What is the Active Travel Transformation Project?
The Active Travel Framework was published in 2020 and produced by Transport Scotland in collaboration with key delivery partners, Regional Transport Partnerships and Local Authorities. It brings together the key policy approaches to improving the uptake of walking and cycling in Scotland. It reiterates the shared vision for active travel in Scotland, that by 2030:
“Scotland’s communities are shaped around people and place, enabling walking and cycling to be the most popular mode of travel for short, everyday journeys.”
The budget for active travel has steadily grown since its inception, doubling to £80m in 2018/19 and increasing to £150m in 2022/23. Currently, £190m is allocated for 2023/24, with a commitment to increase this to £320m in active travel investment in future budgets.
Through this budget, the Scottish Government and its partners have invested in active travel schemes across the country, as well as supporting behaviour change activity. This has included new and improved segregated walking and cycling paths, new junction arrangements and crossings, secure cycle parking, and behaviour change programmes.
The evidence is clear that in order to deliver modal shift, connected, good quality, safe active travel infrastructure is required, with people supported and encouraged to use it through various behaviour change and other enabling initiatives. While there have been examples of good practice throughout Scotland over the last decade, it is clear that the infrastructure required to enable large scale changes to travel behaviour has not been delivered quickly or efficiently enough.
The Active Travel Transformation Project was established by Transport Scotland in February 2022 to help deliver the vision for 2030, and ensure best value for the increasing investment by working with partners to devise and implement a delivery system which supports and enables local authorities and others to build active travel infrastructure more quickly, to a high standard and in a planned, connected, cohesive way, meeting everyone’s needs. In addition the delivery system should support and encourage people to use the infrastructure for everyday journeys and should provide additional support for those most in need – for example disabled people and people affected by transport poverty, to ensure a just transition.
The Project defines the objective of Active Travel Transformation as:
“…an accessible system that delivers better outcomes with sufficient processes and resources to generate a pace and scale of delivery that matches our policy ambitions…”
In delivering on transformation, the project has focussed on five key pillars to date:
- Innovation and exemplar activity
- Capability and capacity
- Leadership and coordination
- Enablers and barriers
- Funding design and governance