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They spend £billions of our money on HS2 to gain half-an-hour for those earning their bread on their journeys by rail but now, with pop-up cycle lanes, 20mph speed limits, and possibly 60mph speed limit to come, they throw away £billions more losing entire hours on their journeys by road.

They spend £billions of our money on cycle lanes to get clean air for everyone, yet these same £billions condemn cyclists to inhale toxic fumes when those cycle lanes are adjacent to slow moving traffic.

And they spend £billions on the NHS but don’t ask RoSPA about the true cost of serious cycling injuries when they flag up cyclists’ vulnerability to accidents but base their stats only on accidents reported to the police. No one asks the NHS for the true figures!

On Gosforth High Street in Newcastle I invite you to see the worst of all worlds – a cycle lane on one side of the road only with a long tail back and cyclists inhaling toxic fumes, returning riding on the pavement or close to buses, vans, lorries and cars inhaling more toxic fumes on the way back. Just a mercy that there are fewer than 100 cyclists a day braving the wet, cold and windy weather to come. The project manager said that they “needed to see up to 3,000 cyclists a day using this corridor to comply with 20% of all trips under five miles.”

For the national scandal – horrendous evidence – click https://mol.im/a/8718471 and more https://mol.im/a/8724177. Only the Daily Mail reports this. Where are Emily Maitlis and the Newsnight team, John Snow and Channel 5? On a bike ride to Timbuctu?

This is what happens when the Government provides millions of £s to the cycling charity Sustrans and lets them infiltrate central and local government planning departments and then write the policy and administer it, and when the PM likes to be seen riding a bike or a scooter when it would be much better PR if he was driving a Nissan Leaf, and very much safer too.

By the way Sustrans’ plans for Newcastle put cycle lanes and red lines on both sides of Gosforth High Street. Congestion Super-de-luxe! Amateurs in a world badly needing professionals, the letters EV not in their alphabet, their vision of “a model shift” from car to bike predating the world’s auto industry tooling up for Electric Vehicles and autonomous motoring.

And the local Labour council adopted Sustrans’ precisely calculated forecast of 1,232,177 additional cycling trip with their cycle lanes.

But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns. Don’t bother they’re here.

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