Blood on the streets

But the costs of pollution and the costs of poor health are -

(1) Spread over many years.
and
(2) Not all borne by government.

I am only including the external costs of private motoring, whether borne by society as a whole or directly by taxpayers, for instance the estimated £1m every road fatality costs us, the massive costs of keeping the network maintained, injuries etc. A decline in motor vehicle miles would see an immediate reduction in these costs. The benefits would not take twenty years to accrue, they would be instant.

The imbalance in thinking about this issue is typified by the farce that took place in Parliament, the RHA are a powerful lobby group so their advocate could sit their and imply the recent dead cyclists had behaved badly, and nobody challenged him. The RHA have the construction industry and the oil lobbyists on their side, cyclists were barely represented apart from Gilligan, a man who's only in the job as a tribute from Boris.