The People’s £50 million

Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling

credit: ITV, Matt Polaine

Monday 3 December sees the start of a week of TV programmes about the People’s £50 Million Lottery Giveaway. ITV1 has joined forces with the Big Lottery Fund to award the largest prize ever seen on UK television. The series will be presented by Katie Derham.

Each competing project will feature in a short documentary to explain how the £50 million will be used and the impact it will make for people across the country. Personally I have voted for the Sustran’s Connect2 project, although I feel a bit let down by a government who ploughs £billions of tax revenue into unsustainable fossil-fuel intensive and dependent transport infrastructures, while ideal, local, and sustainable transportation networks begs for lottery money. £50million is better than nothing, but to put this in perspective with our motor-transport money pit, in 2005 the cost per mile of building a motorway in the UK was £24 million.

So consider how much £50 million of cycle infrastructure can impact positively in the UK, compared to just two miles of motorway. Which not only has restrictions on vehicles that can use it (my tax will pay for it, but as a pedestrian, horse rider, cyclist, moped, learner driver, or electric vehicle I can’t use it), but how it cuts up the community it is built through.

A celebrity champion will front each appeal, with telephone voting lines opening at 9am on Friday 7 December. The programmes will be broadcast immediately after the ITV1 Evening News

The schedule is:

• Monday December 3: The Edge, supported by Ray Mears (11:05pm – 11:20pm)
• Tuesday December 4: Sustrans’ Connect 2, supported by Lorraine Kelly (11:05pm – 11:20pm)
• Wednesday December 5: Sherwood: the Living Legend, supported by Brian Blessed (11:05pm – 11:20pm)
• Thursday December 6: Black Country as an Urban Park, supported by Toyah Willcox (11.05pm – 11.20pm)
• Friday December 7: A recap of all four projects by their celebrity supporters (11.05pm – 11.20pm)

register and vote here