Are we happy for motor traffic to increase by 54% in England and Wales over the next 35 years? Motor traffic on Britain’s roads doubled between 1980 and 2019, and the Department for Transport predicts a further increase of up to 54% by 2060, depending on the various assumptions made for demographics, economic growth and societal behaviour.
This was the message given by Roger Geffen MBE, who was the guest speaker at our AGM in October. Roger spent many years working for Cycling UK as Campaigns & Policy Manager and was awarded an MBE for services to cycling in 2015. He is now putting his energies into Low Traffic Future (LTF) lowtrafficfuture.org.uk, which was set up in 2022 as an alliance of like-minded organisations that can work together to achieve a positive vision for transport right across the UK.
In particular LTF is looking to Local Transport Authorities (i.e. Councils) to set the vision and policies to reverse this inexorable increase in motor traffic through their Local Transport Plans. LTF has held up Reading, along with Oxfordshire, York and the West Midlands, as councils which have already published ambitious targets for reducing motor traffic.
Roger gave us a recap of the background and chequered history of Local Transport Plans. The requirements for Local Transport Authorities to produce Local Transport Plans goes back 25 years and was intended to create funding certainty, whereby the plans would be submitted to the Secretary of State for Transport and funding allocated to the Local Transport Authorities based on the strength of these.
However this system of transport planning and funding fell into disrepair about 15 years ago. There has been no guidance provided for the preparation of Local Transport Plans since 2009; furthermore Local Transport Plans ceased to be the main source of local transport funding. Fast forward to 2021 and the Department for Transport promised to revive the linkage between funding and Local Transport Plans; however statutory guidance on their preparation, set to be issued in 2023, has still not been published.
To fill this gap in guidance, LTF has set out ten key policies which it encourages Councils to include in their Local Transport Plans. These range from adequate bus service provision, to having appropriate planning policies which don’t entrench car dependence into new developments. LTF is asking councils to sign up to being part of the LTF alliance by adopting at least four of these ten key policies.
Amongst the audience on that evening in October was Councillor John Ennis, Reading’s Lead Coucillor for Climate Strategy and Transport. John stated that RBC had just adopted its new Local Transport Plan for the period up to 2040 and that, given the policies in the Plan, Reading was well positioned to be part of the LTF alliance.
Reading already has an acclaimed bus service and a suite of new bus lanes are currently being introduced across the town to improve journey times and reliability. So what about some of the other key policies set out by LTF?
One of these policies is to have measures to limit demand for motorised traffic. Reading’s Local Transport Plan states that “We will develop demand management measures to reduce congestion …”. The exact form of these measures, or the programme for implementation is not given; however we are already seeing some road space being reallocated away from general traffic to provide bus and cycle lanes, and the Council has made no secret of its desire to target through traffic which does not have its origin or destination in Reading.
Another of LTF’s key policies is for comprehensive walking and cycling networks to provide safe, convenient and attractive routes throughout the area by 2040. Reading has a plan for walking and cycling networks (the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan), but achieving a comprehensive network by 2040 looks challenging based on the speed of progress to date.
A major constraint to establishing a comprehensive cycle network is that, at present, the required funding must be bid for from central government. Whilst the new Labour government has reinstated some of the Active Travel funding previously cut in the latter days of Rishi Sunak, a funding revolution for active travel did not appear in the recent budget. Roger Geffen believed that a return to the original Local Transport Plan funding mechanism would be to the benefit of Councils, rather than them wasting time and resources making bids for specific transport projects from numerous central government funding pots.
Ideally RBC would generate its own funding to implement its Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan, and one obvious source for this is by using demand management to generate revenue. In fact Reading’s Local Transport Plan does state that one of the outcomes of demand management will be to “provide a reliable, ring-fenced income stream for investing in alternative travel services, initiatives and infrastructure”.
So what does the near term future hold for Reading? We have a new Government that talks the talk on Active Travel, we have a new Local Transport Plan that sets out transport policies and strategy to 2040, and we have a Lead Councillor for Climate Strategy and Transport who professes a strong commitment to reducing carbon emissions. Time will tell if we are on the road to our vision of a cycle-friendly Reading; but how much time, that is the question.
Keith Elliott
RCC Secretary
