Walking and cycling key to boosting physical activity levels

Walking and cycling for transport make a valuable contribution to our activity levels. Be it walking to school, cycling to work, or many other everyday journeys, active travel can offer a convenient, accessible and affordable way to move more. For those with busy and hectic lives, it may be one of the few opportunities to create a regular habit.

Sport England commissioned Sustrans, working with Dr Nick Cavill and Prof. Adrian Davis, to assess and highlight the great potential of active travel and mark Sport England’s own ambition for how cycling and walking can support their vision of a more active nation.

Strong case for investing in active travel

The report presents a definitive case for investing in active travel to support physical activity. Our expert, independent research team reviewed the best quality evidence and found a wide range of effective interventions that increased walking and cycling, with the strongest evidence pointing to integrated approaches across whole places.

Eighty-four studies met the inclusion criteria. These were then clustered by a series of intervention typologies:

• City and town-wide interventions – these involved a mixture of changes to walking and cycling infrastructure eg. cycle lanes and community engagement programmes eg. cycle training.
• Building or improving routes or networks.
• Social marketing including marketing of infrastructure.
• Workplace and other institution based interventions.
• Interpersonal interventions.
• School-based programmes.

Conclusions 

Overall, the review concludes that there is strong evidence for the positive impact of interventions to increase or support active travel. This in turn increases levels of physical activity. Of the different intervention typologies the evidence was strongest (in terms of volume and robustness) for city or town-wide interventions. Each of the other intervention types reported some increases in walking and or cycling.

Of 84 studies, over two thirds (61) found interventions had led to increased levels of active travel. Most of the remaining studies showed no significant change or showed mixed results across a number of indicators. A small number showed decreases in active travel.

All of the peer reviewed studies addressing whole town or city-wide interventions showed that interventions increased levels of cycling and walking compared to controls. The evidence available for city and town-wide programmes shows change at the population level. However, the evaluations did not discriminate between different population sub-groups.

The review also found evidence for the positive impact of walking and cycling interventions at a more localised level. Interventions to build or improve local routes or networks report increased walking or cycling in most cases.

Recommendations

The report provides clear consensus of active travel’s huge potential. To harness this, it’s crucial we engage with and listen to people in the places they live and work – to recognise barriers, challenges and local context, and understand how active travel can work for them. The report also carries recommendations to invest and collaborate in active travel more effectively –  an important reminder of how further research and robust evaluation can help us continue to improve provision and delivery.

The message is clear: active travel has a vital role to play in achieving a more active nation. This review is an important step towards fulfilling that promise.

A number of recommendations emerge from the study. In investing in active travel, priority should be given to: ‘whole system’-type intervention approaches; identifying appropriate combinations of measures that ‘fit’ locally, based on evidence of need and likelihood of impact; encouraging local agencies to promote active transport as part of their efforts to increase physical activity; securing consistent, long-term funding streams; and enabling funding streams that draw on wide-ranging cross-departmental support.

Sustrans and our partners on this project would like to thank Sport England, our expert advisory panel, and our theory-into-practice workshop participants of key stakeholders. All contributors are listed in the report.

Read the full report

• Cycling
• Health
• Policy
• Walking

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The postcode lottery of children’s road safety

We need more widespread high-quality infrastructure and slower streets to make children and young people safer, especially in deprived areas.

Children on foot or bike are more than 3 times as likely to be involved in a collision with a vehicle in the 20% most deprived areas in Scotland than the 20% least deprived areas.

We need more widespread high-quality infrastructure and slower streets to make children and young people safer, especially in deprived areas.

What we have been studying

Though it is well-established that there are more road traffic accidents in more deprived areas, we have been researching just children travelling on foot or bike only.

Sustrans Scotland compared road casualty data for slight and serious injuries with the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation to work out the risk to children in different areas. This produced the average risk of being involved in an incident across Scotland depending on level of deprivation.

What we found

The risk for a child on foot or bike of being involved in a road traffic accident increases as areas become more deprived. From an average of 0.25 incidents per data zone in the least deprived areas to an average of 0.83 incidents per data zone in the most deprived areas.

Children on foot and bikes are at a disproportionate risk of injury in deprived areas.

Why is this?

We do not know and this research isn’t designed to tell us. The truth is that everywhere will be different and there are lots of interwoven factors that lead to this social injustice.
However, our work delivering walking and cycling infrastructure and working with communities leads us to a few theories:

• Deprived areas are often denser and busier, so you might expect more casualties as there are more people around.
• Deprived areas are more likely to host busy and fast roads that are more dangerous.
• Car ownership is likely to be low in these areas (though cars driving through might be high) which means that more people are out on foot or a bike on the way to school or work.
• There may be a lack of investment in infrastructure and locals may not have the time or resources to complain or organise a response.

What do we want to happen?

Though we are not sure why this is happening, we do know what we can do to reduce this inequality and deliver safer streets. The most effective preventative measures are safe infrastructure and slower speed limits.

• Infrastructure: evidence shows pedestrian safety requires appropriate crossings, wide pavements, and comfortable walking routes. And for cycling, segregated space offers the biggest improvement.
• Lower speed limits: Protecting children from cars means that we need to slow down cars. Slower streets reduce both the number and severity of collisions. 20mph has been particularly effective in deprived communities, where it halved casualties in the most deprived areas of London.
• There is a need for more research to better understand the causes of this inequality.

If we want more people walking and cycling, and more children seeing the health benefits of active travel to school, we need to start by making our streets safer places - especially in Scotland’s most disadvantaged areas.

Find out more about our work in Scotland

• Communities
• Young people

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I worry for my son's health because of London's toxic air

Lorcan began struggling to breathe in June 2018 following a cold.

©RayMalone. When Lorcan was first diagnosed his consultant advised us to walk on quieter back streets and try to avoid taking the tube.

A growing body of evidence demonstrates a link between poor air quality and asthma, with recent findings revealing the UK has the highest rates of childhood asthma caused by air pollution in Europe. As many as one in five new cases of child asthma in the UK are linked to traffic fumes and other pollution, totalling nearly 40,000 cases a year – a worryingly high figure.

Pollution from traffic can damage airways, leading to inflammation and the development of asthma in children who are genetically predisposed to the condition. Lorcan, aged two and a half, was diagnosed with a severe viral wheeze in June 2018. Since then, he has been in and out of hospital following seven episodes, with consultants confirming that air pollution from cars is a significant contributory factor.

Ruth Fitzharris, based in Crouch End in North London, shares her story about Lorcan’s condition and what she thinks needs to be done to clean up the Capital’s dirty air.

London’s toxic air

Ruth said: “When Lorcan was first diagnosed his consultant advised us to walk on quieter back streets and try to avoid taking the tube which is hugely debilitating in the capital. Since then I have felt trapped. I used to enjoy taking him into central London but now those places are bad for him and the air is becoming noticeably worse.

“Even in my local area, walking down the road you can see back-to-back traffic pumping out toxic fumes. A simple trip to the shops is an anxiety-inducing experience but I don’t have any choice in the air my son and I breathe.  

“ I don’t have time to wait for the Government to take action. I met another mother in a similar situation a couple of month’s back who has now left Islington and is living in Winchester. This is the reality of the Capital’s chronic air problem. ”

- Ruth Fitzharris

The impact of air pollution on little lungs

“Over the course of the past year, Lorcan’s had seven episodes. Because of this, he has been in and out of hospital for three days at a time to receive intense treatment. This involves receiving medication through an inhaler for which he has to be pinned down because he is too young and distressed to co-operate, with each episode he has been given the inhaler around 50 times, oxygen masks and nebulisers and a medication called prednisolone which can inhibit growth.

“As a result, Lorcan’s height and weight has slipped from the 50th to the 9th centile. He has also become less agile and he’s missed out on quite a lot of playing with other children and going to the nursery – the sort of things that other children take for granted.

“He is too young to understand that he has to have the medication and becomes extremely agitated, so he’s not able to sleep much while in hospital. The process is very distressing for us both and we don’t get much sleep at the hospital.

“Because of the frequency of his episodes, my plans to get a job have been delayed and I cancelled being maid of honour at my best friend’s wedding. This recovery time from each episode is physically and mentally draining. And not just for me, the whole family is on edge whenever he goes back to hospital. The anxiety and stress has a huge impact on our everyday life.

Reducing our dependency on cars

“There needs to be a big reduction in the use of polluting vehicles in cities. There is traffic everywhere you look. Public transport is very congested and our cities lack an extensive well-connected cycling network like in Holland. It would be fantastic to retrofit dedicated cycling and walking infrastructure on our roads.

“We’re lucky that we have access to medication which has prevented him from having an episode for four months. But that doesn’t stop the anxiety and stress I feel when taking the tube or walking down a road packed full of cars idling their engines.

“I don’t have time to wait for the Government to take action. I met another mother in a similar situation a couple of month’s back who has now left Islington and is living in Winchester. This is the reality of the Capital’s chronic air problem. Probably the only way to escape it is to leave.”

Read on about Sustran’s air quality projects here. 

• Air Quality
• Health
• Lifestyle

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Second report of the Glasgow Connectivity Commission blueprint for a thriving city

The first report of the Connectivity Commission in December 2018 left me wanting more.

It identified many problems with transport in Glasgow that Sustrans Scotland recognise, but it didn’t propose the type of radical change needed. I wrote a blog about this, explaining why I felt Glasgow needed a bolder vision for true transport transformation.

The second report delivers that. We welcome the report and the practical, deliverable recommendations for a healthier and prosperous Glasgow.

While press coverage has focused on the proposals for a Glasgow Metro, there are big ideas for walking, wheeling, cycling and public space too.

Connectivity

A network of safe, high quality, segregated cycling routes connecting the city centre to suburbs. The South City Way, a segregated space for cycling between Queens Park and Merchant City, is highlighted for praise. This project is delivered by a partnership of Glasgow City Council and Sustrans with part finance from our Places for Everyone programme, which is funded by Transport Scotland.

The Commission wants to see this type of infrastructure connecting all parts of the city and outer neighbourhoods so that everyone has the option of safe, direct cycle routes into the city centre.

Changes to vehicle access in the city centre to prioritise people-friendly public spaces 

The ‘smart grid’ proposal takes a lead from the city of Vitoria Gasteiz in the Basque Region and Barcelona’s ‘Superblocks’; mini-neighbourhoods created by permitting vehicles only on certain streets, and prioritising walking, cycling and space for people. Vitoria Gasteiz has seen a rapid increase in walking and cycling as a result.

More Avenues

The acceleration and expansion of the Avenues project into other parts of the city centre such as George Square, Argyle Street, Cathedral Street and High Street. The Avenues programme, delivers streestscape improvements to establish principal Avenues throughout the city centre, forming an integrated network of continuous pedestrian and cycle priority routes.

It helps make the city more attractive, “people-friendly”, and economically competitive.

Glasgow Metro

Once delivered, the eye-catching metro will help people leave the car at home and make life better for those without a car, but the proposals for walking, cycling and placemaking would also have major impact (at a fraction of the cost).

Whilst delivering the ambitions of the report will not be easy, the Commission underpin their recommendations with evidence of their impact and have indicated how they think infrastructure can be paid for.

We value our strong working relationship with Glasgow that has helped us to deliver the South City Way, South West City Way, Connecting Woodside and a host of other schemes to help more people walk, wheel and cycle. We hope to be a part of delivering these new, exciting proposals.

Glasgow has identified a path to be a greener, healthier and happier city. It is not alone in realising the problems created by 50 years of car-centric planning, and we continue to support the City of Edinburgh with plans for the City Centre Transformation.

More cities, towns and places in Scotland should take note and work out how they can deliver places for everyone.

• Communities
• Cycling in cities
• Walking

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