Living Streets Webinar: Reallocation of street space

In their ‘AND’ Walking webinar, Living Streets asked representatives from 4 areas of the UK; What action are you taking in your area? Below is the GM extract from the webinar.

Greater Manchester

Presented by Dr Richard Nickson, Director of Cycling & Walking, Transport for Greater Manchester and Beth Sutcliffe, GM Walking. 

Space for walking

There was a real incentive to bring walking and cycling to the forefront in the light of the pandemic. Working with Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester and Chris Boardman, the Cycling and Walking Commissioner, we introduced pop up infrastructure. Each borough received a share of £5 million funding for active travel measures, including temporary pavement extensions and town centre improvements.

Evaluation

It’s incredibly important to see how these measures are affecting people to help bring about long-term change. We introduced agile measures to look at how people view walking and cycling with our Travel Demand survey showing that experiences during lockdown seem to have had a positive impact on attitudes to active travel. Nearly a fifth of respondents said they felt safer walking and cycling due to less traffic and nearly half claimed that walking and cycling during lockdown will prompt them to do so more often when restrictions ease.

Legacy

We need to lock in the benefits we experienced from having more people walking and cycling during lockdown. However, we are already seeing a return to pre-lockdown levels of traffic in some areas and questions are starting to be asked across the UK. Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and physical distancing measures can bring about long-term change. There have been sustained changes in the Trafford area because of the retention of road space reallocation. The next step is looking at how we make this more long-term.

What is GM Walking?

GM Walking supports an increase in physical activity in Greater Manchester. Support and investment in walking recognises its role and ability to support the most inactive to get active, in a free and accessible way.

Adapting to lockdown
We had to adapt our whole Walking Region offer to be relevant for the new world we were living in. Highlighting two the ways we’ve done that:

1. Empowering Communities

We’re working with voluntary organisations and communities to support them to implement their own schemes to help them walk more. GMCVO will be giving out a total of £225,000 in grants to VCSE organisations to support increased walking, with 69 small and medium grants and four partnership grants already allocated so far.

2. Let’s Walk Fest

GM Walking Festival aims to celebrate and promote walking. Last year’s festival in May (2019) comprised 429 walking activities. Due to Covid-19, the May Walking Festival was cancelled. Instead, our virtual festival ‘Let’s Walk Fest’ has been developed and will run from 12 – 25 October 2020.

Images provided by TfGM and GM Walking

Looking ahead in Greater Manchester

The Active Lives data will give an impression of how COVID has affected walking in Greater Manchester. We’ll be attempting to fill data gaps by expanding monitoring capabilities around walking and cycling, using innovative data analytics based on mobile data and video-based analytics.
We’re also looking to engage with more disadvantaged communities who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.