Lancaster Cycling Demonstration Town

The Cycling Demonstration Towns programme saw levels of funding for cycling approaching levels that are more typical of The Netherlands over a period of 6 years between 2005 and 2011. Lancaster and Morecambe was one of the locations, and averaged a spend of £13 per person during this period.

Of the six towns that took part in this project there was quite a bit of variation in terms of how much cycling levesl increased over the period compared to a baseline from 2005, i.e. at the start of the programme. It was noted that the individual delivery programmes, political support, funding changes, influence from other interventions and weather influences may have each contributed.

The Cycling Demonstration Towns project involved a lot of monitoring of cycling levels, and during the programme Lancaster had more than three times as many permanent cycle counters as there are in Utrecht! Virtually all of the cycle counters in and around Lancaster were abandoned relatively soon after the end of the programme though, amking it much more difficult for people to know how levels of cycling in Lancaster have been changing since then.

the cycling levels in each of the towns was compared against a matched town that was not part of the programme to understand how useful the additional funding had been in promoting cycling in the area. The figure below shows how increases in the levels of cycling in Lancaster compared to the matched area.

A greater growth was recorded in the corresponding matched area than in Lancaster with Morecambe. Whilst there was no significant investment in cycling in this matched area, political leadership strongly supportive of cycling is reported in this location during the corresponding period. There was some relatively small scale delivery of schemes to enable cycling, such as the installation of cycle contraflows, and a considerable effort to restrict car movement and to increase permeability of the town centre for cyclists.

Government road traffic estimates over a similar period of time indicated a increase in cycle traffic of approximately 18% between 2002 and 2012, which is broadly similar to the degree of change seen in Lancaster during the Cycling Demonstration Towns programme.

You can find the Sustrans reports on the outcomes of the Cycling Demonstration Towns progamme here.