Chris Boardman heads newly-launched government body Active Travel England

Let's hope he doesn't have his hands tied like most of the others in jobs like this, a figure head to make things look kosher!

To be honest having Yorkshire as the base, and no disrespect to yorkshire or the people that live there, it is the wrong place for the HQ! I may be biased as I live in North Northumberland, but it would be a better base to start with given how rundown our PRoW's and cycle paths are. One only has to watch TV or read any of the publications, Yorkshire has a fantastic PRoW/cycling path network that is well publicised, Northumberland however is a totally different story! We may get the tour of Britain come through specific locations, but check the media, very little footage and no publicity! Plus whilst Northumberland County Council pushes getting out and about on foot or cycle, they do very little in the heart of the county to aid this. Go to the larger towns in the south of the county and there are many new footpaths and cycleways, the county council have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds if not millions, providing safer places to cycle or walk!

Head north of Morpeth and try to walk any of the multitude of PRoW's (supposedly) looked after by NCC, you'll find then either overgrown and/or practicably unpassable! If you can find them, the majority have missing waymarks and/or fingerposts, they may be marked on the definitive map the county hold, but it's difficult to find them on the ground! Cycling routes are much the same, only NCR68 is well posted, byways and bridleways may be part of the PRow network, but we're allowed to ride them on bikes, but again try finding them, and if you do you'll probably find you'll be walking and not riding due to their condition!

Our esteemed county councilors, present and previous are not interested in hearing about it, nor is our current MP. As with many Cycling UK members, I filled in the forms and letters supplied by Cycling UK, and sent to our councillors and MP's to hopefully persuade them to attend meeting for additional funding aimed at increasing the support for walking and cycling networks! From my experience, and having spoken to many others that filled in those forms, the replies received were generic prewritten and meaningless, not one councilor or MP replied with any comment on the topic of the letters/forms, they did thank us for taking the time to organise events and clubs for walking or cycling, something that was never even mentioned!

So St Chris needs to be on guard and fully aware he is likely to be shortly banging his head against a very thick brick wall! I wish him all the luck. 

As individuals up here in the north of the county we walk and ride where we can, pleading with the council to insist farmers/landowners abide by the law and maintain the PRoW's on their land, sadly the council's PRoW department has it hands tied by a lack of funds and resources thanks to central government, and who runs this new unit! We'll continue to do our best to keep ways open, but our scope is limited by age (we're all over 60) and manpower (some won't go against the council). Recently we've had more luck getting things done through the Rural Payments Agency, they distribute and control payments made to landowners/farmers for keeping the PRoW network on their land open, they can withhold and apply fines if they do not comply. The councils can do this too, but politically they won't, in case they loose support to their parties from those same landowners/farmers.

I'm going to choose to be optimisitic about this as St Boardman is pretty smart and is unlikely to be involved with something that is just empty policies. If he's on-board with it, then he must think that results are possible.

Quote:

Chris Boardman has been appointed interim commissioner

Brilliant!

Quote:

of a new governmental body, Active Travel England, which has been tasked with implementing the Gear Change strategy, among other things.

Hmm... doubts appear.  Shouldn't this all be the remit of the Department for Transport?  If we want cycling and walking to be considered as ... transport?  And integrated into our existing systems? Because the government has said we need less internal combustion engines and less cars in general, yes?

Maybe not to start with - like a supertanker the DfT will take a lot of time and effort to redirect!

Quote:

the government has also announced £5.5 million of new funding for local authorities, train operators and businesses to encourage various active travel schemes, including a £300,000 top-up to E-cargo bike schemes, £3 million to improve cycling infrastructure around train stations, and £2.2 million to explore ‘active travel on prescription’ schemes.

Oh - they're sidelining him.  He's been put in charge of paperclips.

Maybe that's unfair, this is a new thing after all. So let's see where the actual money in the last budget is going. Lots to read through and I'm not sure if some of this is "recycled" e.g. a new promise of already-allocated funds, but:

£24 billion between 2020-21 and 2024-25 in strategic roads, delivering upgrades such as the A66 Trans-Pennine.
£8 billion for repairs
£35 billion of rail investment

But but £5.7 billion declared for "sustainable transport" in certain city regions!  Which when you check is mostly trains(!) and buses(!) although there is a *mention* of cyclists and pedestrians. I can't find a separate figure for them though. (The earlier reported "2 billion for active trave"l has been analysed elsewhere [road.cc, cyclist mag , sustrans]).

Compare: cost of freezing fuel duty 2011-2020 is estimated at a £50 billion loss of revenue.

So what's Gear Change done / spent in its first year then?

From the report here - over the course of 2020/21 the Government has provided £220 million to local authorities (Active Travel Fund - this was a Covid initiative), £100 million to Transport for London, £20 million of revenue funding to local authorities (Access Fund) £20 million to the Fix Your Bike voucher scheme, £13 million BikeAbility, £2 million to Cycling UK , £2 million to Living Streets.

Not nothing although the £220 million was something of a covid windfall. I make that 377 million. It's not clear whether this is representative of what the regular spend will be like. Taking that whole figure it's about 6% of the anual "investment" declared for road building (not including repairs) in the budget. In Scotland the decision was that 10% of the overall transport budget was the baseline spend for active travel which would make the UK's efforts look even smaller. Might be worth comparing how much the Dutch spend on this [2010, 2018].

Swings and roundabouts. The return of Cycling England! 
Will this organisation also be saddled with a laughable budget and direction? Reformation of an independent new body will also allow the DfT to scapegoat, remove the issue of cycling away from central government and to wash its hands as inevitably every national cycling target fails.

Let's be honest here. 

One positive is that ATE will have powers with respect to large planning applications.

In North Yorkshire, any cycling infra at new developments is token, abysmal, and useless. The council has started mentioning LTN 1/20, but completely ignoring what it actually says.

It needs a body like ATE to force them to change, otherwise they never will.

"responsible for driving up the standards of cycling"
An unfortunate turn of phrase!

my only reservation with appointing Chris B in the role, and maybe this is why its only interim for the moment, is that he ends up spreading himself too thinly across all of his work & progress slows, and this is going to be a tough job.

making change in Manchester or even London is relatively easy, and I know people will say but what about Kensington or whatever, trust me its still easier even with those councils undermining things all the time, than pushing the same kind of stuff out into the regions where theres been no cycling revolution, most regional councils are still firmly welded to motor vehicles, not active travel.

Even those that hint they might just get it, like the East Suffolk cycling and walking strategy had over 200 recommended changes for active travel, but covering a tiny fraction of their area, and the majority of which Chris B would laugh at as outdated not meeting any national standard & about as much use as a chocolate teapot. But they are the only council in Suffolk who have produced anything, Babergh, Mid Suffolk, West Suffolk, Ipswich arent doing anything, and most of the changes Suffolk county council (yeah local government gets complicated) installed as part of the emergency active travel funding are slowly being unwound for fear of upsetting the motorists.

And thats one county, multiply that kind of stuff as Im sure its no different elsewhere, by the 47 other counties in England and you get a feel for the kind of job he has on his hands.

what we really need is 48 mini Chris Bs able to push the kind of change through at the local level, because just having the 1 at the national level, I think the messages will be too diluted by the time they hit the ground.

we shall see, Im generally always pessimistic in my outlook, but I wish him all the success & support in it as I think he will need it.

BOARDMAN FOR PRESIDENT!!!

The hate filled, institutionally anti cyclist guardian has a bit by Chris 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/22/walking-cycling-sa...

Unfortunately not behind a paywall...

Good news.

Harrison and the DfT have shown some real ambition in appointing Boardman. They know he's going to hold them to a high standard so must have confidence in delivering.

The DfT have done some great work on active travel recently, hopefully this will be a continuation of that.

Excellent news! If anyone can prise people from cars, it's going to be St Boardman. I hope he gets the permanent role.

Hopefully he will be able to get local planners to adopt a consistent and effective definition of what constitutes good cycling infrastructure and then start to build it.

It remains to be seen how effective ATE will be, but with St CB in charge, it has a chance.

In an incredible break with tradition, the BBC mentioned this on R4 news this morning!  Maybe they'll even mention cycling and walking as much as 1% as they mention electric cars.

"Today, the government has also announced £5.5 million of new funding for local authorities, train operators and businesses to encourage various active travel schemes"

£5.5 million is surely a typo as it would take £5.5 billion to actually start to get people using active travel as their default option. £5.5 million wouldn't even pay for a politician's wallpaper.

Unless the government wants active travel to fail......