Active Travel Board meeting: March 2022

The Board was given a presentation on the communications activities for the introduction of 20mph as the default speed limit in 2023.

Statutory legislation is planned for June 2022. There is considerable interest from WHO and other countries in the introduction of a default 20mph speed limit, including Spain, England, Ireland and Scotland and Welsh Government are liaising with counterparts in these areas.

The proposed campaign aims to focus on the benefits, building a collective understanding of how this is a positive thing for communities.

The two strategic concepts, which have been tested in focus groups, are:

• ‘Saving the quality of lives’. Using thank you notes as a form of positive acknowledgement and reinforcement
• ‘Finally, something we can agree on’. Redirecting people’s passion for their communities towards a positive change.

The campaign will be a sustained programme including various media along with behavioural change initiatives such as the Living Streets WOW travel tracker, which is being implemented in 12 schools across the trial areas. Police enforcement and education will also be implemented.

The Board discussed several areas in response to the presentation including working directly with professional drivers to ensure they are aware of changes, using public sector and other fleet vehicles as pacer cars and the consultation and concern regarding rejecters organising concerted responses to sway the results. 

Work to develop a climate change campaign is in its early stages of development. This will be a 3-year national campaign with behaviour change at the heart. The brief is being finalised in order to procure a marketing agency and consultation on the strategy will happen shortly. The tender specification invites an example of behaviour change based around encouraging active travel. The aim is to launch the campaign during Wales Climate Week in November 2022.  

Each strand of the campaign will include a behavioural ‘ask’ of the public, such as how we heat our homes, how we travel, what we eat etc. Welsh Government are currently assessing which behavioural asks to target and the timeline for each.

Alongside this work are plans for the launch of a Wales Climate Hub online portal, which will include information on the climate emergency and interactive elements.

The Board discussed liaising with wider stakeholders to support this work.

Board members were provided an overview of the proposed approach to the Active Travel Act review. The Board were advised there are two statutory requirements to the review:

• the operation of the Act; and
• the Act’s success in securing both new active travel routes and related facilities, and also improvements of existing active travel routes and related facilities.

Provided these statutory requirements are met, the scope and content of the review may be as broad or narrow as the Welsh Ministers deem appropriate. The different evidence that could be used to review the Act was set out along with Welsh Government’s proposal to commission a public survey to explore to what extent people in Wales been impacted by the Act. Board members were asked to volunteer to help shape this work.  

The Board were also advised of the Senedd’s Cross-Party Group on the Active Travel Act (CPGATA) which is conducting their own independent review of the Active Travel Act. A panel has been convened, which includes several members of the Active Travel Board, who will be conducting detailed interviews to review the Act.

The Board were provided a list of potential measures which could be included in a dashboard for future Board meetings.

Board members were invited to identify which measures they thought should be prioritised and to raise any additional ones which should be included.

Active travel to schools

• The Hands Up survey is being publicised in preparation for the national rollout in April.
• There is development work to provide information for schools such as the percentage of pupils who could travel actively, based on GIS mapping work. This will provide each school with an indicator of how many pupils could travel actively and is part of a wider piece of work around active school travel, which includes looking at the local catchment area in a more qualitative way. The Board agreed this work is important and are interested in its findings.

Behaviour change

• The sub-group is currently focused on Newport linking to the work of the South East Wales Transport Commission
• The Chair provided feedback from a meeting with Newport in regard to plans for behavioural change measures. Newport Council and Newport Bus are both engaged in the process, which is positive. The consultation on the Cardiff to Newport superhighway for active travel has received a significant number of responses so far, with people positively engaging.

Inclusive Active Travel

• The terms of reference have been agreed and the sub-group are now looking to increase its diversity of representation.
• The sub-group are going to be looking in more detail at inclusive design and what is meant by the term ‘inclusive’.
• The Active Travel Conference is taking place on 31 March with a focus on inclusive active travel. This is being organised by Sustrans on behalf of Welsh Government.

Date of the next meeting: 9 June 2022