Active Travel & Safe Streets
A key measure for creating a low traffic future is to redesign our roads, streets and junctions to be people-friendly places, where children can play, neighbours can socialise, people of all ages and abilities can get around safely and easily by walking, wheeling and cycling, and where high-streets and street-life can thrive without being choked by exhaust fumes. [N.B. “Wheeling” includes the use of any mobility aid which can legally be used on the footway, i.e. the pavement]
This section considers what needs doing to create a safe and attractive environment for walking and wheeling , then for cycling, then what both groups need to benefit from safe streets and lanes. It then considers the importance for active travel of well-maintained roads and paths (especially local streets), before concluding with behaviour change measures to boost walking and cycling, particularly among the groups who could most benefit from the physical activity but who are least likely to take up cycling and walking without encouragement and support.
The role of cycle hire schemes is covered in the section on public, shared and community transport.
Walking networks in towns need to connect people safely and conveniently from their homes to nearby schools, shops and other key facilities – for more, see local cycling and walking network plans below.
Pavements need to be wide enough, well-maintained and clear of clutter. Features such as waymarking, seats, street trees and planters are essential for enabling people to navigate, for older people to rest, to reduce pollution and create safe and attractive places where people want to spend time. However they need to be placed where they will not obstruct wheelchair users or create hazards for visually impaired people, or make walking unpleasant. Tactile paving is vital for visually impaired people to know where they can walk safely.
Road crossings need to be located and designed to maximise the convenience of using them. Crossing-points across more minor side-roads should be designed to visually reinforce the new Highway Code rules which give priority to pedestrians and cycle users going straight ahead over vehicles turning into and out of those side roads. Signalised pedestrian crossings need to provide plenty of crossing time for pedestrians, allowing older and disabled people to use them without danger or stress. For the fastest and/or busiest roads, bridges or tunnels are needed. These should be step-free and with gradients and diversions minimised, to make it as easy as possible for disabled people to use them. Where tunnels are provided, they should be wide and straight to provide natural light and good visibility right through the tunnel wherever possible.
Further information
Official guidance: The UK Department for Transport (DfT) has yet to produce a guide to designing infrastructure for walking, to complement its Cycling Infrastructure Design guidance (see below). However Active Travel England (an arms-length Government agency responsible for supporting and assessing local authorities in delivering good practice on walking, wheeling and cycling) has published various tools to support good design for specific schemes and for new developments, as well as a library of good practice case studies.
There is important advice on the planning of networks (as distinct from individual schemes) for walking, wheeling and indeed cycling, in DfT’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) guidance, and some useful (though dated) design advice in the two volumes of the Manual for Streets guidance (see volume 1 – n.b. volume 2 is not available online, but a replacement for both volumes is planned). Other useful sources include the Welsh Government’s Active Travel Act guidance and any locally applicable guidance (such as Transport for London’s Planning for Walking Toolkit).Unofficial guidance: See Living Streets’s online briefing on inclusive pedestrian design.
Cycling networks, like walking and wheeling networks, need to be safe, direct, coherent, comfortable and attractive – see local cycling and walking network plans.
Cycle facilities along fast or busy main roads should be physically protected from motor traffic: the faster and busier the traffic, the greater the level of protection that is needed (but see also the section on safe streets and lanes for solutions where protection is not needed). Cycles should also be kept separate from pedestrians, unless there is plenty of space and/or usage is light (e.g. on a path next to an inter-urban road), allowing both groups to mix safely and without stress.
Safe, secure and well designed cycle parking should be provided in new residential developments and at key destinations, e.g. schools, shops, workplaces, public transport stations and interchanges. In addition to cycle parking, public transport services should make provision for cycling to and from stations and interchanges, with space on trains, trams and longer-distance bus or coach services, and cycle reservation systems on any train services where seats can also be reserved. See also the shared transport section for more on the important role of cycle hire schemes.
National and local government should support the use of non-standard pedal cycles, such as child trailers and cargo-bikes (whether for households or businesses), trikes and hand-cycles (these can be crucial mobility aids for the many people who find walking difficult but who can cycle), and electrically assisted pedal cycles (or ‘e-bikes’). Dutch evidence shows that the average journey on an e-bike is about 60% longer than on a conventional bicycle. E-bikes can therefore substantially increase cycling’s contribution to tackling climate change, enabling people to replace car-use for longer or hillier journeys in rural areas, as well as enabling older, less healthy or disabled people to take up cycling who might otherwise find it difficult or impossible.
Cyclists also need good signing and waymarking.
Further information
Official guidance: As noted in the previous section, DfT provides guidance on the planning of active travel networks (as distinct from individual schemes in its Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) guidance. For planning specific cycle routes or other infrastructure features (e.g. cycle parking), the key reference in England and in Northern Ireland is the Department for Transport’s Cycling Infrastructure Design guidance (Local Transport Note LTN 1/20), together with the various design advice and support tools provided by Active Travel England (including advice on active travel in new developments). Other cycle-specific design guidance includes National Highways’ Designing for Cycle Traffic (which applies to England’s trunk roads and motorways, including their junctions and crossings), the Welsh Government’s Active Travel Act guidance, (n.b. this also covers network planning), the Scottish Government’s Cycling by Design guidance, and any relevant local guidance (such as Transport for London’s London Cycling Infrastructure Design Guidance).
Unofficial guidance: See Cycling UK’s Space for Cycling guide and the Guide to Inclusive Cycling from Wheels for Wellbeing.
The majority of roads and streets in built-up areas should be subject to 20mph speed limits, with similar reductions (e.g. to no more than 40mph) for quieter rural lanes. Exceptions can be made for faster and busier main roads, though these should be provided with separate cycle facilities. There is a mistaken view that 20mph limits should be concentrated around school gates. However this simply reinforces the idea that children will normally be driven to school and that they only need to get safely from their parents’ car to the school gate. Instead, we need 20mph schemes to keep children safe near their homes and throughout their walking and cycling journeys, whether to school or to visit friends or anywhere else. For more information, see the 20sPlentyForUs website.
In 2023, the Welsh Government and Senedd (i.e. the Welsh parliament) made 20mph the ‘default’ speed limit for built-up streets in Wales – allowing exceptions as above – acting on feedback from a Public Health Wales evidence review, a Task Force Report and extensive consultation. Early data show that there were 26% fewer casualties on 20mph and 30mph roads in Wales in the first quarter of 2024, compared with the same period in 2026, while fatal injuries in this period fell from 11 to 5. Other data show reduced speeds, improved compliance with speed limits, more reliable (though marginally increased) journey times and increased walking and cycling. The Low Traffic Future alliance therefore urges the governments for England and Scotland to follow suit.
Other solutions can involve creating various forms of vehicle restrictions in town or city centres or in residential neighbourhoods. Town or city centre schemes typically involve using traffic restrictions to create pedestrianised or pedestrian-priority areas, normally with cycle access and possibly also with bus, taxi and/or delivery access, at least at some times of the day.
In residential areas though, the normal approach involves introducing traffic-filters to cut off rat-runs, while maintaining access for walking, wheeling and cycling, giving them an advantage for local trips. This type of scheme has come to be known as a Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN), though it is not a new technique. Overall, LTNs have been shown to improve road safety, increase walking and cycling and reduce car use for local journeys. They generally attract high public support, both in principle and in practice after their implementation. These schemes need careful design and good consultation to ensure local community support, and wider measures may also be needed to ensure they reduce motor traffic overall.
School Streets are another option for reducing local traffic pressures and creating more child-friendly street environments, particularly around primary schools. These schemes prohibit driving at school arrival and drop-off times on selected local streets. Exemptions can be made for local residents and businesses. School Streets tend to cover very minor roads and a more limited area than LTNs, though the two types of measures can also be combined. School Streets are generally easier to implement and are more popular initially than LTNs. Monitoring has shown these schemes do also reduce traffic.
Traffic calming features (such as road humps and speed cushions) and/or zonal speed camera systems can reduce speeds and improve safety (see review of evidence), and may be useful where the layout of a street (or a street network) does not naturally keep most drivers’ speeds down to around 20mph. Still, it is generally preferable to design streets to feel like safe, people-friendly places, with attractive surfacing and street furniture (e.g. seating and planters) which enable and welcome people of all ages and abilities to walk, cycle and wheel safely and easily.
Oxfordshire and Cornwall have delivered 20mph limits for almost all of the counties’ towns and villages, having made funding available subject to support from local councillors and parish councils – this was forthcoming in the vast majority of cases. Surrey County Council is not only introducing 20mph limits for most (though not all) urban streets but also has a process for reducing rural single-carriageway limits potentially to 40mph on rural lanes, or to 20mph or 30mph in villages. This approach could be combined with design features used in the Quiet Lanes schemes in Norfolk and Kent, and/or with the use of average speed cameras.
Further information
Official guidance: See DfT’s statutory guidance on Setting local speed limits (though a long-promised update to this document is still awaited). The Welsh Government has published several documents relating to its plans to make 20mph the ‘default’ speed limit for built-up areas in Wales.Unofficial guidance: See the guides to creating Low Traffic Neighbourhoods from the charities Possible, Sustrans, and from Living Streets and the London Cycling Campaign. CPRE produces a guide to Quiet Lanes; the School Streets Initiative has a collection of useful resources on creating School Streets; while 20sPlentyForUs provides information and advice on 20mph limits.
The UK Government has encouraged local authorities in England (outside London) to draw up Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs), while Welsh authorities are legally required to adopt Active Travel Network Maps (ATNMs), in accordance with the Welsh Government’s Active Travel Act design guidance. However the principles, and the steps needed to create a LCWIP or an ATNM, are similar:
- Define the geographical area to be covered (including any cross-boundary issues).
- Identify the most important start and end-points of journeys (e.g. residential areas, schools and colleges, employment locations, shopping areas, healthcare, public transport and other facilities) that need to be connected by safe, convenient and direct walking and cycling routes.
- Prioritise the corridors with the greatest potential to unlock increased cycling and walking if provision is improved – the Propensity to Cycle Tool (http://pct.bike) can assist with this.
- Identify the actual route alignments where walking and/or cycling conditions can be improved most cost-effectively to maximise the increases in walking and/or cycling.
- Consult and seek support for the route proposals (including from neighbouring authorities etc where cross-boundary issues arise, as well as from the wider public), adapting them as required in the light of feedback received.
However national governments and councils alike need to do more to integrate the planning and funding of LCWIPs (or ATNMs in Wales) and Rights of Way Improvement Plans (RoWIPs). LCWIPs and ATNMs are widely seen as being mainly for day-to-day urban walking and cycling, while rights of way are often seen as being for recreational walking (and, to a lesser extent, cycling and horse-riding) in rural areas. Yet this distinction is not, and should not be, hard and fast. On the contrary, joining up the planning and funding of these networks would make it easier, for instance, for children to walk or cycle from outlying villages to schools in nearby towns, or for families in those towns to get out for recreational walks or bike rides without feeling the need to jump in the car to get there.
Further information
Official guidance: The key sources for planning walking and cycling networks (as distinct from specific routes or other infrastructure features) are DfT’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) guidance and its statutory guidance on reallocating roadspace to support active travel – or the Active Travel Act guidance in Wales. N.B. The DfT-backed Propensity to Cycle Tool is a very useful resource for prioritising the links in a proposed local cycle network in England or Wales. Finally, there is Government guidance on preparing Rights of Way Improvement Plans (RoWiPs).Unofficial guidance: See also the guidance on rights of way and RoWIPs from the Ramblers and Cycling UK.
Electrically-assisted scooters (or ‘e-scooters’) have become popular in recent years. However at present, the only e-scooters that may be ridden on UK roads are publicly hired e-scooters, as part of a UK Government trial to assess whether to legalise them and, if so, how. Privately-owned scooters may only legally be ridden on private land with the landowner’s permission.
The previous UK Government had plans to create a new category of ‘micro-mobility vehicles’, that would include e-scooters and other light motor-vehicles, whose power and weight limits will be low enough to permit them to be ridden under similar laws to those applying to pedal cycles. Low Traffic Future urges that these vehicles should be regulated in a way that seeks to maximise their potential benefits for reducing car traffic, while minimising the safety risks to their riders and other people – especially to more vulnerable pedestrians – and to the health benefits of walking and cycling. Micromobility parking bays should preferably be provided on the carriageway, and should never obstruct footways.
Further information
Official guidance: DfT’s guidance on e-scooter trials applies in England, Scotland and Wales.
SUVs have a range of adverse impacts for the environment, road safety, highway maintenance and the management of road space, due to their excessive height, bonnet-height, length, width, weight and/or fuel consumption.
The adverse safety impacts are borne disproportionately by pedestrians and cyclists, especially children, though SUVs present an increased risk to other road-users too. Their own occupants also face increased risks, as they have a significantly higher risk of ‘roll-over’ incidents compared with standard-cars. There are also psychological effects due to SUV drivers feeling more protected (and thus being less mindful of the risks they might present to other road users) and of ‘looking down’ on other road users, both literally and metaphorically (even if subconsciously).
SUVs have outsized climate and air pollution impacts, due to their height, weight and width, their tyres, and indeed the emissions from manufacturing them. If SUVs were a nation, they would be the world’s 5th largest emitter of CO2. They also have disproportionate road maintenance impacts: these increase exponentially, in proportion to the 4th power of a vehicle’s axle load. Parked SUVs can block narrower roads, when lorries, buses, emergency service vehicles or other larger vehicles are unable to get past them.
With SUV sales rising, cars in the UK and EU have been getting wider by an average of 1 cm every 2 years, with over a half being too wide for many car-parking spaces. We support calls from the SUV Alliance and its members (notably Transport & Environment, the Green Alliance and Clean Cities Campaign) for regulations and financial measures to deter the manufacture, purchase and use of larger, heavier and/or higher-emitting vehicles. Paris has trebled the parking charges for heavier vehicles, while Edinburgh has banned SUV advertising on the City Council’s billboards and other property. Other councils are actively considering the options available to them.
Further information:
Unofficial guidance: The consultancy Transport for Quality of Life has created a toolkit of measures available to local authorities for managing cars which are heavy, long, wide, have high bonnet-heights and/or have high fuel consumption. The SUV Alliance provides a compendium of evidence on the range of problems associated with SUVs.
Poorly-maintained roads are the bane of drivers’ lives. But pedestrians, cyclists and people with disabilities are far more seriously affected by poor maintenance than drivers. Potholes, obstructions and trip-hazards can cause serious and even fatal injuries, while poor winter maintenance can trap older and disabled people indoors, unable to get to the shops for fear of a dangerous fall.
Yet road maintenance budgets are increasingly skewed towards maintaining A roads and motorways. That is despite evidence that funding cuts to minor road maintenance have significantly higher economic costs than those affecting trunk road maintenance. This is probably because walking and cycling account for a greater proportion of the traffic on minor roads, while pedestrians and cyclists’ maintenance claims are much more likely to involve serious injuries, not just property damage. The average maintenance-related legal claim made by cyclists is 13 times higher than those from drivers.
Councils therefore need to give greater priority to inspecting and maintaining minor-roads and off-road paths, including winter maintenance and vegetation clearance of off-road paths and tracks. From a cycling perspective, they also need to focus more on the area of the road nearest the kerb, on potholes which run parallel to (rather than across) the line of cyclists’ travel, on hills (where they will be travelling at higher speeds) and on junctions (where cyclists will be turning and watching out for other vehicles’ movements rather than the road surface).
Further information:
Official guidance: Well Managed Highway Infrastructure, produced by the UK Roads Liaison Group (UKRLG), applies throughout the UK.
Unofficial guidance: For a cycling perspective, see Cycling UK’s briefing on Highway maintenance.
A key consideration in all aspects of road and street planning and design is the need to consider the needs of children, older people and people with mobility, sensory or cognitive difficulties that make it difficult or dangerous for them to walk or cycle independently. The need for inclusive design is recognised in official walking and cycling infrastructure guidance, though the principle is often overlooked in practice.
In general, infrastructure designed for wheelchair access will also work for all forms of pedal cycle (including children’s trailers and cargo-bikes, as well as non-standard pedal cycles that are often used as mobility aids). However, there is a tension between the preference of wheelchair users for level surfaces and those of visually-impaired people for kerbs to provide protection and aid navigation. It is therefore vital that schemes are well designed and that tactile surfacing is correctly installed.
Further information:
Official guidance: See DfT’s Inclusive mobility guide.
Unofficial guidance: See Living Streets’s online briefing on inclusive pedestrian design and Wheels for Wellbeing’s Guide to Inclusive Cycling.
Besides creating a safe and attractive environment for walking, wheeling and cycling, councils should also actively promote walking and cycling using safe and comfortable routes (via behaviour change programmes, training etc.) to residents, enabling them to be less car-dependent. This is particularly important for groups such as women, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, health patients, older or disabled people. People from these groups are particularly prone to thinking that “cycling and walking aren’t for people like me”, yet they are exactly the people whose health, wealth and well-being has most to gain from discovering the joys of walking and cycling!
The Government-backed Bikeability cycle training programme has been designed for adults and teenagers as well as younger children, taking people from learning basic balance and control skills (level 1) through to being able to handle busy roads and junctions (level 3).
Cycle training and other ‘behaviour change’ opportunities should be made available not just in primary schools but also in secondary schools and colleges, cycle-friendly workplaces and in a range of community settings. Women, health patients, people with disabilities, and people from ethnic minority groups (especially women and teenage girls) are much more likely to take up cycling if they do so among peers. This has been well demonstrated by Cycling UK’s Big Bike Revival, Cycling for Health and other social prescribing or community outreach programmes, and by Glasgow’s Bikes for All programme (which offers heavily discounted access for those on lower incomes to the city’s cycle hire scheme – see report). These programmes have all attracted significant participation from these under-represented groups. Living Streets’s programmes for diverse communities and older people, and the Ramblers’ Wellbeing Walks programmes have similarly impressive results in terms of boosting walking among less active groups.
Further information:
Official guidance: See DfT’s webpage on behaviour change projects.
Unofficial guidance: Living Streets runs various programmes to promote walking, notably its WOW programme to promote walking to school, as well as its workplace and communities programmes. Cycling UK provides briefings on the case for and benefits of behaviour change projects generally and cycle training specifically, while the Bikeability Trust provides a range of resources on delivering cycle training for people of different ages and abilities. Sustrans’ behaviour change programmes mainly focus on promoting cycling to school, while Modeshift Stars also runs programmes to promote active and sustainable travel for schools and colleges, workplaces and local communities. Campaign for Better Transport’s flagship Better Transport Week is an annual celebration of all sustainable transport modes and offers many free resources for local authorities and partners.
"A key measure for creating a low traffic future is to redesign our roads, streets and junctions to be people-friendly places."
"A key measure for creating a low traffic future is to redesign our roads, streets and junctions to be people-friendly places."
Active Travel & Safe Streets
A key measure for creating a low traffic future is to redesign our roads, streets and junctions to be people-friendly places, where children can play, neighbours can socialise, people of all ages and abilities can get around safely and easily by walking, wheeling and cycling, and where high-streets and street-life can thrive without being choked by exhaust fumes. [N.B. “Wheeling” includes the use of any mobility aid which can legally be used on the footway, i.e. the pavement]
This section considers what needs doing to create a safe and attractive environment for walking and wheeling , then for cycling, then what both groups need to benefit from safe streets and lanes. It then considers the importance for active travel of well-maintained roads and paths (especially local streets), before concluding with behaviour change measures to boost walking and cycling, particularly among the groups who could most benefit from the physical activity but who are least likely to take up cycling and walking without encouragement and support.
The role of cycle hire schemes is covered in the section on public, shared and community transport.
Walking networks in towns need to connect people safely and conveniently from their homes to nearby schools, shops and other key facilities – for more, see local cycling and walking network plans below.
Pavements need to be wide enough, well-maintained and clear of clutter. Features such as waymarking, seats, street trees and planters are essential for enabling people to navigate, for older people to rest, to reduce pollution and create safe and attractive places where people want to spend time. However they need to be placed where they will not obstruct wheelchair users or create hazards for visually impaired people, or make walking unpleasant. Tactile paving is vital for visually impaired people to know where they can walk safely.
Road crossings need to be located and designed to maximise the convenience of using them. Crossing-points across more minor side-roads should be designed to visually reinforce the new Highway Code rules which give priority to pedestrians and cycle users going straight ahead over vehicles turning into and out of those side roads. Signalised pedestrian crossings need to provide plenty of crossing time for pedestrians, allowing older and disabled people to use them without danger or stress. For the fastest and/or busiest roads, bridges or tunnels are needed. These should be step-free and with gradients and diversions minimised, to make it as easy as possible for disabled people to use them. Where tunnels are provided, they should be wide and straight to provide natural light and good visibility right through the tunnel wherever possible.
Further information
Official guidance: The UK Department for Transport (DfT) has yet to produce a guide to designing infrastructure for walking, to complement its Cycling Infrastructure Design guidance (see below). However Active Travel England (an arms-length Government agency responsible for supporting and assessing local authorities in delivering good practice on walking, wheeling and cycling) has published various tools to support good design for specific schemes and for new developments, as well as a library of good practice case studies.
There is important advice on the planning of networks (as distinct from individual schemes) for walking, wheeling and indeed cycling, in DfT’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) guidance, and some useful (though dated) design advice in the two volumes of the Manual for Streets guidance (see volume 1 – n.b. volume 2 is not available online, but a replacement for both volumes is planned). Other useful sources include the Welsh Government’s Active Travel Act guidance and any locally applicable guidance (such as Transport for London’s Planning for Walking Toolkit).Unofficial guidance: See Living Streets’s online briefing on inclusive pedestrian design.
Cycling networks, like walking and wheeling networks, need to be safe, direct, coherent, comfortable and attractive – see local cycling and walking network plans.
Cycle facilities along fast or busy main roads should be physically protected from motor traffic: the faster and busier the traffic, the greater the level of protection that is needed (but see also the section on safe streets and lanes for solutions where protection is not needed). Cycles should also be kept separate from pedestrians, unless there is plenty of space and/or usage is light (e.g. on a path next to an inter-urban road), allowing both groups to mix safely and without stress.
Safe, secure and well designed cycle parking should be provided in new residential developments and at key destinations, e.g. schools, shops, workplaces, public transport stations and interchanges. In addition to cycle parking, public transport services should make provision for cycling to and from stations and interchanges, with space on trains, trams and longer-distance bus or coach services, and cycle reservation systems on any train services where seats can also be reserved. See also the shared transport section for more on the important role of cycle hire schemes.
National and local government should support the use of non-standard pedal cycles, such as child trailers and cargo-bikes (whether for households or businesses), trikes and hand-cycles (these can be crucial mobility aids for the many people who find walking difficult but who can cycle), and electrically assisted pedal cycles (or ‘e-bikes’). Dutch evidence shows that the average journey on an e-bike is about 60% longer than on a conventional bicycle. E-bikes can therefore substantially increase cycling’s contribution to tackling climate change, enabling people to replace car-use for longer or hillier journeys in rural areas, as well as enabling older, less healthy or disabled people to take up cycling who might otherwise find it difficult or impossible.
Cyclists also need good signing and waymarking.
Further information
Official guidance: As noted in the previous section, DfT provides guidance on the planning of active travel networks (as distinct from individual schemes in its Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) guidance. For planning specific cycle routes or other infrastructure features (e.g. cycle parking), the key reference in England and in Northern Ireland is the Department for Transport’s Cycling Infrastructure Design guidance (Local Transport Note LTN 1/20), together with the various design advice and support tools provided by Active Travel England (including advice on active travel in new developments). Other cycle-specific design guidance includes National Highways’ Designing for Cycle Traffic (which applies to England’s trunk roads and motorways, including their junctions and crossings), the Welsh Government’s Active Travel Act guidance, (n.b. this also covers network planning), the Scottish Government’s Cycling by Design guidance, and any relevant local guidance (such as Transport for London’s London Cycling Infrastructure Design Guidance).
Unofficial guidance: See Cycling UK’s Space for Cycling guide and the Guide to Inclusive Cycling from Wheels for Wellbeing.
The majority of roads and streets in built-up areas should be subject to 20mph speed limits, with similar reductions (e.g. to no more than 40mph) for quieter rural lanes. Exceptions can be made for faster and busier main roads, though these should be provided with separate cycle facilities. There is a mistaken view that 20mph limits should be concentrated around school gates. However this simply reinforces the idea that children will normally be driven to school and that they only need to get safely from their parents’ car to the school gate. Instead, we need 20mph schemes to keep children safe near their homes and throughout their walking and cycling journeys, whether to school or to visit friends or anywhere else. For more information, see the 20sPlentyForUs website.
In 2023, the Welsh Government and Senedd (i.e. the Welsh parliament) made 20mph the ‘default’ speed limit for built-up streets in Wales – allowing exceptions as above – acting on feedback from a Public Health Wales evidence review, a Task Force Report and extensive consultation. Early data show that there were 26% fewer casualties on 20mph and 30mph roads in Wales in the first quarter of 2024, compared with the same period in 2026, while fatal injuries in this period fell from 11 to 5. Other data show reduced speeds, improved compliance with speed limits, more reliable (though marginally increased) journey times and increased walking and cycling. The Low Traffic Future alliance therefore urges the governments for England and Scotland to follow suit.
Other solutions can involve creating various forms of vehicle restrictions in town or city centres or in residential neighbourhoods. Town or city centre schemes typically involve using traffic restrictions to create pedestrianised or pedestrian-priority areas, normally with cycle access and possibly also with bus, taxi and/or delivery access, at least at some times of the day.
In residential areas though, the normal approach involves introducing traffic-filters to cut off rat-runs, while maintaining access for walking, wheeling and cycling, giving them an advantage for local trips. This type of scheme has come to be known as a Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN), though it is not a new technique. Overall, LTNs have been shown to improve road safety, increase walking and cycling and reduce car use for local journeys. They generally attract high public support, both in principle and in practice after their implementation. These schemes need careful design and good consultation to ensure local community support, and wider measures may also be needed to ensure they reduce motor traffic overall.
School Streets are another option for reducing local traffic pressures and creating more child-friendly street environments, particularly around primary schools. These schemes prohibit driving at school arrival and drop-off times on selected local streets. Exemptions can be made for local residents and businesses. School Streets tend to cover very minor roads and a more limited area than LTNs, though the two types of measures can also be combined. School Streets are generally easier to implement and are more popular initially than LTNs. Monitoring has shown these schemes do also reduce traffic.
Traffic calming features (such as road humps and speed cushions) and/or zonal speed camera systems can reduce speeds and improve safety (see review of evidence), and may be useful where the layout of a street (or a street network) does not naturally keep most drivers’ speeds down to around 20mph. Still, it is generally preferable to design streets to feel like safe, people-friendly places, with attractive surfacing and street furniture (e.g. seating and planters) which enable and welcome people of all ages and abilities to walk, cycle and wheel safely and easily.
Oxfordshire and Cornwall have delivered 20mph limits for almost all of the counties’ towns and villages, having made funding available subject to support from local councillors and parish councils – this was forthcoming in the vast majority of cases. Surrey County Council is not only introducing 20mph limits for most (though not all) urban streets but also has a process for reducing rural single-carriageway limits potentially to 40mph on rural lanes, or to 20mph or 30mph in villages. This approach could be combined with design features used in the Quiet Lanes schemes in Norfolk and Kent, and/or with the use of average speed cameras.
Further information
Official guidance: See DfT’s statutory guidance on Setting local speed limits (though a long-promised update to this document is still awaited). The Welsh Government has published several documents relating to its plans to make 20mph the ‘default’ speed limit for built-up areas in Wales.Unofficial guidance: See the guides to creating Low Traffic Neighbourhoods from the charities Possible, Sustrans, and from Living Streets and the London Cycling Campaign. CPRE produces a guide to Quiet Lanes; the School Streets Initiative has a collection of useful resources on creating School Streets; while 20sPlentyForUs provides information and advice on 20mph limits.
The UK Government has encouraged local authorities in England (outside London) to draw up Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs), while Welsh authorities are legally required to adopt Active Travel Network Maps (ATNMs), in accordance with the Welsh Government’s Active Travel Act design guidance. However the principles, and the steps needed to create a LCWIP or an ATNM, are similar:
- Define the geographical area to be covered (including any cross-boundary issues).
- Identify the most important start and end-points of journeys (e.g. residential areas, schools and colleges, employment locations, shopping areas, healthcare, public transport and other facilities) that need to be connected by safe, convenient and direct walking and cycling routes.
- Prioritise the corridors with the greatest potential to unlock increased cycling and walking if provision is improved – the Propensity to Cycle Tool (http://pct.bike) can assist with this.
- Identify the actual route alignments where walking and/or cycling conditions can be improved most cost-effectively to maximise the increases in walking and/or cycling.
- Consult and seek support for the route proposals (including from neighbouring authorities etc where cross-boundary issues arise, as well as from the wider public), adapting them as required in the light of feedback received.
However national governments and councils alike need to do more to integrate the planning and funding of LCWIPs (or ATNMs in Wales) and Rights of Way Improvement Plans (RoWIPs). LCWIPs and ATNMs are widely seen as being mainly for day-to-day urban walking and cycling, while rights of way are often seen as being for recreational walking (and, to a lesser extent, cycling and horse-riding) in rural areas. Yet this distinction is not, and should not be, hard and fast. On the contrary, joining up the planning and funding of these networks would make it easier, for instance, for children to walk or cycle from outlying villages to schools in nearby towns, or for families in those towns to get out for recreational walks or bike rides without feeling the need to jump in the car to get there.
Further information
Official guidance: The key sources for planning walking and cycling networks (as distinct from specific routes or other infrastructure features) are DfT’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) guidance and its statutory guidance on reallocating roadspace to support active travel – or the Active Travel Act guidance in Wales. N.B. The DfT-backed Propensity to Cycle Tool is a very useful resource for prioritising the links in a proposed local cycle network in England or Wales. Finally, there is Government guidance on preparing Rights of Way Improvement Plans (RoWiPs).Unofficial guidance: See also the guidance on rights of way and RoWIPs from the Ramblers and Cycling UK.
Electrically-assisted scooters (or ‘e-scooters’) have become popular in recent years. However at present, the only e-scooters that may be ridden on UK roads are publicly hired e-scooters, as part of a UK Government trial to assess whether to legalise them and, if so, how. Privately-owned scooters may only legally be ridden on private land with the landowner’s permission.
The previous UK Government had plans to create a new category of ‘micro-mobility vehicles’, that would include e-scooters and other light motor-vehicles, whose power and weight limits will be low enough to permit them to be ridden under similar laws to those applying to pedal cycles. Low Traffic Future urges that these vehicles should be regulated in a way that seeks to maximise their potential benefits for reducing car traffic, while minimising the safety risks to their riders and other people – especially to more vulnerable pedestrians – and to the health benefits of walking and cycling. Micromobility parking bays should preferably be provided on the carriageway, and should never obstruct footways.
Further information
Official guidance: DfT’s guidance on e-scooter trials applies in England, Scotland and Wales.
SUVs have a range of adverse impacts for the environment, road safety, highway maintenance and the management of road space, due to their excessive height, bonnet-height, length, width, weight and/or fuel consumption.
The adverse safety impacts are borne disproportionately by pedestrians and cyclists, especially children, though SUVs present an increased risk to other road-users too. Their own occupants also face increased risks, as they have a significantly higher risk of ‘roll-over’ incidents compared with standard-cars. There are also psychological effects due to SUV drivers feeling more protected (and thus being less mindful of the risks they might present to other road users) and of ‘looking down’ on other road users, both literally and metaphorically (even if subconsciously).
SUVs have outsized climate and air pollution impacts, due to their height, weight and width, their tyres, and indeed the emissions from manufacturing them. If SUVs were a nation, they would be the world’s 5th largest emitter of CO2. They also have disproportionate road maintenance impacts: these increase exponentially, in proportion to the 4th power of a vehicle’s axle load. Parked SUVs can block narrower roads, when lorries, buses, emergency service vehicles or other larger vehicles are unable to get past them.
With SUV sales rising, cars in the UK and EU have been getting wider by an average of 1 cm every 2 years, with over a half being too wide for many car-parking spaces. We support calls from the SUV Alliance and its members (notably Transport & Environment, the Green Alliance and Clean Cities Campaign) for regulations and financial measures to deter the manufacture, purchase and use of larger, heavier and/or higher-emitting vehicles. Paris has trebled the parking charges for heavier vehicles, while Edinburgh has banned SUV advertising on the City Council’s billboards and other property. Other councils are actively considering the options available to them.
Further information:
Unofficial guidance: The consultancy Transport for Quality of Life has created a toolkit of measures available to local authorities for managing cars which are heavy, long, wide, have high bonnet-heights and/or have high fuel consumption. The SUV Alliance provides a compendium of evidence on the range of problems associated with SUVs.
Poorly-maintained roads are the bane of drivers’ lives. But pedestrians, cyclists and people with disabilities are far more seriously affected by poor maintenance than drivers. Potholes, obstructions and trip-hazards can cause serious and even fatal injuries, while poor winter maintenance can trap older and disabled people indoors, unable to get to the shops for fear of a dangerous fall.
Yet road maintenance budgets are increasingly skewed towards maintaining A roads and motorways. That is despite evidence that funding cuts to minor road maintenance have significantly higher economic costs than those affecting trunk road maintenance. This is probably because walking and cycling account for a greater proportion of the traffic on minor roads, while pedestrians and cyclists’ maintenance claims are much more likely to involve serious injuries, not just property damage. The average maintenance-related legal claim made by cyclists is 13 times higher than those from drivers.
Councils therefore need to give greater priority to inspecting and maintaining minor-roads and off-road paths, including winter maintenance and vegetation clearance of off-road paths and tracks. From a cycling perspective, they also need to focus more on the area of the road nearest the kerb, on potholes which run parallel to (rather than across) the line of cyclists’ travel, on hills (where they will be travelling at higher speeds) and on junctions (where cyclists will be turning and watching out for other vehicles’ movements rather than the road surface).
Further information:
Official guidance: Well Managed Highway Infrastructure, produced by the UK Roads Liaison Group (UKRLG), applies throughout the UK.
Unofficial guidance: For a cycling perspective, see Cycling UK’s briefing on Highway maintenance.
A key consideration in all aspects of road and street planning and design is the need to consider the needs of children, older people and people with mobility, sensory or cognitive difficulties that make it difficult or dangerous for them to walk or cycle independently. The need for inclusive design is recognised in official walking and cycling infrastructure guidance, though the principle is often overlooked in practice.
In general, infrastructure designed for wheelchair access will also work for all forms of pedal cycle (including children’s trailers and cargo-bikes, as well as non-standard pedal cycles that are often used as mobility aids). However, there is a tension between the preference of wheelchair users for level surfaces and those of visually-impaired people for kerbs to provide protection and aid navigation. It is therefore vital that schemes are well designed and that tactile surfacing is correctly installed.
Further information:
Official guidance: See DfT’s Inclusive mobility guide.
Unofficial guidance: See Living Streets’s online briefing on inclusive pedestrian design and Wheels for Wellbeing’s Guide to Inclusive Cycling.
Besides creating a safe and attractive environment for walking, wheeling and cycling, councils should also actively promote walking and cycling using safe and comfortable routes (via behaviour change programmes, training etc.) to residents, enabling them to be less car-dependent. This is particularly important for groups such as women, people from minority ethnic backgrounds, health patients, older or disabled people. People from these groups are particularly prone to thinking that “cycling and walking aren’t for people like me”, yet they are exactly the people whose health, wealth and well-being has most to gain from discovering the joys of walking and cycling!
The Government-backed Bikeability cycle training programme has been designed for adults and teenagers as well as younger children, taking people from learning basic balance and control skills (level 1) through to being able to handle busy roads and junctions (level 3).
Cycle training and other ‘behaviour change’ opportunities should be made available not just in primary schools but also in secondary schools and colleges, cycle-friendly workplaces and in a range of community settings. Women, health patients, people with disabilities, and people from ethnic minority groups (especially women and teenage girls) are much more likely to take up cycling if they do so among peers. This has been well demonstrated by Cycling UK’s Big Bike Revival, Cycling for Health and other social prescribing or community outreach programmes, and by Glasgow’s Bikes for All programme (which offers heavily discounted access for those on lower incomes to the city’s cycle hire scheme – see report). These programmes have all attracted significant participation from these under-represented groups. Living Streets’s programmes for diverse communities and older people, and the Ramblers’ Wellbeing Walks programmes have similarly impressive results in terms of boosting walking among less active groups.
Further information:
Official guidance: See DfT’s webpage on behaviour change projects.
Unofficial guidance: Living Streets runs various programmes to promote walking, notably its WOW programme to promote walking to school, as well as its workplace and communities programmes. Cycling UK provides briefings on the case for and benefits of behaviour change projects generally and cycle training specifically, while the Bikeability Trust provides a range of resources on delivering cycle training for people of different ages and abilities. Sustrans’ behaviour change programmes mainly focus on promoting cycling to school, while Modeshift Stars also runs programmes to promote active and sustainable travel for schools and colleges, workplaces and local communities. Campaign for Better Transport’s flagship Better Transport Week is an annual celebration of all sustainable transport modes and offers many free resources for local authorities and partners.
