Does the government’s new cycling strategy set the ambitious active travel targets we need?
It’s here! The UK Government has published its Active Travel – Active England: the Third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS3) for England.
It’s a brave move for government to publish its new active travel strategy during Bike Week – our annual celebration of cycling. What if we don’t like this iteration of CWIS and it puts a dampener on Bike Week – that would be doubly disappointing.
This Bike Week we also published a report – not a strategy for active travel like the DfT, but an update to our ‘Getting there with Cycling’ evidence report, first published in 2022.
‘Getting there with Cycling’ brings together the overwhelmingly strong evidence in favour of building cycling infrastructure and makes the case that better cycling infrastructure benefits everyone, not just people who cycle.
After presenting such a strong case for investment in cycling we hoped that the UK Government would act on the evidence and up the ambition with CWIS3.
Thankfully, CWIS3 is a positive step forward from government driven by a vision that we can get behind: ‘for walking, wheeling and cycling to be safe, easy and accessible choices for everyone’.
To make this vision a reality, government aims to focus on three areas: getting more people physically active through active travel, making active travel an easy choice, and improving safety for people walking, wheeling and cycling.
Ambitious targets
Achieving these three objectives will be driven by some new targets, which is good to see. We strongly urged DfT to include targets in CWIS3 as they give the impetus for strong action – so we are please government has listened.
There’s a target to increase the number of short urban trips which include some element of active travel: up to 55% of trips by 2035. CWIS3 also focuses heavily on getting more children cycling, walking or wheeling to school and has an ambitious target of 60% of kids travelling this way in nine years’ time.
Investment commitments
Of course, nothing happens without money so it’s positive to see a recommitment to funding in the document and potentially some increases over time.
CWIS3 outlines £760 million for Active Travel England to distribute specifically for “for walking, wheeling and cycling schemes” and a sizable £4.5 billion from other pots of money which local authorities can draw on to help meet the CWIS3 objectives.
What’s clear is that the financial commitments are not entirely clear and transparent, especially how much is actually ring-fenced for active travel projects, so we will be doing some sleuthing to find out what’s really going on in the calculations and budgetary promises.
Schools and networks
For the next five years government has set out a couple of clear themes: enabling children to cycle to school and mapping a national active travel network.
There are a number of measures in CWIS3 which aim to meet the new target for children cycling to school, including a national Safe Routes to School programme.
I expect there will be renewed effort to train more children to ride through Bikeability, more School Streets implemented, and hopefully more councils creating safe cycle routes to schools.
Government also wants people to know where their cycle networks are and be able to navigate them easily. It aims to bring together all the local walking and cycling routes, the National Cycle Network, Rights of Way and other routes onto one national map.
A single national network map could focus minds (especially for all the map lovers out there), but also support wayfinding improvements and identify gaps where new routes are needed to make cycling possible for more people.
Mind the gender gap
When government consulted on CWIS3 we called for a strong commitment to close the gender gap in cycling. It’s disappointing that this is an issue not addressed in the strategy and no target to increase the proportion of women cycling.
However, there is a goal to decrease the percentage of “people citing personal safety concerns when walking, wheeling and cycling”.
Our ‘My ride. Our right’ campaign has highlighted that only half as many women as men choose to cycle so we welcome this commitment as fear of personal safety is big barrier to more women cycling.
We are keen for government to do more for women who want to cycle but don’t feel safe when on the road or in public spaces. We’ll continue to push for a target to close the gender gap and for more action – government must address this important issue.
Time for local politicians to step up
Heidi Alexander said in a pre-publication Guardian interview that she is “determined to maintain a focus on everyday travel” and doesn’t just want to talk about “planes, trains and automobiles”.
Government has already said it wants to put cycling on an equal footing with other transport options and, at Cycling UK, we want this message to be adopted quickly by local politicians so that it becomes a reality where people live.
Many of the commitments in the new strategy will have to be delivered at the local level by councils. With greater devolution planned in England we are keen to understand how government will ensure that councils meet the targets while giving them more freedom to work as they see fit.
CWIS3 must drive the transformatory action needed so that cycling can become the norm for short local journeys and for children to get to school.
