Iain Savages Plan To Spend £1.5bn A Year On Cycling

1 September 2016, 10:27 | Updated: 12 September 2016, 19:04

Iain Dale labelled plans to spend 10% of the government's transport budget on cycling "pie in the sky".

Britain's Olympic gold medal-winning cyclists have written to the Prime Minister, saying that the best legacy of their success in Rio would be a big boost in the budget.

That would mean £1.45billion every year - and Iain Dale was not happy with that.

Filling in for Nick Ferrari At Breakfast on LBC, Iain said: "If you live in London and you travel along the newly-imposed cycle lanes on Victoria Embankment and Upper Thames Street, you would think that any government who wanted to put more money into cycle lanes would have taken leave of their senses.

"Just that one scheme has clogged up that part of central London.

"And it's not just during the day. You can drive along there at 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night and it is still a complete mess. Cars stood there for minutes on end, causing pollution.

"And you look at the number of people that use these cycle lanes. Shall we say, it's not an awful lot.

"I"ve not go objection to investing money in improving cycling facilities, making things safer for cyclists.

"But to think of spending £1.45billion of taxpayers money every year on those sort of schemes, I think it pie in the sky."