Unfortunately this is just the problem with government in general.
....
I just had an argument with a councillor because council contractors had dug up over a kilometre of NCR tarmac cycle path and replaced it with hardcore topped with the tiniest sneeze of fine gravel. She just wouldn't believe this wasn't an acceptable surface for a busy cycle path. Well I say busy, it's not busy any more.
When your civilisation becomes increasing complex such that no one person can dedicate the mental bandwidth necessary to make seemingly sensible decisions without a whole bunch of negative unintended consequences, you end up with ridiculous outcomes like this. Human's were never meant to live in or solve the problems of mass society. We are left with retrospective, knee jerk reactions and picking up pieces later when it all goes wrong, at great cost compared to how we could have got it right from the outset. Our cognitive power is severely limited, despite our own self-inflated importance and delusions of superior intellect, we are basically chimps, operating on impulse and value judgements, it makes us very prone to getting stuff like this very wrong. The few of us with vested interests in cycling can see the benefits, but those who don't do it, are influenced by their own prejudices, and nefarious lobby groups within the motoring industry.
Because cycling isn't mainstream, it will never warrant the investment and mental bandwidth it truly requires. As
@Drago says, it's going to take the end of the age of oil to change things, only the necessity of getting about with only muscle power and biomass energy will mark the end of the motorcar. I fear we passed the point of no return, there can be no "stop de kindermoord" moment in the UK, at least whilst there's the money to do something about it. We're locked in to motor orientated transport. It would take mass civil disobedience to get politicians on board, or a concerted effort to get an under-represented fringe group (yes, the utilitarian cyclists) to be over-represented where decisions are made. That's why it ain't gonna happen. Truly depressing.
'Stop de kindermood' was an emergent social behaviour directly resulting from the civil disobedience and unrest of the 70s oil crises, when oil importing nations felt the impacts of of exporter embargos, these resulted in mass grass roots protests and a desire to do things differently. For whatever reason, the UK didn't experience the necessary combination of events to trigger it's own moment. It's unfortunate that the economic downturn resulting from of the next wave of oil and energy shocks will hamstring any movement to invest in cycling infrastructure.
On the plus side, once the majority of cars are off the road, we'll have a nice network of wide paved roads and motorways to ride on, traffic free
, however we still protested that no provision was being made for the public footpath that would cross the new road. 
cutting directly on to the two lanes going west, a break in the armco barriers in the central reservation and steps and stile on the other side of the two lanes going east. Needless to say we deemed this not safe enough to take our 3 children (all under 6 years old) and 3 dogs for a walk on the footpath any longer.
