IN response to the securing of an almost £20million in grants to create two new “sustainable connectivity corridors” across the South East of Dorset, when will government and councils realise the folly of building more and more cycleways?

We all realise the implications of climate change, but that said even with a substantial increase in use they are just not cost effective. There will never be a dramatic increase in usage to ever make this so.

Recently we have seen roads dangerously narrowed to accommodate cycleways. In other cases, white lines to designate cycleways in existing roads have had the same effect.

Many of the cycleways across the conurbation are hardly used. Those marked out on existing roads that are sometimes used, are manly used by cyclists as a means of racing from A to B and woe betide any vehicular traffic that gets in their way.

Years ago, probably many if not more people used a bike to get to and from work, however in those days a bike was ridden, and racing was kept to time trials early on a Sunday morning.

From time to time the Echo contains comment from councillors about Beryl bikes. Indeed the article about the funding mentions the extension of the Beryl bike scheme.

However, am I the only person who travels about the conurbation and observes lots of the bikes in marked bays, but since the scheme started, I have only seen one person using them.

If as a country, if we were starting from scratch with a blank canvas then it would be easy to incorporate cycleways, walkways, bus lanes and wide roads at very little extra cost, but I cannot for the life of me see how what we are spending billions of pounds on justifies the end result.

COLIN MOYES

Harkwood Drive, Poole