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20 Sep 2023

ACT members will benefit from a long term discounted commission of just 3%

18 Sep 2023

Sustrans are calling on schools and families across the UK to take part in Cycle to School Week from 25 to 29 September to experience how travelling actively can be healthy, cheap and fun.

18 Sep 2023

New statistics showing a 5% fall in cycling from last year should be a “wake-up call for the government” and are due to the Government's "flawed" decision to slash the...

18 Sep 2023

The government’s Active Lives Survey has revealed that, in 2022, Cambridge (50%), Oxford (35%), Isles of Scilly (30%), Hackney (28%), and Southwark (25%) were the five local authorities in...

18 Sep 2023

ACT member Balfe’s Bikes has begun its plan to introduce Cytech apprentices to its stores and upskill existing staff through the Cytech training programme.

15 Sep 2023

The team from Whistler Adventure School (WAS), which recently became the only centre in Canada accredited to offer Cytech technical three, is to deliver a series of free sessions in Scotland,...

6 Sep 2023

Offers designed to help Londoners 'make the green transition' following the expansion of the ultra low emission zone (ULEZ) last month include a range of discounts, offers or trials available...

6 Sep 2023

A new report on the state of the UK cycle industry suggests that bike sales have fallen once again, months after it was reported that they had fallen to a 20-year low in 2022.

6 Sep 2023

Rebecca, staff member with the ACT has released an EP on the music platform Spotify, with popular local band Thee Derelique.

5 Sep 2023

Small and medium sized retailers who may be struggling amid current economic challenges have been offered an opportunity to share their stories on TV.

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DfT announces a shift towards public transport and active travel

Posted on in Business News , Cycles News , Political News

cycle pathDecarbonising transport: setting the challenge is the latest document to be published by the Department for Transport (DfT) late last week, stating the current challenges and steps to be taken when developing the transport decarbonisation plan.

The document describes how the Government intend to work with others to develop a transport decarbonisation plan in order to reduce transport emissions and ensure the challenge to reach net zero transport emissions by 2050 is met. The document also reviews existing climate policies in transport as well as existing forecasts of future transport emissions from each mode of transport, plus as a whole.

"Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities," writes Transport Secretary Grant Shapps in the foreword. "We will use our cars less and be able to rely on a convenient, cost-effective and coherent public transport network."

The document goes on to list, "Accelerating modal shift to public and active transport," as the first of six strategic priorities for the plan, which seeks to deliver a net zero emissions transport system.

To achieve that, the DfT says it aims to...

  • Help make public transport and active travel the natural first choice for daily activities
  • Support fewer car trips through a coherent, convenient and cost-effective public network; and explore how we might use cars differently in future
  • Encourage cycling and walking for short journeys
  • Explore how to best support the behaviour change required
 
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: "Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities. We will use our cars less and be able to rely on a convenient, cost-effective and coherent public transport network."
 
"Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities"
 
 
Mr Shapps said the shift in emphasis away from driving - where possible - could improve people's health, create better places to live and travel in, and also promote clean economic growth.

Cycling UK policy director Roger Geffen commented: "It's absolutely amazing. This makes Grant Shapps the first government minister in the UK to talk about traffic reduction since John Prescott tried (and failed) to achieve this aim in the late 1990s.

"There are some holes in the document, but it suggests that the government really does seem to be taking climate change seriously."

Former Commons Transport Chair Lilian Greenwood said the contents were, "incredibly welcome if the rhetoric matches the reality," but pointed out that would require a significant change in investment.

"Right now all our energies are on tackling the coronavirus but when we come out the other side we have an equally serious emergency because emissions from transport have to be tackled if we are serious about turning around the future of the planet for coming generations.

"It's great if the first choice is to be public transport and active transport - but that does mean the government has to change radically investment."

​The transport decarbonisation plan will be published in later in 2020.

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