+ What are the benefits of active travel?

It will save you money! It will make you fitter and healthier! It is the best way to travel without having a negative impact on the environment! It is better for local businesses! It reduces congestion! Streets and public places look far better when full of people than full of cars! Did we mention it will save you money?!

+ Why are we worrying about active travel, electric vehicles will stop the pollution problem?

Air pollution generated by internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles consists of both Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions and particulate matter. Although the move to electric vehicles (EVs) will eliminate CO2 emissions from vehicles (which is a good thing!), particulate matter emissions will only reduce by about 50%. It’s these emissions that are most harmful to health, especially when concentrated by traffic. This is because brake and tyre wear is a significant source of these emissions, and EVs will still (thankfully) have brakes and tyres. The emissions of particulate matter from brakes and tyres increases as a vehicle’s weight increases, and as EVs are generally heavier than ICE counterparts, they certainly won’t improve the situation! EVs also take up the same amount of space on the road as ICE vehicles do, so there’ll still be the same amount of traffic congestion to concentrate the harmful particles, too.

+ Traffic congestion is a real concern, so why do you want road space taken away from cars?

People choose the mode of transport that is most convenient for them. Up until now, motor vehicles have been the only convenient choice because the world around us has been designed almost exclusively to accommodate them. The problem is, they’re so space inefficient that they are a victim of their own success - our cities, towns and villages just can’t fit them all in anymore! Thankfully, the days of bulldozing buildings, and even whole communities, to accommodate new roads is at an end, so unfortunately it isn’t a simple case of making more room for them. By widening roads, the traffic congestion simply becomes ‘shorter and fatter’ instead of ‘longer and thinner’; it doesn’t clear any quicker, because the capacity of junctions and the roads beyond are the limiting factor, not - as it may seem - the width of the congested road. We don’t notice the ‘width’ of a traffic jam though, only the length. If we’re sat stationary a bit closer to our destination, we perceive having spent less time in the congestion, and forget how many lanes of traffic we were competing with to make progress. This is also worse for our health because it makes the congestion - and therefore the air pollution - denser (the vehicles are less spread out).

That’s before we even get to the problem of ‘induced demand’ which, again unfortunately, means that whenever extra road capacity is built, the reduction in congestion is only temporary before the new road space becomes congested too…and then on a lot of occasions, becomes even worse!

This means that the only way to reduce motor vehicle congestion is to entice those that are able, out of their cars. To do this, active travel and public transport must be made more convenient. Unfortunately, this does come at the expense of motor vehicle convenience - but only in the short-term. Assigning part of the space dedicated to motor vehicles to active travel infrastructure instead, will make it more convenient (and more importantly, safer!) to ride, and less convenient to drive. This is a necessary, temporary inconvenience, as it not only allows people who were already thinking about using their bikes to do so, but attracts an amount of inconvenienced motorists to using bikes as well. Then… the magic happens! Motor vehicle congestion actually falls because the number of vehicles on the road at any one time begins to reduce! This is why the initial sacrifice of road space must be made - it works out better for everyone in the end. It’s no accident that the country with the highest bike use in the world, partly because of the amount of space taken away from motor vehicles, also regularly ranks so highly for being one of the best places in the world to be a driver (no points for guessing where that is)!

+ I’m a regular walker and cyclists make me feel unsafe, why don’t they ride on the road where they belong?

The problem is, some motorists don’t want bikes getting in their way on the roads either. So where do bikes go? This brings us back to the problem of safety and convenience. Roads are often neither safe nor convenient for people riding a bike, so they choose to break the law by riding on footpaths and pavements to feel safer making a journey they have every right to make. If a pedestrian, who might average 75kg in weight and walk at 3mph, worries about a 90kg bike-with-rider passing them at 15mph, do they ever think what it must be like for that bike-with-rider to be passed at 30mph by something weighing at least 1.5 tonnes? We are not saying riding on pavements is OK, pedestrians should feel safe making their journeys. We are saying that if there is a need to separate pedestrians from motor vehicle traffic, there is also a need to separate those on bikes from motor vehicle traffic. We will always support segregated bike paths over shared-use paths or on-road bike lanes for these reasons.

+ What exactly is ‘active travel infrastructure’?

Active travel infrastructure is anything built to allow journeys to be walked, wheeled, scooted or cycled. In simplest terms, this is foot, bike and shared-use paths. It is also how these paths safely and conveniently cross roads, think Zebra or Toucan crossings, and traffic calming measures that make it safer for sharing the carriageway to walk, wheel, scoot or ride alongside motor vehicles. As a group who approach active travel from a bike rider’s perspective, our main aim is ensuring the provision of a network of safe, convenient, segregated bike paths in addition to existing footpath / pavement and road networks.

+ Are you only interested in provisions for those that use bikes?

No. While we might focus on bikes, infrastructure that is safe and convenient for bike use benefits all active travel. By supporting a network of segregated bike paths it means cycling on pavements is less likely, protecting pedestrians. A bike path isn’t just for bikes either, they can be used for wheeling, scooting and riding of all types. While bikes might be our preferred transport, we want to make the city safer and easier to get around for everyone!