Sir
Of course the joint authors of a letter to your paper of the ideological anti driving and pro cycling lobby would make all sorts of specious claims to promote their cause.
As UK drivers cover some 300 billion driver miles a year, I doubt that cyclists, including the long distance enthusiasts who are invariably cycling as hobbyists, are covering 2% of that, some 6 billion miles a year. To suggest that by 2050, as this group is doing, that we can increase that to 25%, some 75 billion miles cycled a year is beyond any credibility. Therefore their projected economic savings, even before any examination of their rationale, is bound to be no more than speculative and without sound foundation.
I can well understand why cyclists find it advantageous to associate with walkers. However may I point out that the main difference of walkers from cyclists is that, without the former, all of us would die but without cyclists we would continue to live quite well. Another difference is that walkers do not generally mix and mingle with mechanised essential infrastructure and already enjoy their own separated facilities that have worked very well for hundreds of years. Walkers have more in common with motor transport as, without it, our society would collapse too; both need each other.
Since mankind took to the horse, camel and bullock, society did not expand on the basis of manpower transport and certainly not by bicycling.
Doesn't anyone associate the rise in life expectancy with motor transport? Without it, society would collapse with the consequential death of most of us from lack of basic essentials. So one can argue that motor transport has been very healthy for all of us.
For some reason, many people do not see the private motor car as part of the essential transport mix. Imagine life without them. Public and commercial transport depend on cars, not just to make connections but to get its staff to work. As do the NHS, police, rescue services, water and power suppliers, carers, doctors and so on. Our food is supplied on the basis of large turnover on a last minute ordering and replacement basis and depends on people with cars and freezers to shift it out fast and continuously in large amounts. Our hypermarkets and retail parks surround themselves with massive car parks not cycle racks. Why, even The Thunderer would be silent without motor transport and cars: Why not just try to run it for a week by pushbike to see if it can sustain?
That only a tiny percentage of our population has any interest in road cycling makes perfect sense. As a transport mode, except around flat towns and cities, it really isn't fit for purpose. It's uncomfortable, hard work, exposed to weather, cannot carry any loads or passengers over a long distance very rapidly, and given that, to date, thirteen cyclists have been killed on our roads this year already, it's clearly a very dangerous yet demonstrably unnecessary activity in the 21st Century. That so many don't cycle, is surely evidence then that there must be something very wrong with it. If it were viable as a transport mode far more people would be doing it already.
The question we must ask of these minority lobbyists is: 'Why should we spend large sums of money on something society can quite happily live without?'
Regards
