Emergency active travel proposals provide route to ‘new normal’

Pop-up cycleways, temporary road closures and additional town centre cycle parking are just some of the options being considered to make travel safer and offer new ways of getting around, helping the county adjust to a ‘new normal’ as lockdown restrictions ease.

And with initial funding of £514,000, of an expected total of £2.35m, now secured through a successful bidding process to the Department for Transport, Buckinghamshire Council is developing an initial programme of emergency active travel proposals. These will build on the significant increases in walking and cycling already happening during lockdown, help contribute to a cleaner environment, ensure people keep the right social distance while out and about and provide further safe access routes to schools.

Buckinghamshire Council Cabinet Member for Transport, Nick Naylor, said that with the effects of Covid-19 likely to be with us for some time to come, there’s a need to make things as safe as possible now, but also to grasp new opportunities that will be better for people’s health and promote improvements to the environment.

“The pandemic has pressed a massive global reset button. Of course, while we all want things to get back to normal, there may be areas where a change in habits would be really beneficial. Things like working from home, less need to travel and more use of online services have already resulted in less pollution, better air quality and other environmental benefits. We can potentially learn from this and encourage different ways of doing things going forward.”

He said that the Council was busy looking at a range of options and had kept a log of walking and cycling schemes people had suggested in the past few weeks.

Nick added: “Of course, we don’t have the money to tackle everything, so we’re focusing on areas where we can make the biggest difference with temporary and ‘pop-up’ measures. The advantage of these schemes is that because they are temporary they can be altered. If they work really well some could become permanent, but we’ll be keen to hear local feedback and see how well these measures perform before any decisions like that are made.”

The Council says there will be more opportunities for longer term changes, to benefit communities, the local economy and the environment with a second round of permanent active travel measures. This could include more electric vehicle charging points and potentially taking part in the Government’s e-scooter trials.

Clive Harriss, Cabinet Member for Sports and Leisure added: “All the measures under consideration need to complement everything being done locally to restart the economy and reopen our high streets, schools and other community facilities. It needs to be a focussed effort and as Nick says, a perfect opportunity to think about changing some of our habits going forward, particularly around cycling and walking.”

Further detail on the temporary schemes to be implemented in the initial phase will be announced by the Council in the coming weeks.