Last night I went along with Bill Dodds to a meeting at Newcastle Council where we as the Newcastle Cycling Campaign are being "consulted" and asked to give our input to the Tyne & Wear bid to something called the Local Sustainable Transport Fund. 

Bill is in fine fettle right now being chair of the West Gosforth Labour Party, given the change in regime in Newcastle.  I'd been gently winding him up earlier in the day suggesting that we propose that the bid focus its efforts on getting risk happy rich white men cycling (on the grounds that the environment on the roads is too risky for anyone else to consider it).  Bill remains convinced that the public sector should be concentrating on unemployed minority women living in deprived areas (come on Bill that's so 1980's....).  In practice we are both wrong as levels of cycling in Tyne & Wear are so low that trying to pretend that anyone is under or over represented is statistical nonsense.  I do however look forward to the day when a Newcastle Council Travel Planner heads into the West End of Newcastle to convince the Bengali community to get on their bikes, "you first Geordie Boy" being the logical response.

Our role in the meeting was to pipe up periodically and repeatedly make the point "its the infrastructure stupid".  We also had a list of about 20 other points to make which meant that we said 3 times as much as anyone else there.  Always good to stand out from the crowd I say.  The expressions on the faces of the council officers who'd clearly been hoping they'd be able to bunk of early and get themselves home was not pretty.

The officers are a interesting bunch.  They are led by the highly moisturised Dr Gary McDonald, there was a grey haired lady working under him whose name I didn't catch who looked a bit like the lady who used to help out Alan Sugar judging The Apprentice.  The slightly younger guys seem nice enough but do have the look of men who would happiest sat at the end of a railway platform checking off train numbers rather than talking about cycling.

I remain convinced that none of the transport officers have ever ridden a bicycle in traffic, ever. I mean look at the roads, its clearly not designed with us in mind is it?
 
The main thrust of the LSTF is that the key to delivering a switch to sustainable transport is employing lots of highly paid people to "travel plan" the public.  I'm still getting to grips with how this works exactly but I think its mainly to do with giving out cycle maps and suggesting that folk get the bus.  I can't moan too much about travel planning as my friends wife does it and shes a very nice person.  I've kind of seen it work well in that when a new firm moves onto a business park there is a job to be done in helping everyone figure out how to get to work.  If you need a new bus route someone has to ask for it.  That said I am highly sceptical that it is the solution to a low carbon economy or making the air we breathe less poisonous.
 
I suspect that most of the LSTF money should Tyne & Wear get any is going to get blown trying to get people working in locations designed around the car to cycle or get the bus.  I had a go at explaining that certain places are attractive to walk and cycle to and some are not.  The Highways people didn't really seem to understand this concept, I guess if you go everywhere by car then you wouldn't. 
 
There will be some cash for cycling, and a tiny proportion of this will be spent on something useful like a bike lane, of that a tiny proportion will be spent on something that actually works and is designed right.  I'm hoping for at least 200 yards of euro style bikeway out of the £20 million that T&W is trying to get its hands on but I'm just a dreamer when it comes to that sort of thing.
 
Its clear that for every gram of carbon saved by someone deciding to cycle to work, the transport people are going to be happy to see another motorist hit the roads to make use of the spare road space.  We had quite a big attempt at suggesting that they might want to try some traffic reduction alongside all this sustainable transport thing.  This to me is quite simple and logical as if for example you get school kids to cycle instead of being driven, it seems nice to stop commuters using the freed up road space to rat run past the school.  Unfortunately this can't be done because "the war on the motorist is over". 
 
Yep you heard it here, well actually you heard it a few months back from Phillip Hammond.  It is however interesting that this is now being parroted by local transport officers up in the North East, clearly the message has filtered down that any real attempt to actually cut motor vehicle use is going to be frowned upon.  If you can't nudge them out of their cars with a bit of travel planning magic then that's that.
 
So where from here, I guess stay involved with the Local Sustainable Transport Fund for entertainment value if nothing else.  Perhaps dust off the CV and start applying for highly paid travel planner jobs?  Well actually I think it just reaffirms the fact that if we want a Dutch style cycle network in the UK we need to get cycling schemes put forward in the same way as road schemes, i.e. with political backing and packaged as serious infrastructure.  The idea that the solution would come from a national fund which wraps cycling in with lots of other forms of transport was always a non starter.  Onwards into War On the Motorist 2.0 where we get what we want documented properly and then compete for funding for cycleways head to head with plans for motorway junctions.