Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the use of cycle lanes under the emergency active travel fund.

The Department has commissioned a formal national evaluation of the Active Travel Fund (ATF) which will consider this matter in some detail. A baseline report of schemes selected for evaluation is scheduled to be received by the Department in December 2022 as we know it takes time to understand the long-term impacts of new cycling infrastructure. This will be followed by a final report in late 2024. Local authorities have also been required to submit regular monitoring reports to the Department on their use of active travel funding. In the meantime, the Department’s 2020 Road Traffic Estimates for Great Britain, published on 28 April 2021, suggest that the amount of cycling in 2020 was 46% higher than it was in 2019, and the highest level of cycling on the public highway since the 1960s.