The party sets out to boost the number of cycle lanes, superhighways and quietways if elected and to launch a new national cycling safety campaign aimed at both bicycle riders and motorists.
 
“It’s time this Government showed some real ambition, striking while the iron is hot on active travel,” said Labour’s shadow green transport minister Kerry McCarthy.
 
“It’s very worrying that we’ve gone back to the levels of pollution and congestion that we had before Covid, and in some places things are even worse,” she added. “Unless the Conservatives do more to make our roads safer for cyclists, the problem is only going to escalate.”
 
The call came days before the Government’s latest road casualty statistics to be published on Thursday and four weeks ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review.
 
Cycling UK’s head of campaigns Duncan Dollimore welcomed the focus on promoting active travel. But he warned: “Whether it’s Labour’s stated ambition to get the country cycling, or the Government’s ‘Gear Change’ ambitions for active travel, the reality is that much of this will remain stuck in first gear without significantly increased long term investment and commitment from politicians locally to develop comprehensive cycling and walking networks.”
 
He added that while politicians of different stripes speak of how important active travel is, councillor colleagues sometimes “rip out cycle lanes and low traffic neighbourhoods at the first sign of any objection”.
 
Also at conference, Labour’s shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon called on the Government to do more to address the lorry driver shortage by attracting more people from the UK to the haulage sector, including women who he said make up just 3% of the 320,000 workforce.
 
It is simply not good enough, he said, to “pile more pressure on already exhausted existing drivers and cut corners on tests”.

Jim also pledged to end so called ‘transport deserts’ by offering flexible community transport that uses the latest technology to create “real time, reliable and affordable routes to serve our rural communities”.

Elsewhere at the conference the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association’s general secretary Manuel Cortes warned Government not to scrap the eastern leg of High Speed 2 towards Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds.

Speaking at a fringe meeting on Monday the trade union boss said that with the state of the economy as it is, the Government is going to have “some real economic challenges and the first thing they are going to cut is investment.

“I’m really fearful now that probably (the Eastern) leg of HS2 might be a casualty of that. We should be doing the opposite. At a time when you have got economic difficulties, the way out is not by cutting but through investment and building a stronger economy.”

He also called for High Speed 2 to be extended, rather than reduced in scale, going all the way to Scotland.