West Midlands Mayor: Andy Street vows to boost cycling spending by 4,000 per cent

On May 4, voters in the West Midlands will decide their first directly elected Mayor with powers over transport, housing and jobs.

Mr Street has committed to increasing investment on cycling across the Black Country from 25p per head to £10 per head as a way to reduce traffic on the road.

The Conservative Party candidate said: "Our roads are congested and Black Country public transport needs huge improvement – that much is clear to everybody.

"We need to take cars off the Black Country's roads and one of the ways to do that is to invest in cycling and walking.

"The stats are troubling. Cycling makes up only one per cent of all our journeys and in the West Midlands 25p per head is invested in cycling per year.

"I am committing to increasing the proportion of journeys to five per cent by 2023 by investing in a forty-fold increase in cycling funding. London shows what be can be done. Five per cent of journeys in the capital are already made by bike. Achieving that has needed concerted effort, from which we can learn."

Mr Street said one way of supporting cycling was by making better use of the region's canals.

"In the Black Country, for example, 60 per cent of people live within a kilometre of a canal," he said.

"We need to transform these into routes for cycling and walking safely to school and work."