Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (draft)

Extracted from the executive summary
• Creating a walking and cycling nation is a long-term process and the first step in that process is this Strategy. The government’s long term goal up to 2040 is that walking and cycling should be a normal part of everyday life, and the natural choice for shorter journeys such as the commute to school, college, work or leisure trips. We want to create a nation where cycling and walking are the norm for all people whatever their background or characteristics. To make our goal a reality, we want everyone in the country to have access to safe, attractive routes for cycling and walking and we are calling that goal our cycling and walking ambition.

Our ambition for England is:
“We want to make cycling and walking the natural choice for shorter journeys, or as part of a longer journey”

• This ambition sets out our desire to see transformative change over the coming years. Change that will require us all to share a responsibility to make it happen. Realising this ambition will not only take sustained investment in cycling and walking infrastructure but also long-term transport planning and a change in attitudes amongst central Government, local bodies, businesses, communities and individuals. Cycling and walking must be seen as transport modes in their own right and an integral part of the transport network.

• This Strategy is the first step to that long-term transformative change process. It sets out our objectives that we are working towards to meet our ambition, the financial resources available to meet our objectives, our strategy for delivering our objectives and the governance arrangements that will review this delivery.

The objectives and target we have set to measure progress towards our 2040 ambition are to:
• Double cycling, where cycling activity is measured as the estimated total number of bicycle stages made each year, from 0.8 billion stages in 2013 to 1.6 billion stages in 2025;
• Reverse the decline in walking activity, measured as the total number of walking stages per person per year;
• Reduce the rate of cyclists killed or seriously injured on England’s roads, measured as the number of fatalities and serious injuries per billion miles cycled, each year;
• Increase the percentage of children aged 5 to 10 that usually walk to school.

Public consultation
At the same time, an open consultation on the strategy was launched as the government seeks public opinion on how it should operate. The consultation will run until 23 May 2016 with the final strategy published in summer 2016.