A former adviser to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak has urged the Conservatives to stop bashing cycling infrastructure projects such as bike lanes and low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) — arguing that despite "enormous noise on social media" and many Tories feeling "hate" towards them, it doesn't mean that they are "vote losers with the general public".
Andrew Gilligan was a transport adviser to Johnson during his time as Mayor of London and later a special adviser to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Writing a lengthy piece for Conservative Home, Gilligan argued that "Conservatives won't win in London by opposing bike lanes and low-traffic neighbourhoods".
He went on to point out that bike lanes and LTNs being removed "would make very little difference to congestion or bus delay", as they are "not the cause of it", and "if we actually want to reduce congestion we have to tackle the real causes of it". For that he said the causes are "the same as they always were: traffic, parking, and roadworks".
"Bike-haters point out that congestion has risen even though motor traffic miles in London are about the same as they were ten years ago," he wrote.
"But the rise of the delivery van and SUVs – now 60 per cent of new car sales – means that motor vehicles are bigger and wider, taking up more space. The borough of Kensington is the large SUV capital of Britain – which helps explain why it has such terrible traffic, despite almost zero bike provision.
"Many of my fellow Tories sincerely hate bike schemes, and our friends sincerely hate these schemes, and road changes create enormous noise on social media. But none of that means they are vote losers with the general public."
For evidence, Gilligan highlighted that a report commissioned by the last Conservative Transport Secretary Mark Harper found that a two-thirds majority of people support schemes, while "that for all the talk of divided communities, 58 per cent of those in LTNs didn’t even realise they lived in one".
He also suggested this summer was "only the latest of half a dozen elections – parliamentary, mayoral, and local – where campaigning against traffic restrictions has failed for the Conservatives".
Gilligan said that during the 2021 London mayoral campaign "we underperformed significantly in most wards where we opposed cycle schemes". Likewise, in 2022 borough elections, he suggested campaigns opposing LTNs, namely in Dulwich, had failed and proposed a "controversy-acceptance cycle" for the low-traffic schemes.
"What usually (not always) happens is that through traffic is indeed displaced at the start, but after a few months traffic around the LTN also falls as fewer people make short local journeys by car," he wrote. "Traffic isn't like water running downhill, where if you block one route, it finds the next easiest. It's the product of people's choices. If you make it easier and nicer not to drive, fewer people will drive.
"That's why these things usually (again, not always) go through a controversy-acceptance cycle: opposition at the start, if often from a minority, which disappears after a year or two. Uxbridge, whose 2023 by-election marked the sole success of our party's campaign against traffic restrictions, went Labour this year as the controversy-acceptance cycle reached its later stages.
"None of this is to say that every single scheme works, or is perfect, or should stay in. None of it means the same approach is right everywhere. Outer London is different from the inner city, where public transport is good, the vast majority of journeys are not made by car and most people do not even own cars.
"And none of this is to say that the schemes that do work and do stay in – the majority – have no drawbacks for anyone. They do. Almost all policies do. Very few policies leave everyone 100 per cent happy.
"We've always accepted that in this party. Rescuing Britain in the 1980s would have been impossible without accepting it. But one of the reasons the country is now stagnating again is the growing impossibility of tackling its core problems, of making any kind of change that annoys or upsets anyone.
"The traffic schemes we did in London under Boris Johnson did annoy and upset some people. But they were an attempt to tackle a core problem: the capital's inexorably growing, economy-choking demand for road space.
"There are only four ways to do that. You can build more roads, which in most of London is physically and politically impossible. You can build more railways, which are vastly expensive, take decades, and only serve parts of the city. You can charge for using roads. Or you can do what we did, making better use of the roads you've already got by encouraging forms of transport, like buses and bikes, which take up less space per passenger."
Ultimately, Gilligan's piece concludes by suggesting the "growth of SUVs and vans, and the fact that electric vehicles are almost untaxed, means that in the end, we’ll need road charging".
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He continued: "That would, as my think-tank Policy Exchange has found, cost most people less than they are paying in fuel duty now. Some would pay more, but a properly designed scheme would give the economy a huge boost by cutting congestion.
"I don't mind if you think that's un-Conservative – and you'd rather live with traffic and stagnation instead. But it's an abdication of responsibility. In the end, we have to be about solving problems and governing seriously, not just pretending there are easy answers."
The Conservative Party spending too much time bashing cycling projects was an issue raised by Labour's Transport Secretary Louise Haigh in October. Haigh has since resigned following reports that she pleaded guilty to a fraud offence over a decade ago, and was replaced by Heidi Alexander, however during a brief stint in government she accused the previous Tory government of having pursued "poisonous culture wars against road users of all descriptions".
Following the landslide election win, Cycling UK too urged Labour to move political discourse away from the "divisive rhetoric" that has plagued road safety and cycling infrastructure discourse in recent years.
"There is real appetite in the UK to encourage more cycling, more routes, and the building of better infrastructure to ensure people are kept safe while cycling," Cycling UK chief executive Sarah Mitchell said. "The public recognise the benefits and are desperate to enjoy them. With political will and proportionate funding, we can make that future a reality."
Mitchell also urged the Labour government to ensure that all road safety policies are evidence-based, something the charity said was not always the case during the latter stages of the previous government, whose active travel cuts imposed in 2023 were found to have been at least partly influenced by conspiracy theories and disinformation circulating concerning low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), 20mph speed limits, and the 15-minute city concept.
In 2023, Cycling UK accused Sunak and the Conservatives of capitalising on this divisive rhetoric as part of the government's 'Plan for Drivers' – which, among other things, involved launching a pre-election consultation asking motorists if traffic fines for being "caught out" driving in cycle lanes were "fair" – and using active travel measures such as LTNs as a "political football" to sow division between road users and win votes.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph in July 2023, then-PM Sunak said he was on the "side of drivers", and claimed that "the vast majority of people in the country use their cars to get around and are dependent on their cars".