Twelve of England’s regional mayors have signed up to an unprecedented plan to create a “national active travel network”, focusing initially on helping children to walk, cycle or scoot to school safely.
The scheme, which involves all non-London regional mayors other than one from Reform UK, is intended to fit into wider efforts to devolve transport planning, working with Active Travel England (ATE) to implement schemes they think would help their area.
It has the backing of Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, who said the scheme has the potential to “significantly improve” public health in the areas involved, covering 20 million people overall.
The 12 mayors, nine of them Labour and two Conservative, plus Luke Campbell, the Reform UK mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, have signed a joint pledge to “work together to improve our streets for everyone, for the benefit of the health, wellbeing and connectedness of our communities”.
The initial focus from this autumn will be on trips to and from school, with a pledge to create a combined 3,500 miles of routes safely linking schools to homes, town and city centres, and transport hubs.
It will be based around interventions such as safer road crossings and blocking motor traffic outside schools at drop-off and pick-up times.
The involvement of the two Conservative mayors, Ben Houchen of Tees Valley and Paul Bristow, who represents Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, underlines that the debate has moved on from the culture war-infused period under Rishi Sunak, whose government pushed back against safer walking and cycling in favour of a “plan for drivers”.
Campbell was the last mayor to sign up. His Reform colleague Andrea Jenkyns, the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, is the only mayor not involved outside London, which already has hundreds of so-called school streets and similar projects.
Chris Boardman, the former Olympic cyclist who heads ATE, said the focus on routes to schools followed focus group work which found that people are particularly amenable to messages about walking and cycling when it is about children being able to travel safely and independently.
He said countries including Finland had travel cultures in which primary school-age children routinely make their own trips, adding: “If you start with asking people, do you want that for your kids, you’ll have a very, very strong, powerful and politically popular – yes.
“So if there are mayors and leaders who are not standing next to that, then they have to be accountable for their choice.
“I want to see fear of missing out. If we get to a point where x per cent of kids in an area have the freedom to walk or ride to school, I think we’ll see parents in neighbouring streets and communities thinking, hang on, why can’t we have that?”
Whitty said: “Increasing physical activity has health benefits across the life course. As part of this, we need to make walking and cycling more accessible, and safer, as well as access to green space easier and more equitable.
“This will help remove barriers to improving physical activity levels and could significantly improve the health of England’s increasingly urban population.”
The 12 mayors to have signed the pledge are:
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Tracy Brabin (Labour) of West Yorkshire.
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Paul Bristow (Tory) of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
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Andy Burnham (Labour) of Greater Manchester.
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Luke Campbell (Reform UK) of Hull and East Yorkshire.
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Oliver Coppard (Labour) of South Yorkshire.
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Helen Godwin (Labour), the West of England mayor.
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Ben Houchen (Tory) of Tees Valley.
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Kim McGuinness (Labour), the North East mayor.
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Richard Parker (Labour) of the West Midlands.
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Steve Rotheram (Labour), the Liverpool City Region mayor.
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David Skaith (Labour) of York and North Yorkshire.
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Claire Ward (Labour), mayor of the East Midlands.
Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, signed the pledge in support.