Four reasons why councils should prepare a Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan

Phil Jones is managing director of transport planning consultancy Phil Jones Associates.

Phil Jones is managing director of transport planning consultancy Phil Jones Associates.

Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs) are seen by the DfT as critical to the success of the Government’s first Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS).

The DfT wishes to encourage as many local authorities as possible to publish soundly-based LCWIPs, which will set out a long-term network plan for cycling and walking across a defined area, and a series of short, medium and long-term improvement schemes. Ministers believe that LCWIPs are the best means of putting in place the infrastructure needed to meet the objectives of the CWIS, which include doubling the number of journey stages made by cycle by 2025.    

The DfT will be providing technical support to selected authorities planning to produce LCWIPs over the next two financial years and has invited expressions of interest. The announcement of which authorities have been successful is expected shortly.

Phil Jones Associates supported engineering services consultancy WSP in drafting the DfT guidance to local authorities on producing LCWIPs, which was published with the CWIS and a number of technical tools in April of this year.  

I coined the term ‘LCWIP’ during that study, which, despite breaking the usual three letter acronym rule, seemed to best summarise what was needed – a locally-developed plan to provide the infrastructure needed to grow walking and cycling – not yet another wordy strategy that contained policies to merely ‘encourage’ people to travel actively.

It’s something of an understatement to say that reaction to the published CWIS wasn’t entirely positive though – ‘there’s no money’ was the main criticism, perhaps understandably when the investment of £1.2bn set out in the CWIS included existing spending such as the Cycling City Ambition Grants, and when placed alongside the much larger amounts committed to investment in roads. Similar sentiments have been heard from some local authorities – why should we allocate scarce officer time and money to producing a plan for infrastructure, which has no prospect of gaining funding?  

There’s also a concern that the apparent need to plan is merely a way of putting off the tricky business of actually doing something. Andrew Gilligan, formerly London mayor Boris Johnson’s cycling commissioner, was quoted in a recent Guardian article on TfL’s London strategic cycling analysis, saying: “There’s high demand for cycling on most roads in central London… That’s all the analysis you need. I think this was a way to waste six months.” 

It won’t be a surprise that, much as I respect Andrew Gilligan’s achievements, I disagree that planning isn’t a necessary step, particularly outside London where existing cycling levels are (mostly) very low.

Critically, LCWIPs provide a potential solution to the ‘bootstrap’ conundrum – how do you make the case for giving more road space for cycling in places where few people currently cycle? At the heart of the process is the assessment of potential demand, using resources such as the Propensity to Cycle Tool, developed for the DfT as an open source demand assessment tool by a team of academics including Rachel Aldred and Robin Lovelace. The aim is to present decision-makers with clear data on where and how many short car trips could be made by cycling and walking if only conditions were improved. For the first time LCWIPs ask transport planners to plan for active travel infrastructure just like any other mode – on the basis of where the demand is, not where it’s easiest to provide it.

Secondly, the process is a way of building consensus and commitment – and hopefully able to withstand any unhelpful changes of administration – on what the long-term cycling and walking networks look like. This will help prevent what has been all too commonplace in the past – small fragmented interventions that never add up to a coherent whole. When little links up it’s not surprising that there’s little change, which can sadly just confirm the view that ‘everybody wants to drive around here’.

This consensus should extend to campaign groups – the LCWIP guidance stresses that authorities should involve stakeholders throughout the network planning process. It’s no surprise that organisations such as Sustrans and Cycling UK welcome LCWIPs and are encouraging local groups to work collaboratively with authorities on their preparation.

Thirdly, quantifying the potential demand across a network helps to make sure that investment can be targeted in places where it will have the biggest effect.  Politicians always want to be associated with success, and being able to claim credit for a scheme that has dramatically increased the number of active travellers makes it all the more likely they will want to find the cash to do more of the same.

And finally, while having completed an LCWIP doesn’t in itself deliver any funding, having a well-founded network plan and set of priority schemes will put an authority in a much stronger position to make the case for investment from any source. Furthermore, while in the past most funding for cycling and walking schemes has come from the public sector, authorities must also not overlook the substantial contribution that private sector development can make. The LCWIP guidance stresses that plans should take into account both the additional demand for short trips coming from new developments, as well as the scope for sites to deliver strategic routes within their boundaries and to directly fund off-site improvements.

In conclusion, while LCWIPs are no magic bullet, I strongly believe they have the potential to bring a step change in the process of delivering cycling and walking infrastructure and help to achieve a much greater take-up of these most benign modes of travelling. I hope local authorities agree.