Cycle campaigners have reacted angrily to a suggestion from an MP that traffic-snarled cities are the result of too many cycle lanes – and that some bike paths should be ripped up and returned to car traffic.

Labour MP Rob Flello, who sits on the Transport Select Committee, complained about the “shocking congestion” on Britain’s roads and said road users “have been driving fewer miles yet their journeys are taking longer”.

But he suggested the “loss of tarmac” from building bike lanes might be partly to blame for delays, arguing that increasing space for cars “does more for air pollution in places such as London than getting people on to pushbikes”.

His comments were criticised by bike charity the London Cycling Campaign (LCC), which said increasing the number of segregated cycle lanes was the only way to reduce congestion.

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Mr Flello’s comments came as MPs on the transport committee launched an inquiry into urban traffic congestion.

During the committee's evidence session on Monday, Mr Flello appeared to call for segregated bike lanes to be scrapped in favour of more lanes for vehicles.

In a discussion with the panel, he said: “Surely if traffic is being slowed down because some of the available tarmac is being removed and put to other purposes, or some of the tarmac is not available because of roadworks or because it has been blocked off while some work is being done on pavements—whatever it might be—surely one of the answers is to reinstate some of the tarmac that has been removed.

"It speeds up the traffic and perhaps does more for air pollution in places such as London than getting people on to pushbikes."

However, Simon Munk, infrastructure campaigner at LCC, said bike lanes helped reduce traffic, adding that more people are cycling than driving on key stretches of road in central London.

He told The Independent: “Schemes like the Cycle Superhighways are actually cutting congestion.

“There are more people than ever using the Embankment now according to TfL – because of the East-West Cycle Superhighway.

“The majority of peak traffic on Blackfriars Bridge are people cycling on the North-South.

“The evidence is clear – our cities desperately need more cycle tracks to keep them moving, not fewer.”

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In a blog post published on Monday, the MP for Stoke-On-Trent South wrote: “There’s clear data from successive reports of the National Travel Survey to show that car mileage per adult has fallen significantly over the past twenty years and is actually 10% lower than it was in the mid-2000s.

“In spite of that, average traffic speeds in many towns and cities are actually falling.

“Transport for London admitted recently that the stately progress of traffic in the centre of the capital dropped to a horrifying 7.8 mph last autumn.

“My fear is that a lot of it might be because of an increase in the impact of roadworks and the loss of tarmac for vehicles from the introduction of cycle lanes.”

His comments sparked a backlash on Twitter with cyclists questioning how tarmac had been “lost” when it had instead been “adjusted for a form of transport which uses it more efficiently”.