YP Letters: Environment minister neglects to cite cycling

WHAT about cycling? The Environment Minister, Dr Thérèse Coffey, serves up a useful reminder that dirty air due to pollution from a number of sources is the fourth biggest risk to public health after cancer, obesity and heart disease (The Yorkshire Post, June 22).

“Everyone”, she reminds us, can and should play their part in giving our towns and cities cleaner, healthy air singling us out in Yorkshire by leaving the car at home and walking or using public transport, burning cleaner fuels and having domestic stoves regularly serviced. Yet she fails to mention an activity to reduce pollution and improve air quality – cycling.

This isn’t just about cyclists modelling themselves on riders in the Tour de France, and Tour de Yorkshire, but using the bicycle for relatively short journeys to schools, colleges, places of work and shops.

The pressure on the Government to provide cycling facilities to make these journeys possible must be kept up – a constant theme of Cycling UK, the national body devoted to encouraging all types of cycling, not just long distance races by the fit young men and women in Lycra on strapped down machines built for that purpose.