Bikeability cycle training under threat in UK

From the UK:
We know you, as the Secretary of State, have to make difficult decisions because of the scale of government cutbacks. Transport will be particularly heavily affected.

We are extremely concerned at the rumours emerging that Cycling England and its programmes could be facing the chop. Most worrying would be the loss of the very successful Bikeability child cycle training scheme. We urge you to think twice and look at the facts before considering scrapping these.

As you know, Cycling England is the small but highly effective part of the Department for Transport which deals with getting "more people cycling, more safely, more often". It has achieved an enormous amount with a tiny budget, and is well-aligned to your government's localism agenda.

Cycling: achieving more gains with little money

The Department for Transport's own model (WebTAG) for economic appraisal of cycling schemes give a very high rate of return in transport terms: a benefit:cost ratio of 3:1. Work by Sustrans also gives even higher benefit ratios, up to 33:1 in some cases.

In other words, you can achieve a lot more by putting small amounts of money into cycling, than spending much larger amounts on anything else. Yet current funding of around £60m/year is well under what places like the Netherlands spend. So there is actually much more that could be done.

more: http://www.savecyclingengland.org/