Tory MPs call for an end to active travel schemes

14 Tory MPs have written to Grant Shapps calling for an end in the emergency active travel schemes that have been introduced during the pandemic. 

In May this year, the Department for Transport (DfT) announced a £250 million Emergency Active Travel Fund.

In a bid to encourage active and socially distanced travel, this funding has been used for various projects, such as widening footpaths, introducing pop-up cycle lane and creating cycle parking.

However, a group of Tory MP’s have claimed that this funding is: ‘Simply a high price idealistic formula for even more congestion.’

In a letter written to the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, the Tory MP’s write: ‘Please stop the rollout, and withdraw the plethora of new road narrowing blockades and dedicated cycle lanes eating into our town and city roads.’

The letter also calls for an end to the extension of London’s existing Congestion Charge Zone, which is planned for 2021.

The MPs write: ‘This needless expanded tax will not reduce emissions or congestion to the levels to justify
its implementation.’

Howard Cox, FairFuelUK’s founder, who also signed the letter said: ‘Grant Shapps seems hypnotised by a small minority of ill-informed politically driven well-financed greens, who pathologically hate the motorist.

‘They are hell-bent on making cars, taxis, vans, and trucks obsolescent. Shockingly a Tory Minister is grounding road transport decisions on emotion, not common sense or pragmatic data.

‘Businesses and local communities are being devastated, not by a Chinese bug, but by myopic local authorities, without any consultation and funded by the Department of Transport. Strangulation of our city roads by new vacant cycle lanes and road blockades is intensifying congestion, escalating pollution, and risking lives by delaying emergency services.

‘All this, so that fit well off young cyclists can enjoy their fair-weather pastime at the expense of economic common sense.’

Photo Credit – Pixabay