Ahead of the adoption of his opinion on an EU Roadmap for Cycling by the CoR October plenary session, we spoke to PES member Kevin Peel, member of Manchester City Council (UK).
In your draft opinion, you are calling for an EU Roadmap for Cycling. What are your main recommendations to the European Commisison?
My main recommendation is to try to ensure inclusion of the EU Roadmap in the European Commission's work plan for 2017, to ring fence 10% of EU transport funding for cycling related investment, to require inclusion of cycling provision in all relevant co-funded transport projects involving EU funding and to improve EU-wide data collection. There are many other recommendations related to minimum quality criteria for cycling infrastructure, improvements to road safety regulations, better including cycling in public procurement and extending the use of cargo bikes. All of the suggestions would help to achieve many policy goals including improved public health, air quality and tackling climate change.
Many Europeans depend on cars. How can they be encouraged to move away from a reliance on the car in order to develop an enduring bicycle culture?
This isn't about taking people's cars away, but many people consistently say in surveys that if cycling was a more viable option they would give up the car, or at least use it less. Many car journeys are less than 5km and most of these could be done by bike, but many areas do not have proper infrastructure, safe roads or any incentives. So we have to get the infrastructure right, we have to improve road safety and the perception of the danger of cycling - which is much overstated compared to reality - and provide incentives such as having bike hire schemes in our cities, making it easier for people to try using a bike and increasing the visibility of cyclists on our roads.
How does the situation look like in your own city ?
In Manchester we are investing in new, segregated cycle routes along main commuter routes into the city centre in order to give people a viable, safe and easy alternative to driving into work each day. We are also installing two thousand new bike parking stands around the city centre to ensure there is plenty of secure parking for anyone cycling in and we're designing a better integrated public transport system so people can move seamlessly between bike, bus, train and tram. Of course it isn't all about infrastructure. We also support cycling schemes in many schools to get young people on the bikes and build up their confidence to cycle on our roads and we fund cycle training for adults too.
