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True, but perspective matters!
From the public funding bodies and the taxpayers perspective, cycling infrastructure is better value for money. You get more problems solved for bucks invested.
But from the traditional planners and construction industry's point of view it's the opposite!!!
The more problems get solved with less money, the less they earn and the less follow-up problems appear - to be then again "solved" with other expensive big scale projects.

T+

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The reason that cycling gets left out of schemes like this is that it doesn't cost enough to bolster the egos of those doing the planning.  Engineers and politicians like to be able to spend significant amounts of money so that they can justify their jobs, and cycling just isn't expensive enough.  If the schemes don't have a cost with a row of noughts after it, it can't be important.  See also Parkinson's Laws.

The fact that it is many times better value for money than any of the other schemes means that it should be first on the list, but this is the UK, where egos matter more than reality.

On 31 July 2014 11:49, Peter Wood <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

The Mayor of London has just launched the consultation for a 2050 infrastructure plan. Lots of indicative diagrams for new orbital train networks, underground ring roads, new bridges over the river, cross-city rapid rail lines and extensions to the tube. Nothing much for cycling though. A few mentions of planning to upgrade the existing cycle infrastructure, but no pictures of an aspirational 2050 network, or a narrative explaining how a number of piecemeal projects link up to a cohesive vision. (I think, I only scanned the document.)

Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts/research on why cycling tends to get left out of these grand visions? There have been a few recent proposals for utopian schemes released by the Mayor, such as elevated cycle routes strung alongside train lines. These were generally received as quite impractical and relatively expensive ways to support cycling.  But I can't see why they are less plausible than proposals for completely new underground road and rail.

Any thoughts on why or how different modes of transport gain the institutional-societal capacity to produce bigger dreams, and why this isn't happening with cycling?

https://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/business-economy/vision-and-strategy/infrastructure-plan-2050

Pete

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