New protected cycling routes are urgently needed in two of the UK’s fastest growing cities in a bid to prevent future gridlock, the National Infrastructure Commission is recommending.

A study published by the commission highlights the need to further increase journeys made by bike in Oxford and Cambridge and calls on the Government to provide an extra £200M to improve the cities’ cycling infrastructure.

“Without transport improvements, Oxford and Cambridge will seize up,” said the author of the report and former London Cycling Commissioner Andrew Gilligan. But he highlighted that new road building within the cities is impossible and light rail would be expensive and slow to deliver.

“There isn’t even room in the centres of these cities for more buses,” he said. “But one simple answer is staring Oxford and Cambridge in the face: the bicycle. Getting more people to cycle is the quickest, cheapest, and least disruptive way to relieve pressure on their roads.”

Of the £200M called for to upgrade cycling infrastructure, the report recommends that £150M should be spent in Oxford where it says roads are still designed almost entirely for cars.

It adds that the funding should be subject to concrete plans being drawn up for additional measures to achieve peak hour traffic reductions of 15% within four years in each city.

Specific upgrades proposed include the creation of five high quality segregated or low traffic cycling routes in and around Oxford, several of them continuing beyond the city boundary.

Oxford City Council’s board member for healthy Oxford Louise Upton commented: “Our city streets are creaking at the seams and our air quality is poor. We need to reduce traffic and increase active travel.

“Reducing traffic will benefit people on bikes, on foot and on the bus but if we are serious about getting people out of their cars we have to improve Oxford’s roads and junctions to make them safer for cyclists and pedestrians.”

Improving the standard of the main road cycling routes is also encouraged in Cambridge, as well as constructing a network of cross country routes serving villages around the city.

Meanwhile the creation of an east-west city centre route is recommended in Milton Keynes.

(Photo: Tejvan Pettinger and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)