The Stour Valley Cycling campaign aims to promote, support and enable safe cycling and walking in the western end of the Stour Valley in Suffolk and North Essex. While currently there is lots of safe walking routes, there is almost zero safe cycling infrastructure in the whole area that meets modern design standards.
The 2020 Covid 19 pandemic showed us several things.
- The March lockdown and consequent massive drop in road traffic showed us what clean air smells and looks like.
- The encouragement by the UK Government to cycle for exercise combined with safer streets and roads to cycle on due to the drop in traffic levels showed us what a large scale increase in cycling looks like.
- That working from home is not a luxury that is bad for business productivity and impossible to achieve, the likelihood is that, post pandemic, many people will no longer commute by car, train or bus to offices in nearby towns and cities. This reduces traffic and makes them more likely to shop locally, which is of course likely to be walkable or cycleable.
To make the new higher level of cycling and walking viable requires investment, substantial investment.The UN when assessing the UKs required actions to reduce carbon emissions from transport, suggested that investment needs to be circa £6 Billion per year. So far the UK Government has suggested £2 Billion over 4 years.