Active travel: building for healthier living
Are allowing for vulnerable road users? The Active Travel Act is a pioneering piece of legislation encouraging more people to walk and cycle. But are you building it in to schemes and projects? Think twice as it could be a business opportunity.
One of the best attended events this year, the CEWales webinar on Active Travel drew over 150 participants and the level of debate and interest kept Lee Waters, Deputy Minister for the Economy and Transport, engaged for almost two hours.
No matter the result of the next Welsh Assembly elections, the commitment at fulfilling the goals set out in the Active Travel Act are not going away. That means that Welsh local authorities and their supply chains – which are the CEWales stakeholders – have to collaborate to make sure active travel facilities are implemented across all schemes in Wales.
Active Travel is not just about recreational pathways, cycle tracks through forests or walkways to access the beach or view points. It is about linking communities; it is about enabling people to have a choice between walking or cycling to the shops, school or work. It is about encouraging people to choose not to use their car. Active Travel is about creating, healthier dynamic communities, regenerating the high street and making Wales an environmentally better place. Active Travel is fundamentally about creating a built environment for our future generations.
But to achieve it, hamstrung and resource constrained local authorities need to be met halfway, sometimes more than halfway by designers, consultants, engineers and developers from the construction supply chain to make Active Travel a genuine possibility.
Culturally there are changes to be made in how we travel in Wales. That means those shifts in mindset need to happen amongst decision makers in local government and contractors, suppliers and consultants. All of this was covered in the webinar and subsequent Q&A and there was a lot more that could have been discussed.
You can access the video recording of the session plus the actual presentations here
CEWales is providing training and guidance that you can find out about here and book using the links. We are also keen to run more events about the subject. Contact info@cewales.org.uk for further details and mark your email Active Travel. We see this as a major area for future CEWales work and want to hear your views.