Active travel: encourage or enable?

Incentives to do what we don’t want to do will only ever deliver marginal change

This morning (15 October), I was woken by BBC Radio 5 Live’s Nicky Campbell announcing that the London Health Commission (LHC), in a new report, was recommending that the Mayor and other major London authorities should use their respective powers to make more public spaces smoke-free. Though this is just one of 64 recommendations that the LHC makes, it was plainly the one considered most ‘newsworthy’, doubtless because it’s the one most people are most likely to get most worked up about. When interviewed, the chair of the commission, Lord Darzi, mentioned these other recommendations, to which Campbell simply said, ‘Yeah, but let’s talk about the smoking ban’.

I’d want to have talked about something different: the fact that only three of the 64 recommendations relate to active travel, and that two of these are very weak. The third, Recommendation 12, is the only one that concerns the quality of the environment in which we walk and cycle, and it’s that the Mayor should accelerate planned initiatives on air quality. The other two, Recommendations 7 and 8, are weak because their keywords are, respectively, Encourage and Incentivise. (More on these later). You can check out the LHC report for yourself by Googling ‘Better Health for London’ and scrolling down past the ‘Ban smoking in public places’ news items that come first.

I should make it clear at this point that, in so far as I’m dissatisfied with what the report is likely to do to get more people travelling more often in ways that are better for their health, I must share some of the blame. I was one of the people on the LHC’s ‘Healthy lives and reducing health inequalities’ working group, and I plainly failed to get my views across. That said, when I and the two or three other transport or built environment professionals in the working group made our points about active travel, the others in the group – 30 or so people who were mostly health professionals – always nodded, smiled and seemed to get what we were saying. But it appears that they didn’t then know what to do with our ideas; and I dare say the same issue would arise if a bunch of transport professionals was urged to incorporate some well-evidenced proposals from ecologists within their city transport strategy.

That doesn’t make it any the less frustrating, however. Particularly because the LHC report is pretty good at identifying both the problem (e.g. “Only 13% of Londoners currently cycle or walk to work – despite half living close to their workplace”) and the benefits of change (e.g. “There is compelling evidence that there are huge benefits from taking around 10,000 steps a day: better fitness, lower cardiovascular risk and better mental health, too”). Accordingly, one of the ten pairs of aspirations and ambitions established by the report is to “Get London fitter… by boosting the number of active Londoners to 80% by supporting them to walk, jog, run or cycle to school or work”. (And also, I would hope, to the shops, their friends, the cinema, etc.)

Brilliant! So what are we going to do to achieve that ambition? Well, “Getting London walking requires joint action from employers, the Mayor, local councils and Transport for London”. 

Amen! So what joint action shall we get them to engage in? Well, er…

…er, “Better information and labelling on infrastructure and in the streets, and campaigns to encourage active travel.” Oh, and not forgetting that TfL should establish a scheme, paid for by employers, “to incentivise walking the last mile to work and the first mile home; using Oyster/contactless card data to prove that employees tap out/in at least one mile from their registered workplace; and awarding these good people points that would go towards employer-financed transport rewards.”

Yes. Really. And that’s it. That’s Recommendations 7 and 8 for you; right there.

My sense of frustration is intensified by the fact that the report, almost incidentally, does recognise the importance of good walking and cycling infrastructure in getting people to walk and cycle more: “The Commission strongly supports the Mayor's Cycle Superhighways scheme.” And yet, in this statement of support, comes perhaps the best clue as to why the Commission hasn’t grasped the importance of taking a stronger line on infrastructure provision. It supports Cycle Superhighways because they will “…encourage Londoners to travel around the city actively.” But good infrastructure does far more than merely ‘encourage’; it enables.

Unless ”joint action from employers, the Mayor, local councils and Transport for London” is taken to improve the physical conditions for walking and cycling, efforts to encourage people to travel this way will remain as fruitful as pushing water uphill. “I know it’s unpleasant, crowded and you feel unsafe; but look at those encouraging new signs and just think about those transport Nectar points you’re earning”. No? Nor I.

It’s really positive that the London Health Commission puts across the clear message that, in cities, the best way to get people active is though everyday walking and cycling. However, it’s obviously disappointing that it has done so little to identify, and urge action on, what should be done to create what it could have called ‘Healthy Streets’.

At the one public hearing of the Commission at which I was a panellist, a Commissioner responded to a question from the floor by acknowledging how hard it is to ‘get to’ such an incredibly diverse population as London’s with good health advice, support and practice. My own response was to say that, if we were to make it easier, safer and generally more attractive to walk and cycle, we’d ‘get to’ almost everyone without them even knowing it; without them having to visit a clinic, drop-in to a centre, sign up for a course, or undergo treatment.

So, transport practitioners: although the LHC report seems unlikely to do much to change the political or funding agenda as regards provision for walking and cycling, it has emphasised the importance of prioritising these modes in the work that we do. Let’s do it then, shall we?   

John Dales will discuss this at LTT's Designing in Walking and Cycling Infrastructure event on the 6 November 2014