The politics of cycle infrastructure

Why is building cycle paths so hard? We’ve had some successes

• A really good northern section of the Billy Trail
• A good path from the Billy Trail to Saltmarsh Lane
• A moderate path from St Mary’s Church to Manor Rd
• A passable path along the sea front to Eastoke
• A poor route to Mill Rythe School from Mengham
• The Langbrook Link from Langstone to Tesco & beyond

But we’re no nearer to

• A safe, direct route from Mengham to the bridge (see Haylink)
• A cycle path across Legion Field
• Good, safe routes to our Hayling schools
• A safe cycle route to the Hayling Ferry

So who’s responsible? What’s stopping us?

• Hampshire County Council (HCC) is the official Transport Authority, and manages smaller roads, including the A3023 Havant Rd, public rights of way, and owns the Billy Trail. But it has no money, it’s remote and uncommunicative, and despite it’s wonderful active travel strategy, has almost no support for cycling.
• Havant Borough Council (HBC) has brilliant local knowledge and expertise, but little money, and any work it does for cycling is controlled by Hampshire County Council (HCC).
• National Highways manage the strategic road network, including the A27, and the Havant roundabout, and although in theory, they should encourage active travel, in practice, they often restrict it.
• HCC’s Countryside Services (HCS) manage all Public Rights of Way and countryside, including the Billy Trail. But their main responsibility is to nature, not to cycling, so we really struggled to upgrade the Saltmarsh Lane link, even though we had funding. They prefer ‘natural’ (i.e. rough) surfaces, so it was a massive step forward to get the Billy Trail weather-proofed.
• Landowners do not have to permit cycling, even when a Public Footpath crosses their land. This is a major problem for us on Hayling, as there are Public Footpaths that run almost all the way from Mengham to the Bridge, directly, without the detour to the Billy Trail. But landowners are refusing to allow us to upgrade them for cycling, even at no cost to them 😡.
• The environment and nature is playing an ever bigger role. Much of Hayling Island and our two wonderful harbours are now very heavily protected in law (rightly so, with climate breakdown, etc). Natural England is solely responsible for Nature, and has no interest in cycling, and a total veto. So even simple construction projects suddenly become ensnared in complex legal issues.

And finally, it all comes down to money!

Cycle infrastructure is incredibly cheap beside every other form of transport, and provides a massive return on investment. And swapping car accelerator pedals for bike pedals would relieve roads, traffic and the NHS. But there is no transport budget to pay for it.

Our main sources of funding are :

• Active Travel England (who funded the latest Billy Trail work).
• Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), which is a levy on all new bigger housing developments. But with reduced house building comes reduced CIL pots.

This sounds like a ‘council of despair’

Cycle Hayling finds all this incredibly frustrating, as I’m sure you must do. But we can fix it. We need the government to :

• Fund their Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy with a mandatory percentage of the transport budget.
• Fund the rest of the Billy Trail.
• Make cycling feel safer, with a simpler Highway Code, more enforcement and 20mph limits where people live, study, work and play,.

• We need to execute Havant’s LCWIP (Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan).
• Hampshire needs to stand aside and let Havant get on with the job.
• Landowners need to let us convert public footpaths for cycling.
• And we need Haylink, a direct, traffic-free, all-weather route to the bridge.

There’s huge goodwill amongst councillors and council officers, in Havant and Hampshire. We need to keep lobbying them to ‘do the right thing’, and build Hayling a cycle infrastructure for the future, for active travel and for a greener planet.