Sustainable transport charity Sustrans today (13 June) announces the latest figures for cycling and walking on the National Cycle Network and, for the first time in the Network's 14-year history, it carries more than one million journeys every day. In 2008 a total of 386 million trips were made on the Network - half by bike and half on foot - just under a third of the 1.2 billion passenger journeys made on Britain's railways in 2007/08.

The figures are released at the beginning of Bike Week (13-21 June) and will be published in the charity's Route User Monitoring Report for 2008. The popularity of the National Cycle Network for journeys to work or school continues to rise, with 96 million commuter journeys and 17 million trips to school made over the year. If these commuter trips had been made by car (given the average car occupancy in the UK of 1.6 people) there would have been an extra 60 million car journeys made on our roads at peak hours.

The National Cycle Network reinforced its "No Carbon Necessary" credentials by enabling over of a third of its users to leave their car behind - 134 million journeys were made by people who could have used a car but chose not to.

New sections and links are constantly being added to the 12,000-mile long Network but the number of journeys being made is growing faster than its length. Every pound spent on developing it brings around £35 worth of benefits1 compared with most other transport schemes which deliver ratios of around three to one.

The Network, the UK's definitive barometer of cycling and walking, is also giving people the chance to get more active and meeting expert recommendations for getting people moving around. Organisations including NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) advise that the key to getting more people active is to create the right environment for encouraging walking and cycling such as pleasant, green, traffic-free routes. Nearly three quarters of people asked say that the National Cycle Network is helping them to increase the amount of physical activity they take.

Malcolm Shepherd, Sustrans CEO, said: "It is gratifying to see this increasing and sustained use of the National Cycle Network. But it is also frustrating because, in spite of the increasingly vital role it plays in the environmental and physical health of the UK, the Network remains the only nationally important travel network for which there is no obligation or consistent level of financial support for its maintenance or development.

"Yet we face a low carbon future, escalating fuel costs, and an obesity time-bomb that is set to devastate not just our health but also our economy. While the National Cycle Network is not the only solution to these issues, these figures surely prove it should sit high on the list. And when we read that the National Cycle Network's value for money far outweighs all other transport schemes, perhaps the Network and cycling and walking in general have earned the right to benefit from proper and consistent investment and promotion."

Further information about Sustrans, including other news releases and detailed online route mapping, is available through our website: www.sustrans.org.uk
/ends

For further information
please contact Gill Harrison in the Press Office on 0117 915 0108
Telephone: 0117 927 7555; Fax: 0117 930 4149; E-mail: press@sustrans.org.uk.
Senior Press Officer - Wendy Johnson 0117 915 0128
Press Officer - Matt Davies 0117 915 0127
School Travel Press Officer - Ed Howarth 0117 915 0109
Connect2 Press Officer Hannah Sheppard - 0117 915 0123.
Out of office hours - 07802 986728
Photo Librarian - Jonathan Bewley 0117 915 0120
ISDN line available for radio interviews

NOTES

1 Benefit to cost ratios are used by the Department for Transport to evaluate transport projects. They attribute a monetary value to a number of factors, from public health benefit (ie the cost saving of a healthier population), the savings to employers whose fitter workforce take less time off, and the time saved through shorter journeys, particularly during the school run peak periods. The costs include the investment costs of safe routes, maintenance expenditure, and losses to the Treasury that might result from tax revenue decreases due to reduced fuel sales as people switch from using their cars to walking and cycling.

It currently costs in the region of £200,000 to build a mile of traffic-free greenway of National Cycle Network.
.

• Sustrans is the UK's leading sustainable transport charity. Its vision is a world in which people choose to travel in ways that benefit their health and the environment. It is achieving this through innovative but practical solutions to the UK's transport challenges.

• Sustrans' flagship project, the National Cycle Network, is now around 12,000 miles and runs within one mile of 55 per cent of the UK population. There are around 2,500 rangers helping to look after the National Cycle Network.

• Throughout 2009 Sustrans is encouraging more women to cycle. Our website www.bikebelles.org.uk has advice for women on what to wear, where to go, how to get started and a specially recruited women's panel are sharing ideas and experiences. The thoughts and concerns of women, gathered throughout the year, will be used to inform our approach to UK governments with proposals on how to help more women get out and about on bikes, to the benefit of their health, the environment and our economy.