As ULEZ expands, how can built environment stakeholders collaborate to deliver a London-wide active travel strategy? Ellie Davies, Programme Manager at NLA reflects on our recent Active Travel Summit.

The 2023 edition of the NLA’s annual Active Travel summit felt timelier and more topical than usual. Reasons for the increase in the volume of the discussion surrounding Active Travel and London’s transport network more broadly, is in-part down to the impending expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to all 33 London boroughs, an increase in popularity and maturity of electric micro-mobility technology and a drive to democratise and improve access to Active Travel for all Londoners. 

 

Over the course of the morning, we heard from ten experts in Active Travel regarding their work and aims for London. 

 

The Mayor’s Transport Strategy sets the goals for London’s streets, with the aim of by 2041 having all Londoners doing 20 minutes of Active Travel per day and 70 per cent of Londoners living within 400 meters of the London-wide cycle network. Alongside the drive to increase the popularity of cycling, there is also an ambition to de-prioritise the private car with an aim of reducing private car trips by 3 million. 

 

Stephanie Pathak, Strategy and Planning Manager at TfL began by detailing how Transport for London sets out on achieving the Mayor’s transport strategy goals. 

 

TfL more than tripled the cycle network from 2016 – 2023 and plan on continuing to improve the cycle ways with the use of Cycle Route Quality Criteria and improved wayfinding and branding. With an aim to democratise cycling further, TfL is continuing to push this agenda by the continuous development and imposing of 20mph speed zones and the expansion of the School Streets programme. 

 

Though not stereotypically linked to Active Travel, busses play a vital role in the creation of Healthy Streets, by reducing traffic and therefore making streets safer for walking and cycling. The approach of improving both the quality of cycle ways and public transport is a two-pronged strategy that will have a great impact on the way Londoners use their city. 

 

Bruce McVean, Assistant Director - Policy & Projects at the City of London shared an insightful presentation on the development and key learning from Bank Junction. 

 

Bank Junction is home to some of the most iconic buildings in the City including Poultry 1, The Bank of England and the Royal Exchange. It is a 5-arm junction that sits on top of one of the busiest underground stations in the City and is a project by the City of London to reallocate the surrounding street space. Before the project started in 2017, Bank Junction was one of the most dangerous roads in the city and closed the roads to all traffic bar cyclists and busses. 

 

Having now re-introduced limited numbers of cars – this radical reallocation of carriageway space has transformed the surrounding public realm to a place that you can now enjoy and is peaceful enough for al-fresco dining. St Pauls Gyratory is the next large project for the City of London, which is taking a similar approach to their Aldgate Square scheme to prioritise cycling and walking and reallocate public space. 

 

Leo Murray, Director of Innovation and Engagement at Possible concluded the presentations in session one with a talk detailing the opportunities and challenges presented with the re-opening of Hammersmith Bridge. Hammersmith Bridge, which was close to all traffic since 2019, provides a strategic transport link between Barnes and the Hammersmith and Fulham peninsula with central London. 

 

Interestingly, traffic volumes are down by around 5 per cent in this part of London, compared to other boroughs since the pandemic – due in-part to the closure of Hammersmith Bridge. Leo stated that reopening the bridge to cars again would bring that traffic back – so what Active Travel offer can we provide to ensure that car numbers do not spring back upon reopening? Re-opening the bridge to Ohmio shuttles, cyclists and pedestrians only is the solution proposed by Possible – this would ensure that the less-able have access to crossing the bridge whilst keeping car traffic below pre-pandemic numbers. 

Elizabeth Gaden, E-Scooter Trial Stakeholder & Contracts Manager at Transport for London began the second session with an update on the London Rental E-Scooter Trial. TfL’s statistics from March 2022 – March 2023 show that there were an average of 2.4 million trips made on their rental e-scooters since the trials began, with the average distance of 2.5km per trip across the 10 boroughs involved in the trial. 

 

Trends in TfL data show that Saturday is the busiest day for e-scooter rental suggesting that the majority of trips are made for leisure. Key sustainability takeaways for the trial are that the scheme is using 100 per cent renewable energy to charge the scooters thus saving 249 tonnes of CO2. Looking forward, TfL will launch phase two of the trial in September of 2023, with the DfT extension ending in May 2024. Elizabeth referenced the need for ongoing stakeholder engagement and teaching to further democratise access to this mode of transport. Notably the ‘easiest win’ would be to roll out this trial on one contract across all 33 London Boroughs. 

 

Alice Pleasant, Public Affairs Manager at Lime continued the theme of electric micro-mobility with a talk on ‘Lime in London: assessing the benefits of shared e-bike services and recommendations’. 

 

Since February 2019, Lime in London has more than 1.25 million users, with more than 12 million shared e-bike trips showing an average month on month growth of 10 per cent and finally more than 300 million kms travelled. Clearly Lime provides a service that has had an incredible impact on the numbers of Londoners opting to choose micro-mobility, with 38 per cent of bikes in areas with low access to public transport, bridging the gap between communities and their larger transport infrastructure.

 

Looking ahead, similarly with TfL’s e-scooter trial, Lime plan on working to introduce a London-wider service which would only boost numbers using their service as 22 per cent of riders would cycle more if the rules were consistent across boroughs. Alice also called for all stakeholders within Active Travel to regularly share their date on user patterns to speed-up the delivery and accuracy of these schemes. 

 

Dustin Carlino, Research Associate at the Alan Turing Institute joined the panel discussion and provided insight into the role that differing technologies can play in the advance of Active Travel. Not just by the use of electrified micro-mobility but also traffic modelling software. 

 

The power of showing people what the future of transportation can look like using technology has a very untapped potential as local communities can have a hard time understanding documents that go out to consultation. Therefore the more that we can gameify this process and give people and intuitive way of understanding the change to an area will help people be more on board with changes to streetscapes and improvements to their public realm. 

 

 

The final session of the 2023 Active Travel summit was an open panel discussion picking apart the question ‘Access to Active Travel: How do we prioritize communities?’

 

Joining the Chair by Peter Murray OBE, Co-founder of NLA, was:

 

The panel first examined access to Active Travel through the lens of car dependency. Louise shared interesting insights from their masterplan scheme in Ealing, where 70 per cent of car journeys in the borough are under two miles long and only 6 per cent of people use Active Travel to commute to work. In a borough with typically lower levels of Active Travel, there is a real need to ensure open dialogues and encourage communication with local communities who may be dependent on their cars – alongside an awareness that the creation of a culture war should not stop the urgency to decrease car dependency. Anna referenced the ULEZ expansion and welcomed Sadiq Khan’s expansion of the scrappage scheme. 

 

The panel then moved on to discuss the role of borough partnerships in the democratisation of Active Travel. Matt and John both began by agreeing that there may need to be a top-down approach between the Greater London Authority / Transport for London / Active Travel England to share guidance and policy across the 33 London Boroughs. 

 

Louise also praised the development of the ‘Super Loop’ bus route to improve orbital connectivity but stated that we also need to see the improvement of orbital links in cycling. An audience contribution asked the panel if the term ‘Active Travel’ is useful and whether industry should shift towards the using ‘sustainable travel’ or incorporating the ’15-minute city’ trope more commonly into discussions. 

 

Ultimately, all the discussions from the morning reiterated the standpoint that all these interventions, schemes, policies and technologies prioritise the health and wellbeing of both people and planet.