Active travel is vital for Liverpool. Are leaders taking it seriously?

Dear readers — in 2019, the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) declared a climate emergency. Its subsequent five-year climate action plan outlined the metro mayor Steve Rotheram’s ambitions to invest in green infrastructure, improve public transport, and decarbonise the housing stock. 

That document also boasted of a £70 million spend on active travel to reduce private mileage and emissions. To quote the mayor’s office: “enabling people to get out of their cars, to walk and cycle more, is an important step to improving our air quality and leaving a cleaner city region for future generations.”

Active travel also touches on people’s everyday experiences and expectations. Is the city walkable? Are the streets accessible for disabled residents and visitors? Do bike lanes connect cyclists to the places they need to go? 

Despite the expenditure, not everyone is satisfied. Two years ago, Simon O’Brien — the Brookside and Coronation Street star who is also the combined authority’s walking and cycling commissioner — said the six local authorities that make up the city region need to up their game or risk being “left behind” when it comes to getting people out of cars and onto bikes. Meanwhile, the director of Zero Carbon Liverpool describes a “lost decade” that’s left our city region trailing the likes of Manchester and Leeds. 

Rotheram, O’Brien and city council leader Liam Robinson recently went on a bike ride to see what infrastructure needs improving, sparking questions from many of you about the active travel priorities of our leaders and the city’s spending on cycle paths and walking routes. 

For today’s Answers in The Post, we spoke to experts, commuters and governing bodies to find out whether Liverpool is punching at or above its weight on this issue. But first, your regularly scheduled Post briefing.

Your Post briefing

The inquiry into the deadly Southport attack has been taking place at Liverpool Town Hall. On Tuesday, the inquiry heard that one severely injured girl was stabbed six times as she shielded her little sister from Axel Rudakubana; both sisters survived. The childrens' yoga instructor Leanne Lucas and her friend, dance teacher Heidi Liddle, have also given evidence, as well as the parents of some of the children who survived. Ms Lucas said she felt "excluded from parts of my own community" and wants the inquiry to understand that "the harm didn’t end when the attack ended", while Ms Liddle, who hid with a child in a toilet as the Southport knife killer banged on the door, told the inquiry how she felt "crushing" guilt.

Green Lane Pharmacy on Allerton Road has become the first in the UK to offer free contraceptive implants as part of an NHS scheme. Implants are normally only available via sexual health clinics or GP surgeries, but the pilot scheme has been introduced by the NHS and the city council to help bring down rates of unintended pregnancies and increase access to contraception. Green Lane pharmacist Matt Harvey said the pharmacy had been selected partially due its proximity to university student accommodation, as well as the fact that “the pregnancy rate in Liverpool is still higher than other areas”. After the initial pilot phase the scheme will be expanded to other pharmacies across Liverpool.

And councillors in Cheshire are being asked to sign off plans to set up a new combined authority this week. Cheshire West and Chester will be asked to approve the principle of creating Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority, which will allow those at the helm to have greater control over housing and transport across the region. Cheshire East and Warrington councils will vote on the same issue next week.

What is active travel?

Anytime you’re going from A to B but not in a car or on public transport. So — walking, cycling or wheeling. The benefits of having better active travel options for individuals or families are obvious: not only is it advantageous for our physical health, but it also means saving on petrol money or bus and train fare. 

But what about the city itself? Unsurprisingly, active travel routes have been encouraged for environmental reasons. Anything that cuts down on carbon emissions is welcomed, especially with Liverpool’s net zero-by-2030 ambition still an active goal. 

But studies have also suggested that promoting active travel can have economic benefits for a city. The Street Appeal report, developed by University College London, found that street improvements resulted in better retail rental values and an increase in leisure-based activities (such as sitting in a cafe) without the housing price spike some feared. 

According to LCRCA, active travel peaked ninety years ago. By the end of 1934, when the Queensway tunnel first opened, over 900 bikes a day travelled through it between Liverpool and the Wirral. But “people cycling and walking to work is not a thing of the past,” according to the combined authority’s 2023 Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP). “It must be part of our shared future too.”

What is Liverpool’s goal? 

The key pledge from LCRCA is to deliver a 600km network of walking and cycling routes. The authority claims that 148km of this network has already been delivered to date, citing important projects such as the cycle lane on Runcorn’s Silver Jubilee Bridge in Halton, the major redevelopment of Catharine Street and Princes Avenue, and the CYCLOPS junction at Lea Green. But that still leaves a lot to do. 

Here’s a map of the city’s current cycling network, taken from a dynamic map on the council’s website. All the existing cycling networks are in green and the city boundary is in purple.