Donations, Volunteers Help Carve Out a Growing System of Bikeways in Britain

Pedaling at a leisurely pace, Ethel Jones and Beryl Murphy gossip while riding side by side down a tree-lined bicycle path.

“We can ride together, carry on a conversation and we don’t have to worry about cars,” Ethel Jones, 70, said during a rest break on the 16-mile Bristol-to-Bath bike path.

But it’s not an activity the government encourages. Although billions are spent on roads each year, Britain’s expanding bikeway network is a private, hand-to-mouth, mostly volunteer initiative.

The Bristol-Bath route, which winds through suburbia, past cow pastures and mown hay and along the placid River Avon, is among 250 miles of paths built by Sustrans, a Bristol-based charity that designs and builds motor-free, landscaped routes for cyclists, walkers and disabled people.

Sustrans--short for Sustainable Transport--aims to build a national cycle route stretching 1,000 miles from Inverness in the Scottish Highlands to Dover, the English Channel ferry port. There are plans to extend the Bristol-Bath route to London, connecting with the north-south route.

The goal is to finish the network by the turn of the century. Half of the route’s 400 miles of cycling paths have been built, and improvements are nearing completion on 600 miles of forest tracks and minor roads.

One-third of the estimated $30-million price tag will come from local governments, with the rest coming from donations, according to Sustrans spokesman Philip Insall. The national Department of Transport has offered no money.

In contrast, Rails-to-Trails, a Washington-based nonprofit group, expects governments to pick up the tab for converting 10,000 miles of abandoned railways to bikeways by 1997. In less than two years, the U.S. Department of Transportation has spent $52 million for rail-trail projects, plus $56 million for bike paths, lanes and racks. Under 1991 legislation, state or local governments must match the federal money with at least 20%.

John Grimshaw, a civil engineer who became frustrated with his profession, founded Sustrans in 1983. The charity has since built more than half of all cycle routes in Britain.

“In this country . . . we indulge in (transportation) programs which we haven’t fully researched. Our policies are crazily extravagant and very destructive,” he said.

The Cyclists’ Touring Club, Britain’s oldest and biggest bicycle organization, says bicyclists in Britain “get a poor deal, about the worst in the European Community countries.”

That may change. In an abrupt policy shift, Roads Minister Robert Key said in September that the government will begin to promote the bicycle as a way of reducing urban congestion.

Insall said he is awaiting concrete action. “As yet not a fraction of 1% of the transport budget is being spent on walking and cycling,” he said.

In the past, the government has said bicycling was too dangerous to encourage, citing about 250 deaths and 4,500 serious injuries to bicyclists each year.

Riding can be perilous for the 15 million Britons who own bicycles. Many city streets and country roads are barely wide enough for two-way car traffic.

Only 2% of journeys in Britain are made on bicycles compared to 30% in the Netherlands.

“We know that cities cannot be rebuilt to accommodate bicycles. But we have to make roads safer for bicyclists, and do what we can to encourage them,” Insall said.

Considering that 60% of all car trips are less than five miles, diverting short-haul travel to bikes could substantially reduce air pollution, which regularly exceeds World Health Organization limits in most British cities.

While others ponder the possibilities, Grimshaw builds.