From a cycling perspective its a bit of a blow out. None of the parties have a 'party line' that gets us anywhere near the kind of facilities we're seeing spring up in London and, at best, we can pick out the occasional candidate who doesn't suck.
UKIP are, of course, the worst - the two respondents to Cambridge Cycling Campaigns survey are crap.
The Tories barely responded - one candidate was great, the other one half filled the questionnaire.
Likewise, the Greens were basically not entirely sucky - one great candidate, one sucked. But I feel on cycling we ought to hold the Greens to a higher standard than the other parties they'd collectively refer to as 'grey' and I must say they're just not good enough.
Labour veered from unimpressive to lackluster.
And the Libdems? Again, one good, one 'meh'.
One would have thought that at least one Cambridge political party would see the sense in having a party line that is unashamedly in favour of active transport. After all these years you'd think that at least one bunch of local politicians would have realised that giving cyclists everything they need is also massively beneficial to everyone else too, that less congestion, less pollution, less noise would make the city better for every single person whether they cycle or not and would, unashamedly, make the case for cycling. One would assume that the City Deal financing is an enourmous opportunity for Cambridge to quit with its smug (and I think flawed) assumption that it'll always be the UK cycling capital and get some ambition to try to go world class. But, alas, no. We're still fighting for scraps.
When it comes to local politicians in Cambridge, its still 'them and us'. And I lament that we're making no progress in making 'them' into 'us'.
I'm spoiling my ballot.
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