Labour pledges new active travel fund to get more people cycling and walking

Labour has pledged a new, "fully-funded" pot of money for active travel projects and infrastructure.

The £89m fund would "give much needed extra funding to boost cycling and walking across the country," said Labour's shadow ministers Michael Dugher and Richard Burden in a piece on the Huffington Post today. This would "unclog our towns and cities and help people who are being priced out of transport". They ridicule the commitment of David Cameron and Nick Clegg to a "cycling revolution".

The coalition Government allocated £600m over the last Parliament to its Local Sustainable Transport Fund, and then added to this to extend the fund into the next Parliament. The final awards, for 2015/16, were for £64m.

But Labour earmarks a larger sum, £300m, for "extra pothole repairs". The pair claim the coalition has presided over "Pothole Britain," which is bad for "all road users". They write: "Overall, a third of our local roads are now in urgent need of repair. And since 2010 an additional 2,262 miles of local roads are in such poor condition that they need urgent maintenance work."

But, "despite this growing problem," they say, "the spending plans set out by the Tories and Liberal Democrats will see funding for pothole repair fall by over £80m in the next Parliament... this will only lead to a further deterioration of our local roads".

The new pothole fund - like the active travel fund and a one-year rail fares freeze, paid for by delaying two major road schemes - would mend "at least an extra six million potholes," which they say is "a third more than under current Tory and Lib Dem plans".