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Cycling and obesity silos

The biggest frustration for anyone watching governments make such a horlicks of sustainable development is their apparent inability to make the connections between different policy silos. So here are three seemingly “separate issues”: the increase in levels of obesity – especially amongst young people; the increase in the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from car use; declining quality of life in our towns and cities through increased air pollution and congestion.

No doubt dozens of hard-pressed officials in the Department of Transport, Department of Health and the Department of Communities and Local Government are hard at work in their own respective silos struggling with what are by any standards “seriously wicked issues”. But the idea that the single most important answer to these problems lies in promoting cycling and walking is obviously just a bit too wacky, too subversive, too “muesli-ish” – as someone put it too me the other day!

But could the improbable combination of Alistair Darling and Ruth Kelly be on the verge of shattering those separate silos? A recent report from Cycling Englandhas dramatically raised the stakes in demonstrating that for a mere £70 million a year the Government could secure by 2012 a 20% increase in cycle journeys, 54 million fewer car journeys, and a reduction in CO2 emissions of at least 35,000 tonnes a year. The impact on obesity levels is harder to estimate, but the data shows quite clearly that increased levels of physical activity are fundamental in any anti-obesity strategy.

So could the Government at long last make up for 10 years of paralysing failure in this one tiny policy area of cycling? During that time, the average distance travelled by bicycle fell from 43 – 36 miles per person per year with average trips down from 18 a year to 14. Targets to increase cycle use have unceremoniously been abandoned, and money dolled out in such pathetic dribs and drabs that it’ s no surprise that nothing has happened.

So where has Prudence been all this time? Whatever happened to the “invest to save” philosophy? As the Cycling England report points out:

“even achieving a modest target returning the number of trips to the 1995 level within the next 10 years could save around £523 million by 2015”.

So, anybody prepared to take a punt on the following headline in the announcements about the Comprehensive Spending Review?

“cycling receives massive boost as part of governments new sustainable transport strategy”.

I wonder why not!

Posted on September 26, 2007 4:25 PM |

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