Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS) safety review
QUOTE:
``Invites those with an interest in improving safety of cyclists and pedestrians to provide evidence, drawing on experience from the UK or other countries, that can be used to shape future policy decisions.
Foreword
Active travel, making journeys by physically active means such as cycling and walking, has huge potential benefits both for individuals and for our wider society. The Government’s Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy, published in April 2017, set out our aim to make cycling and walking the natural choices for shorter journeys or as part of a longer journey.
We have made good progress to date; Government spending on cycling trebled between 2010 and 2017, and on average people are cycling further than they did ten years ago. In some cities, notably London, there has been a sharp increase in the level of cycling. But there is much more to do, and our ambition in this review goes further still: to make cycling the natural mode of transport even for a 12 year old.
Since the cycle safety review was announced, the Department has worked closely with cycling, walking and wider road safety organisations to identify the main issues that should be tackled as a priority to improve safety between cyclists and other road users. During that process of engagement, it became clear how many actual and potential policy areas were relevant to cyclists and pedestrians alike.
Given our strong commitment to cycling and walking, we have therefore decided to use this review to consider safety measures that will bring cycling and walking closer together as part of our overall ambition to increase active travel.
Cycling, like walking, needs to be universally seen as easy, fun and safe. Safety, and the perception of safety, are vital if we are to create a rapid increase in the use of active travel.
The truth is that cycling is generally very safe, and serious accidents are rare. But we need to make it safer still, for all road users, so that it becomes a default mode of transport, whatever one’s age or background. But safety does not simply include road safety - it also includes physical health and well-being, in a clean and green environment. The evidence is clear: cycling and walking have the capacity to transform the health and well-being, not only of people who walk and cycle themselves, but of everyone in society.
We now have a great opportunity: to recast local and national approaches to active travel, and create a new world of genuinely multimodal transport. But to do this we need your help, ideas and evidence. This consultation document summarises some of the key evidence for change, and then highlights key areas in which we are seeking your views.
We are looking for great ideas, for evidence of what works, for examples of good practice from other countries, for innovative technologies, for imaginative solutions, and for idealism tempered with a sense of the practical. Over to you!
JESSE NORMAN''