West Midlands and Warwickshire hotspots for cycling incidents

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It’s recently been reported that the West Midlands and Warwickshire are hotspots for cycling incidents, according to law firm Simpson Millar.

This really should be a wake-up call to Warwickshire County Council and the borough councils including Nuneaton and Bedworth. The County Council has promised and promised new cycle schemes, it goes on about active travel on its social media, encourages people to switch just one local journey from the car to active travel, and puts walking, wheeling, and cycling as a priority in its Local Transport Plan – but it doesn’t ENABLE those journeys. Where is the delivery on the ground? 

In Nuneaton, the proposed route from Nuneaton to Bedworth and Bedworth to Coventry appears to have stalled, nearly five years after money was committed for the project. The A47 Long Shoot route has been indefinitely paused with no decision made over whether to actually build it, and the associated Old Hinckley Road link to complete the route from the A5 to the town centre is conspicuous in its absence despite having money awarded from Active Travel England. That meant it should have been under construction by now, if not finished. Then there’s the Weddington Road scheme which has had funding redirected by the Borough Council and looks like it won’t appear. 

In the meantime, the patchwork of routes we do have are inconsistent and do not form a cohesive network. They force riders and pedestrians into conflict in narrow, shared space (e.g., Wembrook Trail, Nuneaton’s ring road), they’re isolated and risky at night (Coventry Canal, Attleborough Fields, Black Track, Weddington Walk), may be poorly surfaced (again, the canal and the Black Track), feature obstructions (K-frames, chicane barriers), or we have pointless and actively dangerous painted lanes on busy roads (Weddington Road). We’ve had road changes with substandard provision installed (new Heath End Road junction, Bermuda Bridge scheme, Gipsy Lane), we have speed limits that are too high for everyday cycling on roads mixed with traffic (e.g., the north end of Higham Lane which is still 40mph), a lack of 20mph zones (which should be all residential streets by default), a lack of safe routes to school (again Higham Lane, Greenmoor Road etc.) – the county STILL only has one School Street scheme, and that is still only a trial. Where’s the rest?

Is it any wonder why we don’t see a massive uptake of people cycling, with some of those who do ride despite all of this perhaps choosing to simply use pavements? 

Other counties and regions are moving much faster than us, and we only need to look abroad to see what works. Our infrastructure is extremely car centric. You get what you build for, and Warwickshire still builds for cars. As a result, people are driving for many journeys which could feasibly be made by active travel; young people are robbed of independence because aside from public transport, they don’t have a means of getting about; adults are trapped in car dependency. More and more motor traffic is induced, adding to congestion which isn’t solved but ultimately worsened by building more road capacity, and all of the problems associated with excessive car use and inactivity.

This is not an overnight fix and a couple of good routes here and there will not by themselves suddenly mean masses of people cycling. For that, we need a comprehensive network throughout and connecting towns and villages. But until Warwickshire actually begins to build this core, high quality network with the routes that its promised, we’re never going to get to the point where there is a real choice for people in how they get about, because rightly or wrongly, the perception is it is just not safe nor is it easy to choose active travel.

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A version of this comment was originally posted to Facebook on Monday 23 September 2024, under the Coventry Live post relating to their article.