Ministers prioritised driving over active travel in England, The Guardian reports
Posted on in Business News , Cycles News
The Guardian has reported that ministers decided to prioritise driving over active travel because of worries about “15-minute cities”.
The report says that ministers began considering curbs on cycling and walking schemes in March last year, with one document saying, “in response to concerns about 15-minute cities”, an urban planning concept that Rishi Sunak’s government has repeatedly mischaracterised.
Other policy papers, uncovered as part of a legal challenge by the Transport Action Network (TAN), show officials warned ministers that a parallel crackdown on low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) was likely to be legally “challenging”.
Another document advised ministers they should drop plans to improve active travel “quietly”, adding: “We would not propose to make any public announcement to this effect.”
In his speech to the Conservative conference in October, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, described 15-minutes cities as schemes in which “local councils can decide how often you go to the shops”.
While many critics assumed at the time this was just rhetoric, the documents indicate Harper and the Department for Transport (DfT) used this definition as the basis for one of the biggest shifts in transport policy for decades.
The document from March proposes removing pro-active travel measures introduced during Covid because of worries about 15-minute cities.
It is understood that officials were referring to plans to extend LTN-type schemes to wider areas, such as one due to begin in Oxford next year. This has been widely confused with separate 15-minute city ideas.
