Labour row as Wolmar attacks Corbyn and Khan over inaction on cycling

Influential transport journalist and Labour parliamentary candidate Christian Wolmar has challenged his party's leadership over "one area where the Labour manifesto needs improvement," with "cycling receiving barely a mention".

Wolmar attacks "overweight councillors, often I'm afraid Labour ones, standing by a busy road saying that making improvements for cyclists is impossible because it would disrupt traffic" and Labour activists for often thinking "cycling is a minority concern and a policy encouraging its use would not attract any new voters, and furthermore, would alienate some existing supporters". He says Sadiq Khan has "not built on [the creation of dedicatedbike routes by Boris Johnson] quickly enough" and "momentum is being lost," in an article on Labour List website published as it was reported Khan axed the planned Westway cycle superhighway.

Wolmar says that action to mirror what has been achieved in the Netherlands, where a quarter of all journeys taken are by bike, "obesity is a rarity, older people are thinner and fitter, and children as young as six or seven cycle unaccompanied to school," would mean cycling commuters suffering 50% fewer heart attacks and almost as many fewer incidences of cancer. He claims that it is politics, not tradition or geography that prevents this, and urges scrapping "vague" support for cycling with "political will," given the "hundreds of British towns  where most journeys, like those in Burgh-Hamstede, [a Dutch town of 5,000 people], could easily be undertaken by bike".