Active travel teams view the road ahead

At Smarter Travel 2015 Baroness Kramer said that LSTF projects were reaping impressive results, but some fear the momentum may be lost after the General Election.

Not surprisingly, the dominant topics of conversation at this year’s Smarter Travel were how the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) had re-shaped the active travel agenda, and whether teams would secure the funding needed to build on their achievements. 

Representatives from the LSTF regions gathered at the Landor LINKS event, which attracted a capacity crowd of over 500, including local government officers, new technology entrepreneurs, urban designers, campaigners, academics and consultants.

Smarter Travel, held at the ICC Birmingham on 5-6 February, was hosted by West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority Centro. Alongside an extensive programme of presentations, workshops, panel discussions and ‘Speed Networking’ forums, there was an exhibition reflecting all aspects of active travel.

Life after LSTF

With so much speculation over what would happen in the wake of the final LSTF budgets for 2015-16, transport minister Baroness Kramer sought to reassure delegates that future money would be available. “When I spoke at last year’s conference there were real fears about the new Local Growth Fund.” Concerns were sparked by the government’s decision not to ring-fence the capital portion of the LSTF transferred to the Local Growth Fund.

“This led to worries that the money would be used in the pursuit of economic growth at the expense of sustainable transport,” said the minister, who spoke via a video link. “Of course, it’s right that any transport investment makes good business sense and pays its way. But that’s why I was confident, because investing in sustainable transport does make great business sense.”

Kramer said the DfT had looked closely at the economic rationale for LSTF projects. “For example, when we analysed 12 of the biggest LSTF projects  we found they are expected to deliver £5 of economic benefit for every £1 invested by the government – that’s fantastic value.”

The £100m capital pooled from the LSTF to help establish the Local Growth Fund has yielded £600m to invest in sustainable transport, Kramer said. “Every single growth deal contains at least one element of sustainable transport, and some contain a great deal more. The new growth deals will deliver around 50 schemes for public transport, walking and cycling.”

The minister stated that the government had already awarded £94m to the Cycle City Ambition and National Park programme, with another £114m to go to the eight Cycle City winners (Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Birmingham, West of England, Newcastle, Cambridge, Norwich and Oxford). Next month the DfT will announce how much each will get. 

Kramer said sustainable transport projects would benefit from the £6bn allocated to local highways maintenance funding. “For the first time a portion of this funding must be used for maintaining cycle paths and walkways.”

More money will also be made available for bike parking at rail stations, the minister said, with £15m in 2015/16 on top of the £14.5m already allocated. 

Another boost comes from the Infrastructure Bill amendment to include a cycling and walking investment strategy for England. The Secretary of State will be required by law to produce this strategy and review it at least once every five years. “The strategy would state the objectives to be achieved and the money that is being provided to meet them.”

The minister offered an upbeat assessment of the LSTF project. She told delegates: “All 96 programmes have helped to grow our economy while caring for our environment. That is a phenomenal achievement and one for which you should all be proud. But we have also built a network of sustainable transport experts, and I am determined that this community should be kept together. And that’s why we have established the Active Travel Consortium, which will offer expertise to local authorities on finance and programme management, and many other aspects of developing and managing a successful cycling network.”

In search of evidence

But not everyone at Smarter Travel shared the minister’s optimism about future funding. Dr Colin Black, managing director of Contemporary Transport, predicted that local transport funding would face further cuts after the General Election. “Unfortunately, smarter choices are still generally viewed as a ‘nice to have’, so they tend to be first in line for the guillotine,” he said. In contrast, road building and new rail infrastructure have already been earmarked for massive new investment for the next five years, and beyond. It’s simple politics: Recognising that to get elected to power politicians need to promise to provide the things that people want. Presumably, the pollsters have got a handle on this. 

“Perhaps people just aren’t passionate enough yet to demand clean air to breathe, nicer and safer places to live, to have the ability to lead healthy lifestyles, and preserve the environment for future generations?”

Black accepts that many big infrastructure projects are good for the economy, and are needed to make sustainable transport work effectively. “However, there tends to be an over-emphasis on mega-projects due to their perceived political kudos. Problem is – if all the transport cash is spent on big projects there is little left to do the things required at a local level.

“Economic benefit-cost appraisal tends to be used to justify these big projects. Evaluation of these projects after their implementation suggests that there should be less reliance on the proposed business case as an accurate indicator of outturn benefit.”

He added: “Interestingly, our fixation with economic benefit in the UK is fairly unique compared to the rest of the EU where a much higher proportion of decisions get made without direct reference to the benefit-cost ratio. This partly helps to explain some of the differences in our transport systems.”

Contemporary Transport is involved in the EVIDENCE project, which has gathered information from around the world on 23 aspects of sustainable transport. Three European academic research centres are working together on the project. 

Developing social benefits

The economic case for active travel projects was widely debated at the ICC, along with the growing importance of Intelligent Mobility, car and bike share schemes, and sustainable transport projects for workplaces and schools.

For over 10 years Centro has been developing the WorkWise scheme to support jobseekers. During the ‘Speed Learning’ session WorkWise team leader Jobeda Shahed explained how jobseekers are given travel passes that cover the cost of travelling to job interviews. Passes are available through 30 Job Centres in the West Midlands, and those that go on to find work are normally eligible for free travel for two months, Shahed said. 

“WorkWise has supported over 20,000 people into work since it started in 2003,” she said. “This is through a combination of one-day tickets for interviews and also monthly passes for jobs.” 

Another case study focused on a scheme in Merseyside, which offers free travel tickets, bikes and personalised journey planning information to help disadvantaged young people. Merseytravel launched the Young Peoples Affordability of Transport project in January 2014. 

Partnership officer Christine Murphy said: “Merseytravel recognise that attendance at school is affected by the cost of transport. We’ve worked with 45 schools, initially to get input from head teachers and then gather statistics from attendance officers as the project progresses.”

Murphy said the project is having a positive impact on attendance levels, citing Broadgreen International School’s report that 98% of students who received support with transport costs showed a ”marked improvement” in their attendance.

The project has been funded by Merseytravel, but the passenger transport executive is encouraging schools to support children through their own funding such as the pupil premium.

So far the scheme has provided 90 bikes to 10 schools and more than 320 travel passes at 34 schools, along with tailored journey plans, cycle training and travel advice. 

The employers’ perspective

There was also a Speed Learning case study on employer perceptions of sustainable transport measures. A national LSTF case study, commissioned by the DfT, is obtaining evidence of the impact of LSTF initiatives on commuting modal share and business performance at four employment sites in Hertfordshire, Slough and the West of England. The study began in 2013 and will finish in 2016. The study is one of four national case studies evaluating impacts of the LSTF as part of the DfT monitoring and evaluation programme for the LSTF.

Dr Caroline Bartle, researcher at the University of the West of England, is involved in the West of England study. She is seeking to discover if senior managers think sustainable transport initiatives can influence staff satisfaction, retention and recruitment opportunities and how they might affect business costs. Research interviews were carried out with 24 employers in the West of England between January and April 2014. The employers are located in two contrasting employment areas: the ‘North Fringe’ and Ports areas of Bristol.

Bartle found that sustainable travel options for employees were seen as an asset by employers, chiefly because they could improve staff satisfaction and morale, but also because they could help the recruitment pool among those who did not have access to a car.  

“For many, better provision of sustainable transport was seen as an essential requirement to reduce car parking demand,” said Bartle. “On-site parking was close to, or had already reached, full capacity for several employers. Many thought that further expansion of staff numbers might be curtailed without greater implementation of measures to encourage alternatives to single occupancy car use, and this could therefore be one factor, alongside office and warehouse space, which might force them to consider site re-location.”

In the Ports area, better sustainable transport infrastructure, alongside general road improvements, could prove essential if the expected growth in employment there is to be achieved, suggested Bartle. In the North Fringe, meanwhile, concerns included over-burdening the transport network due to planned new housing developments. 

“All the managers interviewed understood the car to be the main commuter mode used by employees, and did not foresee a situation where this would change radically,” said Bartle. But measures to encourage alternatives such as car sharing “could benefit their business or individual employees, in as far as they could help ease congestion on the network, improve staff satisfaction, widen recruitment opportunities and help employers deal with over-demand for car parking.”

Changing commuter habits

Journey distance may deter commuters from switching from cars to cycling or walking, said Dr David Metz, visiting professor at the centre for transport studies, university college of London and author of Peak Car: the Future of Travel.

Metz referred to figures in the DfT’s National Travel Survey, which showed that the average trip length for commuting in 2013 was 8.8 miles and car travel was responsible for about 75% of the total commuting distance. “We need to be realistic about where we are starting from. The scope for shifting people out of cars on to slow modes is limited. But you can get people out of cars on to rail for work journeys because rail, where it exists, is faster and more reliable than the car on congested roads.” 

Metz said that demographic factors, such as  population growth and increasing longevity, would become increasingly important in the shift away from the dominance of the car in urban areas. 

In the case of London, the Mayor has a statutory duty to prepare a spatial plan to show how population growth can be accommodated and economic growth fostered, said Metz. 

“The main impact of transport investment is to make land more accessible for development, as in Docklands. So, to get the full benefit from transport investment, it needs to be planned and linked to property development. A good example is the extension of the Northern Line to Nine Elms, where the developers are contributing substantially to the cost. This approach should be adopted generally.”