It is possible a million or more people have cycled past the Houses of Parliament in the past 12 months, but you could be forgiven for thinking this has gone unnoticed by those on the other side of the black railings.

On Wednesday, as the cycle superhighway through Parliament Square whisked commuters to work, inside, the transport select committee heard the government would miss its cycling target. It is predicted to achieve just a third of the 800m hoped-for extra cycling trips by 2025, with much of that predicted growth restricted to London.

Three walking and cycling charities told the committee that, of three targets set as part of the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS) in 2015, only the goal that people will walk 300 times each a year is certain to be met. The third target, for 55% of children aged three to 10 to walk to school, also looks increasingly out of reach; last year the number doing so dropped two percentage points to 51%.

Active travel is the latest government policy failure relating to providing alternatives to, or curbing the dominance of motor traffic. It was told last week it was on track to miss its legally binding carbon targets and, was still facing action over its unlawfully bad plans to tackle air pollution.

Representatives from Cycling UK, the walking charity Living Streets and the sustainable transport charity Sustrans were united on Wednesday in calling for England to follow Scotland and allocate 5% of transport spending to active travel, with a view to increasing it to 10% in future.

Rachel White of Sustrans said that when it came to active travel, “we’re doing something wrong”, while Joe Irving of Living Streets called the government’s walking targets “unambitious, conservative and cautious”, citing its ambition that people should conduct one stage of a journey on foot 300 times a year, or less than once a day. This could include walking 10 seconds to a bus stop.

Roger Geffen of Cycling UK said: “It’s not about putting bike lanes in where there’s a bit of spare money and a bit of spare space – there needs to be a dense network of routes.”

Geffen said that because active travel was funded from various pots, “we don’t know how much money is being spent on cycling, and we don’t know how well it’s being spent”.

We know cycling is an efficient, healthy and cheap means of transport, while lessons from countries such as Denmark on the benefits of decent funding and long-term planning of dense cycle networks are readily available. We know dangerous driving and air pollution from cars kill tens of thousands a year. We know developers fail on pledges to deliver cycling, walking and public transport promises, leaving communities over-reliant on cars.

We have a cycling minister in Jesse Norman who “gets” active travel and has helped drive a Highway Code review and funding for police operations and driver training, among other things.

The CWIS has moved us forward a little, for the first time requiring government to set aside funding for cycling and answer to parliament on its policies, but it is a first step.

As the transport committee chair, Lilian Greenwood, said, although cycling’s benefits include improving congestion, air quality, carbon emissions and physical and mental health, when it comes to government policy “clearly there’s a concern there isn’t sufficient ambition and funding and certainly that funding isn’t guaranteed for a long enough period”.

She added: “It’s moving in the right direction but there’s quite a long way to go.”

The government’s local cycling and walking investment plans would be a good place to start; local authorities have been encouraged to draw up long-term active travel infrastructure plans but there is no money to implement them. “There is a real risk these become documents that sit on a shelf gathering dust,” said White.

“We know the importance of political leadership,” Greenwood said.

She said “great cycling cities” such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen “haven’t always been that way. They took a decision they wanted their city to be different and they acted on it.” As has Manchester, where big cycling and walking plans are afoot under its cycling and walking commissioner, Chris Boardman.

Meanwhile, parliamentarians could look outside their windows and witness first-hand the simple brilliance of the humble cycle and the difference good infrastructure can make. The evidence is clear – now they just have to fund it.