June 2017| 87
distance. We considered which might be the ‘primary’
routes – initially just meaning the ones where we would
expect the most usage with a lot of possible journeys of
short distances. here our udgement of the tra c was
lower, we marked out ‘secondary’ routes.
Our own local knowledge was vital to the next stage. We
considered what the actual routes might be. Often, the
best route was taken to be a main road, so we drew a
line for a cycle path alongside the road. Sometimes, we
used another possible route like a bridleway that could
be surfaced or the route of an old railway or canal.
As we did this, we spotted the opportunity for a third type
of route; one that used existing quiet roads to join up a
series of villages that could be added to the network with
little additional cost. We added these and called them
our ‘tertiary’ routes.
ithin xford itself, we had the benefit of a ma already
drawn up by Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County
Council. This was a network that we generally supported,
so it made sense to use it for the centrepiece of our
network.
Once this was done, I created a table of all the routes
and checked our definitions for consistency. Sometimes
we had been too generous in giving a small town a
primary route, and sometimes we’d marked a secondary
route when the locations served were larger and closer.
We also made an allowance for high quality routes within
the five ma or towns, in addition to the ones between
them. Once this was done, we had our proposed network
– a total of 366 miles (see table).
Route Type
Primary
Secondary
ertiary
Oxford
Five Major Towns
Total
Miles
119
126
65
36
20
366
Costs and benefits
From the Bristol experience, we could see the value in
understanding the costs of the network in communicating
its practicality. We could also see that this would allow us
to compare a bold county-wide cycle network with road
schemes that were being funded, such as £10m for a pair
of slip roads on the A34, and £35m for a new Park and
Ride and bus lane.
We took a simple route for this – just using the numbers
that the Bristol campaign had used; £400,000 per mile of
high quality routes and lower numbers for quieter urban
routes and the tertiary network. This added up to a total
of £120 million.
Like Bristol, we considered this as a cost per population,
but we used a level of £10 per head as recommended
by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling in its
excellent ‘Get Britain Cycling’ report. This amount is far
higher than the level currently funded by government
outside of London, but at £7m per year, it is within