ENCOURAGING cycling is an apolitical issue. So how did cycling get to be seen as an ‘elite liberal thing’?

I suspect its partly because the biggest advocates for making it easier and safer to cycle are on the left of British politics.

Thankfully, with a new pro-cycling Conservative PM, it appears things are starting to change nationally. Here’s hoping this new-found enthusiasm will soon be reflected locally.

For children, riding a bike to school teaches the values of hard work, healthy exercise, personal responsibility, independence, and resourcefulness.

Wanting a bicycle encourages a young person to earn and save. Having a bicycle encourages you to repair things rather than throwing them away. Instead of being chauffeured everywhere, children who cycle turn into self-reliant adults who aren’t afraid to take risks and can pick themselves up and keep going after a fall.

For adults, cycling is the most efficient and financially sound mode of transport. Cycling reduces household costs.

Bike commuters are good employees. They don’t require expensive parking spaces and help unclog our roads so that businesses can operate more freely.

Cycling goes hand in hand with smaller government too. Investing in the local cycle network is far cheaper than investing in roads. It delivers higher returns on investment than any other form of transport.

Adults who ride bikes regularly are also far healthier.

They’re more likely to have long, productive working lives and less likely to become dependent on unemployment and welfare benefits or need the NHS and social care. They’ll pay more into and take less out of Treasury and council coffers.

Encouraging cycling (and walking) can also help improve the ‘liveability’ and ‘affordability’ of our cities, suburbs, and rural towns.

In recent decades our over dependence on the car (an expensive, rapidly depreciating asset that’s typically used five per cent of the time and when 75 per cent empty) has resulted in our streets no longer being safe and everyone’s long-term health threatened by air pollution.

Suburban sprawl has been made worse by the need to allocate large tracts of countryside and spend vast sums on building and maintaining roads and parking spaces.

As we look to the future it is surely in everyone’s interests to rethink our towns on a cycling (and walking) scale. With greater, and thus more affordable, housing densities most of the everyday facilities we need can then be provided within a cycleable and walkable ‘20-minute neighbourhood’.

In summary, cycling improves health and helps produce wealth, freedom, and opportunity.