Great photos from this new cycling bridge in Belgium. It just shows, with a little vision and imagination, there’s always a way to improve transport for everyone. I bet even motorists are happy with this bridge.
The EU is promoting cycling to some extent.
“Cycling is an efficient way of using expensive and scarce space in urban areas, it is healthy, clean and energy efficient. Almost half of all car trips are over distances of shorter than 5 kilometres. This means that there is an important potential for cycling. The Green Paper on urban mobility therefore suggests that cycling should be an integral part of urban mobility policies.” – Clean transport, urban transport
However, when it comes to actual funding for cycling infrastucture – cycling still lags behind and is very limited compared to the numbers who cycle.
“For the cost of one kilometre of urban freeway you could build 150km of bicycle paths, 10,000km of bicycle lanes or 100 well designed 30kmph zones.”
“Some 80 per cent young German adults think people don’t need a private car anymore because public transport is sufficiently developed.”
“Car ownership in Germany is expected to plummet by more than half from 570 per 1,000 people today to 250 per 1,000 people by 2050.”
- Julian Ferguson Public Service
Yet, despite all these factors, only a fraction ( 0.7 per cent) of EU funding for transport goes towards cycling provision, even though 7 per cent of European citizens use bikes as their main mode of transport.”
Comment.
For some reason, people often associate cycling with the concept of ‘very cheap’ or ‘free’. It’s like people feel bad about spending £200 on a bike which might last them 15 years, yet they think nothing of spending £200 a week on motoring costs. There’s a similar attitude to spending on cycling infrastructure. Yet, if countries had the vision to promote cycling, they could see the social benefits far outweighed the minor costs. Maybe Boris’ vision of bikes in the sky is not so far-fetched after all.
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