Cycling

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing this debate. I also congratulate The Times on its campaign. This debate is happening in Back-Bench time. It is an illustration of how Back-Bench time has enabled the House to be topical. Perhaps that flexibility was not there before. One reason why the Backbench Business Committee awarded time today was because the hon. Member for Cambridge made the case that it would be topical to hold this debate at a time when our constituents are so engaged with the issue. I will also say, for the record, that debates that have been this well subscribed in Westminster Hall have on occasion bid successfully for more time.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

The hon. Lady may not be aware that I presented a ten-minute rule Bill on Tuesday, which incorporates many aspects of The Times cycling campaign. If the Minister could persuade the Leader of the House to find time for a Second Reading of my Bill, we would be able to further debate the merits of this campaign and bring it into legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Ellison]

I am sure the Minister heard that plea. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) by saying let us celebrate the joy of cycling. My father is a veteran road racer. In his youth, he was a stage winner of the Tour of Britain on more than one occasion. He still goes out with his friends who are in their 60s, 70s and, I think, 80s, and does hundreds of miles a month around the Yorkshire dales. They are collectively a great testimony to the joys of cycling and to its great health benefits. I am not remotely in his class, but my bike is an invaluable way of getting around my constituency, particularly at weekends between engagements. I have sometimes taken cycle superhighway 8. I am lucky, because it runs from Wandsworth to Westminster.

I want to focus on one specific area, which is the role of our highway engineers in making junctions and cycling safer. Many people have highlighted particular junctions and problems in their constituencies. Some particularly bad junctions in London where terrible accidents and fatalities have occurred have been mentioned. The Mayor of London has asked Transport for London to review hundreds of key junctions. I hope that that review will generate fresh ideas and fresh thinking, and that hon. Members around the country can ask their local highway engineers to look at the ideas and take them up. People have alluded to the lessons to be learnt from continental Europe and the excellent engineering and integration solutions that we see there, but there is also innovation going on in Britain. Transport for London engineers have been working on particular junctions and roundabouts. I met them recently at a problem one in my patch. They are also working with cycling groups and others to look at specific junctions that have been highlighted in this debate.

I put on record a word about the early-start initiative, which is a proposed new design that will be introduced first at the Bow roundabout, and to which other hon. Members have alluded. It will have two lines of signals. Cyclists will have an early start on the traffic. They will come up to a signal ahead of the vehicular traffic and get a head start. They will have their own lights to get away so that they are potentially 12 metres ahead of other traffic, before it even sets off. There is interesting thinking and good innovation there. It is hoped that it will be in place in time for the Olympics, but certainly later this year. The idea is for cyclists to get to the front of the queue without having to filter through general traffic. There will be a generous space for them to wait. Cyclists will have their own space in front of the traffic and get ahead of it early. Hopefully, because of that early start, the potential for conflict on difficult left turns off the roundabout will be reduced.

I hope the Minister will monitor the success of the scheme, because it clearly has potential application around the country at other roundabouts that suffer some of the same problems. With that call to look at what our engineers can do for us, and echoing the words of the many hon. Members who have talked about the joys of cycling, I again congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge on securing this debate and The Times on its campaign. I thank the many constituents who contacted us with their interesting stories and asked us to take part in this debate. I think this is the beginning of a big conversation rather than a one-off debate. I am delighted to have taken part in it.