With increasing international focus on climate change demonstrated by the recent well-attended, high-profile United Nations Climate Change Conference, Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, France, the significant carbon emission contribution made by the transport sector and ever-growing urban populations, a paradigm shift in the uptake of active travel is not only material but essential in moving towards more sustainable development.
Of course, reduced greenhouse gas emissions are far from being the only benefit of active travel. Transport under one’s own steam will be the tonic to many of our modern day ills; obesity-related illness is set to inflict the biggest toll on UK health services over the next generation with childhood obesity rising rapidly. Road death is on course to be the biggest global killer by 2050.
Increased fitness, health and well-being, improved independent low-cost or free mobility to those older, younger and less-abled, better employee productivity, and greener cities free from pollution, congestion and danger is surely a vision of true triple-strand sustainability.
This topic seems timely, with the invitation for papers for the themed issue on active travel achieving a record number of submissions and exceeding the capacity for one issue; a second issue on this theme will follow.
The papers in this edition address particularly these issues: exploring means to increase the uptake of active travel in children; opening our minds to make provisions for other small-wheeled modes beyond walking and cycling that will be particularly attractive to children; the practical barriers to the wider population in the uptake of active travel using tricycles and bicycles with trailers; and issues with accurately estimating bicycle parking demand to facilitating desired uptake.
The first paper (Johnson et al., 2016) draws together a number of evidence sources in an attempt to understand the role of cycle training as one among several measures for increasing active travel. It reviews existing research regarding the role of and outcomes from cycle training for children before an overview of the distribution of cycle training in English schools. It then draws on two new data sources to explore outcomes, experiences and perceptions of cycling and cycle training from a child’s perspective, drawing conclusions on the role of cycle training in schools and what this means for policy makers and practitioners.
We know that active children are more likely to be active adults, and the second paper continues the theme relating to modes attractive and already used by the younger generation (Lorimer and Marshall, 2016). It is an exciting paper going beyond the traditional definition of walking and cycling to include ‘small-wheel modes’ such as inline skating, skateboarding and push scooting, among others. With the recent launch of hoverboards and increasing technological advancements, this mode is only likely to increase in scope. The paper describes how these modes – especially for travel rather than leisure – are rarely quantified outside of accident statistics and the focus of qualitative study in the governance of public space conflict or the sociology of childhood activities. This paper reports on a scoping study exploring the potential for small-wheeled modes and finds differences between the views of planning officers and users of the modes that need to be investigated further to reach conclusions and advice for the design, maintenance and management issues needed both now and in the future to allow more variety and choice in human locomotion for active travel.
The third paper (Gaffga and Hagemeister, 2016) continues this exciting theme of widening the scope of active travel even further to include vehicles accessible to all members of society, beyond those individuals (young and fit) traditionally seen as ‘cyclists’ to include the elderly, the less-abled or those with goods or children to carry. In an online survey, the special problems of tricyclists and cyclists using a trailer were assessed. The main infrastructural problems for trikes and trailers were obstacles such as chicane barriers, bollards and inadequately dropped kerbs. Garages were relatively important for parking trikes and trailers at night. Those able to choose prefer to take a bicycle without a trailer when they travel part of their journey on public transport. The perceived social interactions differed only slightly when using a bike or a trike, or a bike with or without a trailer. Tricyclists and trailer users perceived that they were overtaken with more clearance than when riding a bike. Thus infrastructural elements and public transport are much greater barriers to the use of tricycles and bike trailers than the social interaction on the road. It concludes that elimination of such infrastructure elements can contribute to promoting every day use.
The final paper (Pfaffenbichler and Brezina, 2016) in this edition continues the theme of provision for cycle vehicles but concentrates on parking provision, using the case study of the Viennese transport policy, which aims to double the share of cycling. This paper shows that besides cycle paths and lanes, appropriate parking facilities, both primary (at home) and secondary (at destination), are seen as key to success. Citywide data about the location of public bicycle stands were analysed. The spatial distribution of future levels of cycling were estimated using three different methods based on origin–destination matrices from a transport model and commuter data from the 2001 census with a uniform modal share and a modal share differentiated by five city areas. The research showed that up to 56 000 additional public bicycle spaces are needed to accommodate the intended increase in cycling.
I am delighted with this exciting edition comprising papers that stretch traditional perceptions of active travel and really prompt and inspire us to look to the future possibilities, as well as show so clearly how, if we can manage to facilitate active travel to all groups of society, we really will be engineering sustainability in its widest sense.
