Walking and cycling and the Local Transport Plan

Abstract

This paper looks at the opportunities for promoting walking and cycling through five-year Local Transport Plans (LTPs), which have recently replaced the annual Transport Policies and Programme (TPP) scheme as the means for securing funding approval for investment in local transport. The paper examines the key differences between LTPs and TPPs in terms of the greater scope LTPs offer for facilitating more sustainable travel patterns, which include permitting expenditure on ‘soft’ measures such as travel awareness campaigns, in addition to the traditional ‘hard’—infrastructure—measures. There is a summary of the variety of engineering, educational and enforcement measures local authorities are being encouraged to employ to encourage walking and cycling, such as dedicated facilities, vehicle-restricted areas, home zones, speed management, clear zones. The opportunities for targeting different types of travel are looked at: commuting, school journeys, recreation and leisure trips. The relevance of travel patterns, and thus LTPs, to wider policy objectives—health, urban renaissance, social inclusion, air quality, children's social development—is acknowledged, as is the importance of integrating transport and land-use planning to facilitate non-motorised travel patterns. The paper includes a list of criteria used by the DETR in assessing the quality of LTPs with respect to the national objectives of encouraging walking and cycling for local transport.