Councils in Staffordshire are set to lose out on £200,000 in funding from central government to make it easier for people to walk and cycle in the county.
Staffordshire County Council were to receive £366,000 and Stoke-on-Trent City Council £183,000 from the first tranche of funding under the government’s £250million active travel fund. This money was to be used to introduce temporary measures such as bike lanes as the country emerges from lockdown with councils submitting plans to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.
This week the Sentinel reported that the county council will see its allocation of funding reduced by half to £183,000 and that Stoke-on-Trent will lose a quarter of its allocation, getting £126,000 from the fund.
Under a second tranche of funding the two authorities have been provisionally allocated £1.47million and £673,000 respectively. This money is to be used for longer term projects, with the city council planning to use its allocation to establish a cycling and public transport route from Stoke station and the city centre and to improve cycle lanes across the city.
Dan Jellyman, cabinet member for regeneration at the city council told the Sentinel ‘as far as government grants go this is more than we usually get, so we are quite pleased to get seventy-five percent’.
He went on to say that those councils that received larger allocations were probably in wealthier areas and had plans for active travel that could be taken down from the shelf and implemented easily.
Stoke-on-Trent, he said is not in such a fortunate position, Mr. Jellyman advised that ‘keen cyclists’ and anyone else with an interest in public transport will ‘need to temper their expectations, the funding was never going to be that much when it had to be divided among so many councils’.
One of the few benefits of lockdown was that it saw the number of people walking and cycling increase exponentially. However, as we enter the ‘new normal’ traffic levels are on the rise again and there is a real risk that a historic opportunity to create a greener and more sustainable transport system will slip away.
In their Covid-19: Renewing the Transport System report published this week the Campaign for Better Transport set out a vision for taking the UK’s transport system out of the doldrums and into the future.
They envision a transport system that is 100% zero emission, supports local manufacturing and has improved facilities for walking and cycling embedded in every aspect.
To bring this about they call on the government to take actions including, requiring local authorities to produce plans to permanently reshape transport in their area and to ensure that all stakeholders work together on delivery. They also call for better infrastructure for walking and cycling and for all busses to be powered by electricity.
In Stoke-on-Trent keeping the city moving has been a problem for decades, one we have tried to solve by carving up whole communities to build new roads. This has proved utterly ineffective, causing massively negative social and economic impacts and failing to reduce the congestion throttling the city.
Building an integrated public transport system isn’t a utopian dream to be dusted down every few years then put back in the ‘too difficult’ box; it is a necessity if we are to prosper.
When prime minster Boris Johnson said last week that the UK was going to ‘build its way out’ of the impending economic crisis with a ‘new deal’ based on infrastructure spending things seemed hopeful. There was never going to be a Hoover Dam built anywhere in our green and pleasant land, but maybe there would be some progress after years of inaction.
Sadly, the cut to funding for active travel proves any hopes raised to have been premature. After showing us that he can’t address the nation with the inspiring eloquence of Churchill Mr. Johnson has now proved he can’t act with the boldness and vision of Roosevelt.
His podium rhetoric may be about building for the future, but in the counting houses of the Treasury the cheese paring continues. The word ‘austerity’ might have vanished from the lexicon of Tory politics; the idea itself, not so much.
Locally we also have grounds for being severely disappointed with our local Tory politicians, both Dan Jellyman and council leader Abi Brown from whom he takes his orders have been found wanting. Yet again they have fallen back on the line that Stoke-on-Trent should be thankful for anything it gets when they should be demanding we be given what we so desperately need.
These unprecedented times have provided a window for new ideas to enter the dusty world of British politics. The failed dogma that big government is bad and everything must be left to the whims of the markets is tottering on its pedestal.
Now is the time to push it off once and for all and move towards a world where government invests in the infrastructure of the country because it is a social good, not just an economic one.
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