Thérèse Coffey, the Conservative politician who for a brief period during the autumn of 2022 served as health secretary during Liz Truss' stint as prime minister, has lashed out at an active travel project in her Suffolk constituency, claiming that it is "anti-driver".
Ms Coffey suggested the £5 million of funding for the Woodbridge active travel scheme would be better spent providing cycling proficiency courses at local schools, improving crossing points for pedestrians and cyclists, and repairing road and pavement surfaces, Suffolk News reports.
[📷: BetaStreets/Suffolk County Council]
Suffolk County Council says the proposals, including a 20mph zone, shared-use paths, modal filters and footpath improvements, have been designed using a public consultation, stakeholder engagement and analysis of traffic data, in a bid to "to make Woodbridge's streets better-connected and more people-friendly".
"We want to make it easier to choose more active ways of getting around. Increased active travel has been shown to benefit mental and physical health, improve air quality, reduce traffic congestion and noise pollution, and increase safety," the project's website states alongside artist's impressions of how the completed scheme could look.
However, Ms Coffey weighed in on the scheme to suggest that "active travel should support those who want to walk and cycle more readily, but should not be anti-driver", before questioning the consultation.
"Pretty much every proposal fails to deliver and antagonises rather than encourages," she said. "The survey to gather feedback is woefully bad. It does not set out clearly the different options being considered. I expect it would be deemed unlawful if taken to court. I would consider this consultation to be so bad that it needs to be done again, allowing people to comment far more readily on the proposals being made, including being able to keep a copy of the comments provided."
The consultation closed on 9 April, Suffolk County Council reporting that it had received over 2,100 responses, with the results and next steps to be made available in the "summer of 2024".
The "anti-driver" rhetoric of Ms Coffey's criticism has become fairly typical of political figures from the party she represents, the Conservatives' party conference last autumn hearing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Transport Secretary Mark Harper talk of the so-called "war on motorists" and that they are "proudly pro-car".
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Cycling UK expressed disappointment with the strategy, accusing the Conservatives of an "ill-fated attempt to win" votes with pro-motoring policies"undermining" active travel success".
Likewise, Active Travel Commissioner Chris Boardman urged Sunak to "stick with" policies promoting "fantastic" active travel plans. Boardman also admitted that the language of the Prime Minister's announcement, which called schemes such as low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and 20mph zones "hare-brained" and committed to "slamming the brakes on the war on motorists", was "not the language I would choose" and called on the government to also announce "sensational active travel policy".
"It would be good if these things were said at the same time, in my view," Boardman said. "When you're doing just this one thing it doesn't show that that's important here, so I'd like to see them rolled out at the same time to get balance. Everybody wants their kids to be safe, we need to make sure that that's been spoken to, and it's actually in there in the policy, but it hasn't been pushed up front."