2025 Spending Review, in which they allocated £616 million funding to Active Travel England. Though a large lump sum that gives relative long-term certainty, this divvies out to an average of £154 million per year, in a significant decrease on 2021/22 and 2022/23.
“According to the Institute for Public Policy Research’s latest report, to reach the active travel targets set by the government, it needs to commit to spending at least £2bn a year on active travel in England,” Duncan Dollimore, Head of Campaigns at Cycling UK, told Zag Daily.
Is this all we can hope for? A gradual reduction in spending until a complete grounding halt? When our governments withdraw funding from public safety and climate-positive initiatives, we all suffer. Even in Republican strongholds in America, the demand for active transportation networks is growing, according to Kevin Mills of ‘Rails to Trails Conservancy’. The dependence on the car has damaging consequences. Americans currently drive around 50% more than Canadians, and are two and a half times more likely to die in a collision than them, too.
