Walk, Wheel, Cycle and Scoot

The Core Strategy sets out our vision for travel.

It sets out key roles for:

• Walking and wheeling – these are everyone’s fundamental modes of travel; every journey at least starts and ends by walking or wheeling. In our vision, they underpin 15 minute neighbourhoods as these modes are essential for navigating all places such as residential estates, town centres, retail parks or villages, and for citizens to access local amenities and services.
• Cycling and scooting – these are light personal vehicles, adapted or mainstream, powered or unpowered, that help people access what they need without needing a car and without being constrained by the timetables, fares/ticketing and coverage of ride modes. They can help people navigate local places  quicker than walking and wheeling or perhaps where distances to local services/amenities are beyond a comfortable walking or wheeling range, but also -depending on the individual and the reasons for travel – they can help everyone make longer journeys between neighbourhoods and centres. Increasingly this can also include cargo bikes. A growing number of businesses and households in the region and around the country have successfully switched some of their trips and deliveries from a car or van to a cargo bike. Often, walking, wheeling, cycling and scooting trips are made for the sake of exercise/leisure as well. It is good health, air quality and transport.

This Big Move is all about how we can encourage and enable everyone support people to walk, wheel, cycle or scoot when and where they want – which is convenient, accessible, safe and enjoyable. 

We realise in making walking, wheeling, cycling, scooting for everyone, this requires unequal effort and resources to encourage behaviour change across user profiles and geographies. 

What we mean by: 

Everyone in the West Midlands should be enabled to safely access a range of local destinations on foot, in a wheelchair or on a bike or scooter; with the aim of at least half of all trips in our area to be made by active modes by 2030.

Many of our existing streets have been designed around motor vehicles; creating environments that are not welcoming for people to spend time in and do not support more sustainable travel modes. In many parts of the region, people do not feel safe walking, wheeling, cycling or scooting which acts as a barrier to being more active and travelling by these modes.

People of all ages and from all walks of life can walk, wheel, cycle and scoot easily and safely around our neighbourhoods and local centres, as well as making some longer hops from one neighbourhood to another.

As we step out of our homes onto our streets, we’re greeted by a safe and welcoming environment. Our pavements are decluttered and well-maintained, our local streets are quiet and feel safe to cycle/scoot and as we head toward main roads, we find segregated lanes/paths for cycling and scooting and safe crossing points. And when we arrive at our high streets and local centres, we find that these are environments where the congested high streets have given way to walking and wheeling friendly environments.

As a result, these places are more pleasant to spend time in and people are healthier and happier because they are more physically activity in their everyday lives.

Everyone in the West Midlands should be enabled to safely access a range of local destinations on foot, in a wheelchair or on a bike or scooter; with the aim of at least half of all trips in our area to be made by active modes by 2030.

Concerns over safety can diminish people’s quality of life and deter walking, wheeling, scooting and cycling. This has been highlighted in the National Travel Survey where road safety concerns and traffic were cited as the main reasons for why people chose not to walk and wheel. In the region, there is also a growing number of vulnerable road users killed or seriously injured (KSI).  This then leads to devastating personal consequences for families and communities of those effected by fatal and severe injuries.

Road safety is a priority not only for the WMCA but all our LA partners. Through devolution WMCA has a statutory duty alongside local authorities to promote road safety.  Other agencies too have major roles to play – be it Police, Fire, developers etc.  Therefore, joining together to address car dominance by prioritising people walking and cycling will be a significant first step in tackling road danger.

The National Active Lives Survey evidences that the WMCA region has the highest rates of physical inactivity in England.  Inactivity is the fourth largest cause of disease and disability, and directly contributes to one in six deaths in the UK. 27% of adults are doing less than 30mins of physical activity a week, compared to 21.4% England average. Both regionally and national, less than 25% of adults walk at least 3 times per week for travel and less than 3% for cycling for this purpose.

Evidence suggests if people are regularly active there is 50% less chances of type 2 diabetes, High blood pressure and Cardiovascular disease, 30% less chance of strokes and 25% less chance of certain cancers.  Further there is good evidence, that being regularly active can improve mental wellbeing, reduce anxiety, improve skills and capabilities contributing to greater employability.

Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the existing health inequalities across our region, with those living in deprived areas experiencing significantly worse health and shorter healthy life expectancy. COVID-19 has therefore had a disproportionate impact on them, with mortality rates in the most deprived areas more than double those in the least deprived areas.  Those less active are then often more isolated and will experience the greatest barriers to activity.

Evidence suggests that encouraging people to start walking and cycling is one of the most effective ways to get people active, but the opportunity needs to easy, accessible, safe and enjoyable.

In many parts of the region, people don’t feel safe walking, cycling, scooting or wheeling. Whether this is through the work of the Transport Champions especially, women, girls and LGBT communities feeling particularly unsafe in poorly lit areas, in quiet locations and where there is limited natural surveillance and eyes on the street. Fully tackling this and making our environments far more safer is vitally important and needs to happen before wide spread walking and wheeling is delivered. At the same time efforts are required to address perceptions towards personal safety must also be improved to ensure that this does not create a barrier to access in itself.

Many of our existing streets have been designed around the private car; creating environments that are not welcoming for people and do not support a variety of travel modes. Reducing the private car’s dominance through actions like slower speeds and reallocation of road space to other modes to develop a more balanced transport system will help ensure we consider people first and foremost and attractive environments for people to walk, cycle and spend time in.

When people walk, they legally have exclusive rights to the footways. When people cycle, they must choose between differing options – the road carriageway or some form of cycle path, which means the scale of the network is often significantly different. Walking journeys are typically under 1 mile (20 minute journeys), whereas cycle journeys are 5 miles, and will cover around 25 times the area of a walking network.

Our walk and wheel networks should be convenient, safe, attractive, accessible and signed to and from from every local neighbourhood and lead to significant destinations – i.e. work, shopping, education or leisure. They should also be coherent, connected and continuous. Yet often this is not the case.

In UK law, electric scooters, and many other new forms of powered cycle and scoot vehicles can only be used on private land. There are provisions in law enabling use of some eBikes on our transport network, but the rules are convoluted, inconsistent and not easy to understand.

The Government is currently considering whether the law should be changed to enable and regulate the use of powered scooters and cycles. To test the introduction of such vehicles into our transport system, DfT introduced legislation in July 2020 to enable rental e-scooter trials to take place on public roads and cycle lanes across the UK. The Government is now awaiting the outcome of these trials before deciding on whether and how to change the law. 

Whilst awaiting this decision, many areas have nonetheless seen an increase in the illegal use of a broad range of privately-owned powered cycles and scooters being used on public roads, pavements and cycle lanes. While use of these vehicles remains illegal, it does demonstrate the real appetite there is for these kinds of vehicles and opportunities for expansion.

Not everyone has access to a pedal bike or their own “micromode ” and not everyone is practiced/proficient in their use, especially in our most deprived areas or low incomes. Also many people do not know how to cycle or access to adapted bike to suit their needs.
We need to develop a better understanding of citizens needs, barriers and enablers to change and opportunities for all to be able to have access and to use them.

Vehicle designs also need to cater for different users (e.g. cycles/scooters designed for physical impairments).

The scale of improvement needed to help everyone have the ability to safely and conveniently walk, wheel, cycle and scoot around our neighbourhoods and region is significant.

The characteristics of travel by walking and wheeling are very different from cycling and scooting, just as these ways of getting around are very different from using public transport or driving a larger vehicle. So these methods of travel need to be catered for differently depending on the space.

When most of our urban environment was developed there was at least generally dedicated provision for walking and wheeling on pavements and footpaths but with most other road users sharing main carriageways. Overtime, use of the main carriageway has become dominated by motor vehicles, often moving at high speed.

There is also much of our urban environment where there are barriers to walking and wheeling owing to choices in how we have laid out streets, broken key routes and created severance with major roads, canals, and railways with limited crossings, and places where one use of land dominates an area. These are places where you have to travel far to reach services and amenities and so people are less able to rely on walking and wheeling.

So we have a lot of work to do to create more dedicated infrastructure and quieter streets to help people cycle and scoot, and to make places more accessible and connected by walking and wheeling.

Addressing these barriers will take time but could be accelerated through greater scale of investment and intervention, embedding improvements in ongoing programmes of renewals and maintenance of existing assets as well as wider capital investment in highways, and ensuring that new developments embed better infrastructure from day one.

Whilst we might aspire to provide completely separate spaces for different modes, there are times when this may not be possible or desirable.

We have places with constrained space in our urban area where we have to make trade-offs in who to prioritise. We can’t deliver whole segregated networks overnight at the scale we need, so there are trade-offs between acting at scale and delivering higher quality infrastructure. And sometimes, introducing greater segregation can introduce greater severance, making places less permeable for some road users.

So whilst we can work towards better separate provision in the urban area, road users will need to share spaces as well, and there are ways we can make this safer to do so (for example by reducing the speeds to match the pace of more vulnerable road users, or by reducing traffic of faster/heavier vehicles).

LTN 1/20 provides guidance on how to manage these trade-offs as well as our sustainable transport user hierarchy, but ultimately these can be challenging decisions to make where compromise is needed.

Powered cycle and scoot modes (such as e-scooters) represent a big opportunity to help a range of people access more of the opportunities in the urban environment without a car. Their use is already common both through the escooter trials, and through illegal use of privately owned vehicles, and this shows that there is a latent demand, that they will help meet the needs of many members of the public. It is anticipated that legislation will soon allow the use of approved variants of these vehicles on public infrastructure in the UK. There is the potential for different designs to help people with different needs get around (including disabled users, people travelling with children, and people carrying cargo). However, there are concerns and risks to be managed including concerns over injuries and casualties to users and those who are walking and wheeling.

Current plans for developing cycling networks have not fully accounted for the impact that legalising powered cycle and scoot modes could have on the demand to use the network and requirements of its users.

This page will touch on some highlights of progress – as the LTP is a joint document, it would be good to reflect local and regional successes:

• Investment in Cycling and walking circa with £43.2m committed to cycling and walking infrastructure and behaviour change activities across the region
• West Midlands Local Design guidance, currently in its 3rd edition to be aligned with LTN 1/20
• 17 miles of high quality segregated (fully curbed and light segregation) cycle track delivered
• Micromobility including West Midlands Cycle hire and E-scooters trial
• Low traffic neighbourhoods
• 23 School Streets across the region, with additional funded
• Cycling for Everyone – an innovative programme to encourage those in the most deprived areas to cycle and benefit from investment
• 21k users of cycle hire during the CWG cycling around the world
• Partnerships with British Cycling and Living Streets
• Accessible cycling trials such as Ride Ahead Together which won the national modeshift Community award.

Government committed to a Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy to reach its ambition of “half of all journeys in towns and cities to be walked or cycled by 2030”.  In addition, Government’s Future of Urban Mobility Strategy outlines that “it is essential that people have the chance to make the most of the opportunities from powered cycle and scoot, in a way that is safe for both the users of these new vehicles and road users more generally. The Government is saying that walking, wheeling, cycling and scooting should be the “natural first choice for many journeys”. This will require us to give more priority to sustainable travel, and therefore being prepared to reduce the convenience of private motor vehicle use.

Improving accessibility by walking, wheeling, cycling and scooting, and shifting travel towards these modes, is key to delivering our LTP aims, especially 15 minute neighbourhood/45 minute region connectivity.

Local elected leaders, local authorities and organisations need to champion walking, wheeling, cycling and scooting in the region to achieve LTP objectives and deliver WMCA’s aims.  This will be done through harnessing:

• Financial capital- boosting levels of investment behaviour change including into infrastructure & activation
• Political capital- building local and political support for changes to the transport network, based in Active Travel England principles and objectives
• Human capital- fostering greater resources and expertise for design and delivery of provision active modes

There is also a need for action around:

• Accelerating collaborative work to get more people active including working with communities and partners to encourage behaviour change to understand and address the barriers and enablers to get encourage everyone if they wish to do so walk and cycle , which drives our investment priorities.
• Partnering with local and regional transport and health partners to deliver change
• Supporting local walking and cycling forums and community events
• Supporting officers and leaders within the CA and LA’s to accelerate active travel plans within the region
• Increasing awareness by local leaders of not only the monetary benefits of active travel, but also the social and health benefits when assessing schemes.

The WM aims to be a Centre of Excellence for Active Travel in order to develop training with our partners for:

• CA staff to promote cycling internally and externally
• Staff to better understand best practice and LTN 1/20 design guidance
• Local elected officials to champion cycling in their constituencies
• Test and learn approaches to deliver change
• Embedding a community of learning and practice network which informs practice and policy
• Advocating walking and cycling in all WMCA policies

We need a fit for purpose network comprised of routes that enable inclusive, convenient, attractive, safe and direct travel by walk, wheel, cycle and scoot across the West Midlands – allowing people to connect people with their neighbourhoods and the region beyond coupled with citizen engagement to activate our neighbourhoods.

High levels of local network density and permeability are important so that all people can access their neighbourhoods, alongside complementary regional routes and connections to public transport for longer journeys.

Government has set out guidance on how networks should be developed, this includes guidance for producing Local Cycling, Walking and Improvement Plans (which helps authorities to plan and prioritise network improvements) and LTN 1/20 design guidance (which helps authorities design high quality infrastructure). This will be delivered through work done by Active Travel England.

The West Midlands Combined Authority published an LCWIP for regional routes in 2019 and a number of our local authorities have also published LCWIPs for local networks. We also maintain West Midlands design guidance for active travel.

However, the level of behaviour change required to support the aims of our LTP, and the Government’s own commitments to increase active travel and enable powered cycle and scoot modes all suggest that we will need to plan infrastructure for higher levels of demand than our previous assumptions and we will need to account for new vehicle designs. This has implications for the overall level of investment required, route selection and infrastructure design. Government is considering updating design guidance.

Planning of the network should take into consideration issues such as:

• Road space reallocation- Transport infrastructure currently prioritises space for motorised vehicles, but there is an opportunity to encourage uptake of powered cycle and scoot modes, as well as active travel by reallocating road space for these users.
• Scale of improvement required- There is much work to be done on the current infrastructure to remove barriers to active travel and powered cycle and scoot, as well as a significant amount of new infrastructure that’s needed for increased accessibility.
• Citizen consultation and activation – understanding where and how people move
• Drive to be more inclusive and accessible in design, delivery and impact

Whilst a high quality network of routes and activation are critical for encouraging and enabling cycling and scooting, supporting facilities are also important.

A fundamental facility is safe and secure places to store cycles and scooters. However, other facilities such as showers/changing facilities, lockers, charging for powered cycles and scooters, and cycle/scooter maintenance facilities are all also important provisions.

Often these facilities can be provided at destinations on private land by private entities. However, in many key places where there are many visitors to different local destinations and/or where there is a lack of space on private property, it can make sense to provide facilities on public land (at times maintained at the public’s expense).

Investment in supporting facilities like this is an important complimentary measure that can help improve access by walk, wheel, cycle and scoot.

Features of Facilities

Cycle and scoot storage and servicing facilities should be:

• set in a suitable location for access (destination and potentially origin locations and close to cycling infrastructure),
• weather-proof,
• well-lit, safe, and secure
• able to meet current and projected demand
• Inclusive for a variety of users and a variety of vehicle types

There are times when the public might not have access to a cycle/scooter of their own and we can support them by helping them access a vehicle.

There are a few key barriers that might be getting in the way of accessing a vehicle:

• Affordability of buying a personal cycle/scooter
• Being somewhere far from home, where it is not possible to transport a cycle/scooter
• The regulatory environment does not permit the use of a vehicle that would best meet someone’s needs.

Financial assistance to purchase a cycle/scooter and public shared cycle/scooter can help with the first two issues. But the last issue can only be resolved with significant legislative reform by Government, and local regulation as needed within that new regulatory environment.

Bikes and e-scooters should be financially accessible to all potential users. Often the cost of owning, refuelling and storing a vehicle can become barriers to mobility. Cycle Hire and Escooter hire can address the barrier of ownership for people to take up cycling and scooting.

Mobility credit schemes currently allow people to trade in their personal cars for credits towards public transport. This can be expanded to include credits towards powered cycle and scoot vehicles.

Provision could be supported through grant funded schemes such as Big Birmingham Bikes or for example through partnerships with public health partners to provide funding to communities and enabling them to decide how it is used in terms of providing access to vehicles.

The barriers in confidence and skills can still remain given the existing low levels of cycling in the West Midlands. The cycle and scooter designs utilised in public hire schemes should consider the needs of different users (e.g., adapted cycles/scooters designed for disabled people).

Residents with less public transport connectivity, less likely to participate in active travel and in a lower socioeconomic bracket should be targeted by both public hire schemes and mobility credits.

It is also important to enable unplanned, spontaneous or infrequent use of these modes to give people flexible and dynamic options for travel. The region is developing various shared mobility schemes including cycle hire and e-scooters to enable this.

Powered cycling and scooting encompasses a wide variety of small, lightweight vehicles operating at powered speeds of no more than 25 km/h.

In UK law, electric scooters, and many other new forms of micromobility can be owned privately but are only allowed to be used on private land. Electric powered pedal cycles above a certain horsepower also require licensing and insurance to be used on UK roads.

DfT introduced legislation in July 2020 to enable rental e-scooter trials to take place on public roads and cycle lanes across the UK. Birmingham’s e-scooter trial was launched in September 2020.

E-scooters and other micromobility modes have the opportunity to provide:

• Affordable personal transport
• Low emission vehicle types
• Fewer car journeys
• Last mile connections with public transport

As shown through the e-scooter trial, there is a real appetite for powered scooting and opportunities for expansion of public hire schemes and private ownership.

Private ownership is likely to be supported by changes in national regulation, which is expected by the end of 2022. This will allow for private powered cycles and scooters to be used on roads, pavements, parks, within town centres or canal towpaths.

Local authorities are likely to be given the powers to regulate and enforce speed and licensing standards.

Micromobility also has its own infrastructure needs, such as segregated lanes and public charging facilities. Charging and other considerations for powered cycling and scooting are further addressed in the Green Transport Revolution Big Move.

Concerns over safety are a major barrier to active travel uptake. By creating training for all road users they should have better skills to keep each other safe. We will develop training for:

• cyclists and e-scooter users to ride safer
• bus and freight drivers to make it safer for cyclists on roads
• safe speeds on roads to reduce KSIs
• internal local authority staff on active travel and how to promote it
• blue light partners to develop road safety training

Community outreach also plays an important role in engaging with groups that may face barriers to active travel. Local people must be considered early in the process to ensure schemes are supported locally in the long term and so that residents are aware of the facilities available to them. Businesses are also important to engage with, to expand facilities at sites of employment.

A collaborative approach with multi-agency partners will allow us to utilise the existing channels available to promote cycling and walking/wheeling in the region. We will conduct research so that we can understand the best methods of promotion in the region.

The following West Midlands programmes are funded through the Active Travel Fund to improve cycling, walking and scooting awareness.

• Active Travel Partnerships – Cycling UK, British Cycling, Living Streets
• Park that Bike
• Road Safety package
• Love to Ride
• Travel Planning Support
• Social Prescribing
• Adapted Cycles offer
• Smart bike lights offer

Future community engagement and education schemes may rely on the Active Travel Fund or other available grant funding.

Many people access public transport by walking to bus stops and stations. The active travel and powered cycling and scooting realm is important for encouraging PT use and connecting people door-to-door with their desired destinations. It is important for achieving the vision of 15 minute neighbourhood/ 45 minute region – with people being able to complete end to end journeys seamlessly using active and public transport.

Docking stations and storage for cycle hire bikes, rented e-scooters and personal bikes should be within proximity of other transport hubs. Co-locating active travel infrastructure with PT stations makes it easier to use bikes or scooters for last mile travel.

Cargo can be similarly integrated. E-cargo bike hires should be located near distribution centres, with further storage near delivery destinations such as mobility hubs and parcel lockers. Mobility hubs can fulfil these roles through current trials in the WM.

Public Transport vehicles, including buses, trams and trains, should better accommodate bikes on them. Often people are turned away for attempting to board with a bike or e-scooter.

WMCA will work collaboratively with transport providers to develop policies for allowing bikes and e-scooters on board. Work may also need to be done to provide facilities within public transport carriages to accommodate active travel and powered cycles and scooters.