BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
By Mark Sutton
The bike industry would be wise to align its many positive outcomes to Government goals, a panel made up of Chris Boardman, Trudy Harrison, Ruth Cadbury and Adam Tranter told a gathered crowd last week at a London event, organised by bike industry marketing firm Fusion Media.
Leading the call for pragmatic thinking in how the bike industry approaches asking for more from the Government, National Active Travel Commissioner Chris Boardman told the gathered crowd, “In Greater Manchester, there is a £250 million a week cost put against inactivity, and they are really motivated to reduce that societal bill. We have said to Andy Burnham that active travel can help. If we are able to get 3.6 million people active, that equates to 2 million fewer GP visits.”
This was a point made in the recent announcement of £289 million in funding for active travel, with the mooted 300 miles of cycle lanes said to be funded, equating to 43,000 fewer sick days on account of the likely uptick in public appetite to travel under their own steam.
Boardman added, “It is a choice to make changes. Take Ghent, for example. They decided to change the traffic system, it took €6 million, but they did it in one weekend, and it has made a measurable impact. You have to hope for political will, speak to the things that people really care about, like their children’s safety, which seems to be a stronger emotional lever than messages like climate; and you need to talk to the economy of change. This is all politically saleable stuff.”
Cycling’s countless positive externalities, needless to say, align brilliantly with multiple Government goals. As it stands, Britain’s obesity bill is £100 billion every year, and Boardman’s prescription of active travel not only builds active travel into daily lives, but at the same time reduces a congestion bill that even pre-Covid was harming the economy to the tune of £6.9 billion a year. The yet-to-be-laid cycle paths, so says Active Travel England, are likely to deliver a £9 million annual economic boost by supporting local businesses.
Pitching in and sharing insight from her time as the Conservatives’ active travel minister within the Department for Transport, Trudy Harrison echoed the message that enabling children to cycle safely is incredibly important, and as the new chair of the Bikeability Trust, you’d expect nothing less. However, it’s more than just enabling the children, she explained; the mums must come on the journey too.
“I overheard a mum talking about her daughter being involved with Bikeability recently, and you could tell it meant a lot to her that her daughter now had this life skill. Of course, the children will all put their hands up when asked if they want to cycle to school, but the mums make 80% to 90% of household decisions, so they need to see that their child has learned this life skill. I’m also a big advocate of marketing to mums, they can be a new audience for the bike industry.”
To do that, Bikeability has introduced video logs that are shared with parents after the training so that the parents can visibly see their child has learned to cycle safely on the roads. This has had a far greater impact than a paper certificate that may just get stuffed in a drawer and disregarded.
Harrison added, “Unfortunately, we are the third most obese country in Europe, and 25% of kids start school overweight. But if we look after the girls, the women will look after themselves.”
She went on to speak on the normalisation of cycling in marketing imagery, pointing to the Netherlands as a country that does not change its clothes to go cycling.
Here, Chris Boardman offered, “We need to think about aspirational imagery and high visibility or helmets don’t achieve that. A picture from the Netherlands I saw recently told the story I would like to see; two teen girls on very normal bikes with baskets, looking relaxed, and laughing, they were clearly very independent. The environment here at present is the problem, we should be asking, don’t we want better opportunities for our kids? We are being denied that, and we must remind people what we are losing and campaign for an environment that promotes safety and enjoyment. Ultimately, we need to connect people emotionally to the outcome of our ideas.”
When asked where the Government could be influenced, in particular with this week’s spring budget landing on Wednesday, current Labour MP Ruth Cadbury concluded, saying “For Rachel Reeves, it will largely come down to savings for the public purse and cycling answers a number of the questions being asked of her at the moment. I’d encourage the public and the industry to get more proactively involved, people don’t use the Government enough. Find out about the select committees and contact your MP with what you’d like to see. We need the public to engage like the big corporates do.”
