Travel Actively into the future
Travel Actively has given 1.5 million people the chance to be more active by walking and cycling.
The recently published Travel Actively Monitoring Report illustrates how the projects empower individuals and enable communities to deliver social, economic and health benefits. It demonstrates the excellent value for money provided and how hundreds of thousands of people have become more physically active through walking and cycling.
The report reveals that:
- over 1.5 million people have been given the opportunity to become more physically active through daily travel choices
- over 337,000 people have increased their physical activity levels
- 296,400 people with common mental health problems now have increased awareness of opportunities to become more physically active through active travel
- over 3,800 people have volunteered.
Now Travel Actively is looking to the future. The projects offer solutions in a time of dwindling resources, strapped budgets and increasing obesity. During the coming year, in addition to working at the local level with community-led projects, Travel Actively will work with public health expert partners to develop recommendations for increasing walking and cycling.
As a starting point, we are calling on governments at all levels to:
- put walking and cycling centre stage in transport, planning and public health policies and strategies – coordinated action through cross-sector working could make a real difference
- invest in walking and cycling – for ring-fenced budgets to be allocated by national government departments to enable local delivery of projects that increase walking and cycling levels and decrease car travel
- Department for Transport and Department of Health to renew the Active Travel Strategy – showcasing best practice project delivery and reinforcing the need for cross-sector working on transport and health at a local level.
Since 2008, Sustrans has been the lead partner of the Active Travel Consortium: a partnership of walking, cycling and health organisations from the third sector, committed to providing opportunities for 1.8 million people to become physically active through their daily travel choices.
Branded as Travel Actively and funded by £20 million from the Big Lottery Fund’s Well-being programme, the consortium deliver a portfolio of 50 projects, helping people in England to improve their health and well-being by providing the practical support they need to walk and cycle as part of their everyday lives.