Council faces long road to get cycling in all of city on track

£16.3M PLAN ‘FALLS SHORT’ OF HELPING POORER AND REMOTE AREAS

A £16.3m project to boost cycling in Newcastle “falls way short” of helping the city’s poorer and more remote communities, councillors have complained.

City council bosses heard on Tuesday that investment in improved cycling infrastructure had been too focused on areas like Gosforth, Jesmond and the city centre.

As one of only eight Cycle Ambition Cities in England, Newcastle was able to secure millions in Department for Transport (DfT) funding to develop a cycling network – which has so far delivered schemes on routes including John Dobson Street, the Gosforth Corridor, and Brandling Village.

And while that has resulted in more people taking up cycling in those areas, there are fears that other parts of the city are being forgotten.

Coun Steve Fairlie, who represents Callerton and Throckley, told the finance and budget monitoring scrutiny sub-committee: “If you look at Elswick or Benwell, I would think that those are top of the list because they have some of the lowest car ownership and greatest deprivation.

“We are supposed to spend money on tackling inequalities.

“It is great having these cycle routes, but they are not in the areas where they will tackle inequalities – that should underpin our spending priorities.

“There seems to be a mismatch between what the DfT thinks and what we think. Cycling to work is great if you have a regular job with regular hours in the city centre, and you work in an office sat on your backside all day.

“But I represent the outer west and the people around me work all over the place – they work in Cramlington or at Nissan.”

He added that there should be other cycling infrastructure focusing on getting people to cycle in their own communities, not just to work.

Coun Fairlie said: “I think this falls way short of what our objectives are as a city.”

His Labour colleague, Coun Dan Greenhough, agreed that it might be more important for the council to promote cycling initiatives in areas like Throckley or Denton.

Rob Snowball, the council’s senior specialist transport planner, said that the DfT’s system for handing out funding encourages investing in locations like Gosforth, where cycling is already popular, as that is where there is “value for money” even though it “forgets the wider health benefits”.

He told the committee that – according to a DfT report – the city’s existing cycle schemes have increased cycling on John Dobson Street fourfold and by up to 22% in Gosforth.

Mr Snowball confirmed that the council is seeking to develop a wider cycle network for the city which tries to take into account the need to develop in the west.