We are asked to welcome a huge new investment in cycling and a brave new dawn of the involvement of local people in planning, designing and using new cycle lanes and walking routes. We are encouraged to feel glad that a new agency will be set up to deliver this (Residents to get new decision-making powers in England cycling ‘revolution’, 27 July). I’m sorry to be cynical, but this is classic Johnsonian policymaking. There already exists a way of local people having their input into these new routes. It’s called talking to your local councillors and attending ward meetings. There already exists a method by which these routes can be laid out. It’s called the planning system. There already exists a body charged with developing these routes. It’s called Highways England. The most efficient way to achieve the changes allegedly required would have been to give these pre-existing bodies the necessary funding. But that wouldn’t have created any headlines. That would have meant giving money to local authorities. That would mean loss of central control. Can’t be having that. Set up a zingy new body, with an exciting new logo and charismatic head, and all that will result is much of the money going to chief executives, logo designers and renters of office space. Having yet another body designing for our public realm will merely add confusion. David Lewis Selby, North Yorkshire • London is “the world capital of the velocipede”, Boris Johnson boasted in 2013. A visit to any number of European countries that were taking investment in utility cycling seriously would have disabused him of his ludicrous claim. Now he promises “a golden era” for walking and cycling (Cycling ambitions for England move up a gear with No 10 plans, 27 July). The last 10 years have been completely wasted for active travel, with no meaningful increase in cycling numbers, which remain pitifully low. One of the first acts of the coalition government in its “bonfire of the quangos” was to abolish Cycling England, which was effectively encouraging utility cycling with schemes such as Cycling Demonstration Towns. Since then, local council funding has been squeezed so hard that very little investment has gone into cycling. So what awaits the next decade for active travel? Without sustained and generous levels of investment, we can expect not a golden era but a tinpot one. Dick Follows Lancaster