Bristol - soon to be a genuine Cycling City?

Some might question the sense in putting £11.4 million of council taxpayers' money towards a mode of transport used by a minority of Bristolians.

But we all pay council tax for things we don't use - many people don't have children in school or relatives in care homes but they still contribute to the funding of these council-run facilities.

So it's good to see that the money the city won from the Government, matched by the city council to fund our new status as Cycling Demonstration City, is starting to be put to use.

The first project will be a newly-enhanced cyclepath linking Whitchurch with the city centre and other schemes will follow by March 2011.

The only worry I have with this Cycling City scheme is how far £22.8 million is really going to go in converting a city of nearly half a million people into one where cycling is a dominant feature.

To truly create a city where the cyclist is placed first - segregated lanes, secure bike sheds and so on - would cost much more.

Somehow I doubt that strangers to Bristol visiting in summer 2011 will be amazed at what a strong cycling culture we have here.

There will be a few extra cyclepaths, sure, and no doubt the levels of cycling will be up but it's going to be a far cry from somewhere like Amsterdam, where cars effectively play second fiddle to bikes.

And especially with all the hills and busy roads we have here it's hard to imagine every commuter in the city centre trudging their way uphill every evening.

To genuinely turn Bristol into a "cycling city" there needs to be something done which gives us a nationwide reputation for being bike-friendly.

Something to combat the hills, perhaps.

There's a great scheme in Trondheim in Norway where cyclists can fix themselves up to bicycle lift to take them up the steepest hill in the city.

It looks like a combination of a ski-lift, an escalator and one of the things which brings your bowling ball back to the top of the alley.

Cyclists clip their foot into a conveyor belt and get effortlessly pulled uphill, before unclipping at the top and going on their way.

The company which makes this thing is called Trampe and reckons it costs around £900 for a metre, travels at two metres per second and can take one cyclist every 12 seconds.

So by my calculations that would cost a smidgen over £400,000 to install one on the 450 metres of Park Street, which would take just under four minutes to get up.

How many cycling commuters dread the daily slog back up Park Street to get home in the evening?

Something like that for the steep slopes near the city centre - like Park Street or Brislington Hill - would surely convince hundreds of motorists that riding a bike into work is a viable alternative.

This is the kind of scheme which the city council should be looking at to make Bristol become one of the most cycling-friendly cities in the world.