Why we need a car-free-zone to get on our bikes

8:39am Wednesday 27th February 2008

I often see a fine example of the cycling problem in Bradford. It's a yellow clad mature male pedalling slowly home up St Enoch's Road towards Wibsey, a kilometre-long hill of unrelenting gradient.

It is slow, grinding, and sweaty but remarkably rewarding and mirrors my own struggles with Emm Lane.

On the face of it, the local hills and limited flat roads should explain the small number of those who use bicycles for personal transport within the district. However there aren't that many more cyclists in flatter Leeds and Wakefield, though it is true that towns that have had a tradition of cycling for generations, like York and Cambridge, are generally flat and less demanding of physical fitness.

Our part of West Yorkshire has a tradition of very good sporting cyclists, who compete nationally and overseas. There are also some interesting mainly off-road facilities provided by Sustrans as part of the National Cycle Network, with the new Route 66 link from Dewsbury along the Greenway to Low Moor and then on through Bradford to Shipley and the east-west route along the canal.

It's a pity that all the old railway lines closed by Beeching some 50 years ago haven't been converted into cycleways as the gradients were gentle enough for general cycling.

The Greenway shows what can be done, as does the new Great Northern Railway Trail from Cullingworth towards Queensbury. At the moment it is only one mile long, over the spectacular Hewenden Viaduct, but in time will be ten miles from start to finish.

These specialist routes demonstrate the key factor that encourages cycling and that's the complete separation from motor vehicles. Even the congestion charge reduction in traffic in London only led to a marginal increase in bicycle use and the Dutch have also struggled because of the increasing threat from traffic.

Cycling England, a voluntary body, is putting £17 million into six demonstration towns, including Darlington and Lancaster, to improve matters but the real change will only come with dedicated cycle paths that cars can't enter.

London is planning to invest over £400 million in twelve super cycleways that will link up suburban areas with the centre and will have limited shared space with vehicles. It's expected that cycling participation will increase by at least 400 per cent.

It would be possible to build something similar in Bradford, along the Aire Valley and into Bradford along Manningham Lane, along Thornton and Leeds Roads, as well as Toller Lane, Halifax Road and out along Otley Road from Shipley.

It would mean using some of the pavements, which have already been illegally overwhelmed by parked cars, and separating the routes with raised kerbs to keep traffic away. It would be expensive, but there was a windfall from the sale of the airport and it would be less than the cost of the Saltaire tunnel.

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