Cycling perspectives ( 5 of 9 ) A Tax Payer

Kaya Burgess wrote in May 2013

If you are not a regular cyclist, you may ask why you should support
proposals to boost investment in safe cycle routes.
More than three quarters of a million people commute to work by bicycle
in Britain every day, but you may not be one of them. So why should you
care?
Building safer cycle routes would not only benefit those who cycle. It
would also encourage hundreds of thousands more people to use their
bikes to make short journeys instead of going by car or by train or bus.
This would have benefits for motorists, pedestrians, parents, businesses
and taxpayers.
It would lead to less congested streets, less overcrowding on public
transport, fewer deaths on the road, less NHS money wasted on obesity, a
boost for the high street, less pollution, and a more affordable form of
transport for those priced out by rising petrol prices and rail fares.
This will only happen if a greater proportion of the existing transport
budget is spent on cycling, however.
Around 2 per cent of journeys in Britain are currently made by bike,
leaping to more than 50 per cent in parts of Central London at rush hour
and more than 10 per cent in towns like Bristol, York, Oxford and
Cambridge. Yet less than 1 per cent of the transport budget is spent on
cycle provision. A recent pledge from David Cameron to spend £94 million
on cycling over the next three years amounts to just 0.2 per cent of the
Department for Transport’s budget over the same period.
The 18 recommendations made in the Get Britain Cycling report - outlined
here - can transform Britain’s streets and towns for everyone,
regardless of whether or not they ride a bike.
Here are some arguments for why non-cyclists would benefit from these
recommendations:

5.)

A taxpayer
The NHS spends around £5 billion each year on tackling preventable
diseases exacerbated by inactivity, including type 2 diabetes, heart
disease and strokes.
Around £16bn is currently being spent on the Crossrail project in London
and a further £3bn on upgrades to the A9 road in Scotland. Spending on
both of these individual rail and road projects far outstrips the total
annual spend on cycling in the entire country. And yet, health experts
told the Get Britain Cycling inquiry that investing in cycle provision
is by far the most cost-effective form of transport spend, recouping £4
in health savings for every £1 invested.
Municipal authorities in Copenhagen added up the effect on health,
productivity, congestion and time saved and found that society as a
whole makes a profit of around 13 pence for every kilometre cycled on
the roads. By the same criteria, society makes a net loss of 8 pence for
every kilometre driven by car.
Furthermore, the maintenance of the roads is paid for out of general
taxation, which is paid by motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike
through their council tax and income tax. The “road tax” paid by
motorists is in fact called Vehicle Excise Duty and is linked to a car’s
emissions. This money does not go back into maintaining the roads, and
does not give motorists any greater right than cyclists to use the roads.
At a time of austerity, the Get Britain Cycling report does not call for
extra funding to be created for investment in cycling. It instead asks
that an appropriate proportion of existing transport budgets and
preventative health budgets is reallocated to cycle provision, in order
to reap the economic rewards of promoting cycling.

Tomorrow:

An employer or business