Changing the way we travel
How do we encourage more people to get out of their cars and choose to cycle, walk and wheel instead? This is a challenge all councils are facing as they look to encourage more ‘active travel’ in their communities.
Councils are best placed to make active travel easier, but encouraging a long-term change in behaviour comes with challenges and councils can face resistance from some, according to speakers at the LGA’s annual conference.
Chris Boardman (pictured, above), National Active Travel Commissioner and Olympic cycling gold medallist, told delegates that we should be building our streets for young people.
At a session on active travel, he said: “We have so over-used the car that there is no space for anything else.
“What space do you want for your kids? Do you think you are doing what is right for your kids and for future generations?”
Mr Boardman was clear that active travel measures were not about “getting tough on cars”, but instead about “creating a choice”.
He added: “It is absolutely essential to give people options so they can reduce their car usage and not using the car becomes a practical thing to do.”
Other speakers urged councils not to give in to “a noisy minority” opposed to some active travel measures.
Dame Jane Roberts, Chair of the charity Living Streets, said: “If you are used to a place as it is, you can’t imagine it can be anything different. It is very easy to assume that it has always been like this and can’t change.
“It is a misnomer that car journeys are made by trades people with heavy tools. Many are private journeys.
“We should be tougher on unnecessary journeys and shift that dial. There’s so much that we can do and political choices make a lot of difference.”
Steve Golding, Director of the RAC, told delegates to think of those who live in rural communities and how their experiences of active travel are different from those who live in cities.
He called for greater investment in public transport in suburbs, which are “densely populated but don’t fit the vision of a 15-minute neighbourhood”.
He also described the logic behind the introduction of road pricing as “economic claptrap”, preferring a congestion charge, which was “relatively straightforward” to introduce.
Local engines of growth
Should ensuring economic growth become a statutory responsibility?
Addressing delegates at the LGA’s annual conference in Bournemouth, Local Government Minister Lee Rowley MP said “engines of growth are local and, ultimately, councils do not need a statutory basis to do that”.
He told senior councillors and chief executives that “you know your communities best, you know where your gaps are and where your skills are”, and although “government could create the conditions for growth”, it was councils who were best placed to drive this.
Other speakers in the same conference session noted that councils have to balance an array of competing priorities when it comes to supporting growth.
Antony Lockley, Blackpool Council’s Assistant Chief Executive, said that, in 2010, 36 per cent of the council’s budget was spent on social care, but now 80 per cent is.
Cllr Susan Hinchcliffe, Leader of Bradford Metropolitan District Council, reported that “20 per cent of my week is spent managing transport and infrastructure that drives growth locally”.
She urged the Government “to end the ‘beauty contest’ concept of delivery of funding to local areas”, and called for “mutual respect in the way central and local government operate”.
She also highlighted to delegates that the LGA’s Work Local plan “sets out a clear and urgent ambition to deliver skills at local level”.
“Local delivery is simply more cost-effective and gets results,” she said.