I offer my commiserations to Steven Barrett (Cyclists suffer pain in the glass – letters – April 20). I also suffered a number of punctures some years ago when I surveyed the Stevenage Cycleway system on behalf of Herts County Council. I discovered that t

I offer my commiserations to Steven Barrett (Cyclists suffer pain in the glass - letters - April 20).

I also suffered a number of punctures some years ago when I surveyed the Stevenage Cycleway system on behalf of Herts County Council. I discovered that there is a free telephone number to use for reporting these incidents.

One of my recommendations was that this number should be incorporated into an updated map of the system. Eventually a map was produced in 2002 and the number 0800 136661 was included, but my recommendation that public telephones should also be on the map was not implemented.

The map was available (and I hope still is) from the borough council offices.

As a result of my survey, I made a number of inexpensive recommendations with a view to making the cycleways more used by the public, but these were not taken up.

These included displaying signs at entrances to the system, cutting back encroaching vegetation, prohibiting mopeds (which travel at four or five times the speed of children on bikes), improved signposting and at least warning motorists when they cut across cycleways (such as at Roaring Meg retail park), but these were ignored. Politicians talk much about increasing the use of walking and cycling to improve health and the environment, but when it comes to actually doing something, they are not interested.

Even sadder is the fact that the proposed new Highway Code want to insist that where cycling facilities are provided, cyclists must use them, regardless of how inadequate, derelict or even downright dangerous they may be. Whatever would our politicians do if they wanted to discourage cycling?

JOHN HESSION, The Gardens, Cloisters Road, Letchworth Garden City