Cambridge campaigner says "little has changed" for cyclists in last 13 years

Cambridge – viewed by many as the UK’s best city for the safe provision of cycling – is only tolerating the bike, not promoting it.

That is the view of the outgoing chair of the Cambridge Cycling Campaign (CCC), Martin Lucas-Smith, who added that while infrastructure replicating that of the Netherlands is feasible, many more obstacles still have to be negotiated.

Lucas-Smith has lobbied for various cycling improvements in the city and the county in his 13 years at the helm, but he still feels that more can be done to eradicate the “many hostile roads on which cycling is still nothing like what the Dutch and the Danish have achieved”.

Although saying that “very little has changed” since 2001, Lucas-Smith does feel optimistic that change for the better is afoot should councilors embrace sustainable travel and implement two-way cycling on one-way streets and demand better cycling provision on new housing developments.

He told Cambridge News: “I think there are parts of the county and city council who perhaps are a bit more enlightened and actually do recognise that with the congestion that’s coming, cycling has to be one of the solutions.

“I think the challenges for my successors and the new committee will be to take the goodwill that does exist around the city and campaign hard... to get Dutch quality infrastructure that is so badly needed, and which really is achievable in Cambridge and beyond.”

Source: Cambridge News

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