Highways England is poised to announce the first schemes that will benefit from its newly issued Cycling Strategy, which commits £100m of ring-fenced cash to 200 projects between now and 2021.
The programme aims to help realise the Government's ambition for cycling to become 'a natural choice for journeys'.
Highways England claims that Britain's National Health Service would save £17bn within 20 years if cycling levels rose to those of Denmark. Its strategy pledges that it will give greater consideration to cyclists' needs both during and after road network improvement schemes.
The Department for Transport and the Office of Rail and Road will jointly monitor the roll-out, with a new Cycling Technical Working Group responsible for producing annual progress reports, and exploring newly-developed metrics covering cycle usage and rider satisfaction for more accurate evaluation of results.
Cycling charity policy director, Roger Geffen, told Transport Network: 'The strategy runs to just four pages and is inevitably short on detail. Yet it still manages to fit in several CTC’s suggestions, eg to design cycle-friendliness in all schemes, including planned road maintenance work, to train their staff to 'think bike' and to work with councils and others to deliver well-joined-up cycle networks.
'What matters though is what gets delivered on the ground. If David Cameron’s promised "cycling revolution" is finally to get rolling, ministers must now redeploy some of the £15bn budget for strategic road network improvements.'
