More money for active travel - Cycling UK needs you!
I have two questions:
- Do you think it would be a good thing if more people cycled, with more short journeys travelled by bike or on foot?
- Do you want more infrastructure which enables people to do this, so more children walk or cycle to school safely and people feel confident shifting to forms of active travel?
If your answer is 'yes' to both, then you probably know that, sadly, we won’t see either of these things without substantially increasing investment in cycling and walking.
That’s why Cycling UK needs your help today.
Cycling UK needs you!
Duncan Dollimore, Head of Campaigns
Five days left
We’ve been waiting for the UK Government to carry out a Spending Review and, next Wednesday 4 September, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will announce how much money each government department will receive next year.
A proper Spending Review would also set out how such monies were to be allocated within departments, so Cycling UK has been pressing for months for more investment in active travel in England (transport budgets are a devolved matter in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).
Next Wednesday’s announcement appears to have been rushed forward, however, so it’s not clear how much detail we’ll hear next week, but we’re still pressing for details – and more money.
Show us the money for cycling and walking
I’m not going to repeat the case for increasing investment in active travel, because I’ve set it out in recent weeks through various blogs explaining why this makes both sense and money, and asking those who control the future of cycling in England to show us the money for active travel by doubling investment to tackle our underfunding of cycling and walking crisis.
I’m just going to say that Cycling UK needs you.
Turning to the Treasury
We asked people to write to their MPs about funding for active travel. Thousands of you did, which helped us to establish a dialogue with over 200 MPs, who in turn raised this with Ministers.
We asked people to write to Transport Ministers, and thousands did, leading to assurances from the current Minister Chris Heaton-Harris MP that he would push strongly for increased investment in active travel through the Spending Review.
We now need to make sure that Treasury Ministers listen, because they decide who gets what cash!
That’s why we’ve turned the target of our funding campaign to the Treasury.
This week, Cycling UK’s CEO Paul Tuohy and Living Streets’ CEO Joe Irving wrote to the Chief Secretary of the Treasury Rishi Sunak MP. He’s in charge of the Spending Review process.
That letter stressed the urgent need to increase investment in active travel as part of the solution to our climate, air pollution, congestion and inactivity-related health crises.
Cycling UK needs you to add your voice to theirs.
Jam today, not tomorrow
Nearly 11,000 people have supported our funding campaign so far, and since we changed the target of the action yesterday from the Transport Minister to the Treasury, nearly 1,000 people have emailed Rishi Sunak MP to ensure that he knows that we don’t want jam tomorrow. We need and want more funding now.
We’ve got five days left.
We need your help.
We need more people to send an email to the Treasury.
It will take you two minutes.
It’s really easy, you can take action online now.
Please think about my two questions at the start of this blog.
If you're still answering 'yes', then please take action today.
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