Next Tuesday, between 7-8pm, in Oxford Town Hall, I’m going to be talking about the future of cycling in Oxford as part of the Pedal Power exhibition.

I think that future is really going to be the future of transport itself in Oxford; fuel prices and increasing carbon mean bikes will once again rule the roads, just as they did 50 years ago, except it’ll be better – the bikes will be cooler.

The default form of transport will be bicycles. Cars will only be used when really needed. There’ll be clean electric buses, but bikes will be much cheaper and quicker. With fewer motorised vehicles to harrass budding cyclists, and with an expansion of the 20mph scheme, bikes will be everywhere, I’ll argue.

Speaking on the same platform as me will be Moshe Givoni, a researcher at Oxford University’s Transport Studies Unit (TSU). So if you think my ideas sound pie in the sky, you should come and hear what Moshe has to say. He’ll be outlining Visions 2030, a project shared by four universities, including the TSU.

My initial reaction to Visions 2030 was they’d lost the plot. The scenarios they envisage assume cycling will comprise up to 40 per cent of transport in urban areas, with car use at anything from 30 per cent down to as low as five per cent, the rest made up by walking and public transport.

Isn’t this the stuff dreams are made of, not serious research projects? Yet the more I discovered, the more the scenarios seemed realistic. I shan’t steal Moshe’s thunder – you can find out more a week today.

To put Visions 2030 into context, cycling has been in long term decline since the 1960s. Cycle traffic declined from 23 billion to 5 billion passenger kilometres between 1952 and 2006, with a slight increase in the past 10 years.

To reverse the decline, the Government developed a strategy in 1996, which set a target of quadrupling the number of cycling journeys. The plan for transport in 2000 adjusted that down to a tripling of the 2,000 cycling level, and the more recent document on the Future of Transport (2004) continues to endorse this target.

In Oxfordshire, the right noises are made, but there is scant evidence yet of a real appetite to favour cycling.

I have lost count of the number of cyclists who have complained that cycling has been ignored in the new layouts for London Road, Headington. The proposed 3.8m lanes and 20mph speed limit are incompatible.

The road is wide enough for narrow on-carriageway cycle lanes throughout. The council should paint an advisory cycle lane, even if it’s narrower than is ideal, as a signal to drivers and new cyclists if nothing else. Vulnerable cyclists will feel the pinch without them.

Oxford boasts the world’s first ever Advanced Stop Line or ASL – that box that allows cyclists to get ahead and away from danger at junctions. It’s outside the King’s Arms pub in Parks Road.

ASLs should be put in as a default every time a major intersection is overhauled in Oxfordshire. They should be basic, mandatory policy. Yet four separate attempts by Cyclox to convince the council that an ASL will fit and is needed at the soon-to-be-renovated Windmill Road–London Road junction eastbound have been ignored. Is that the end of ASLs in Oxfordshire? Are we going backwards? I really hope not.