L OVE A ND ’AT E
Chris Boardman gets the top job at Active Travel England, with revolution on his agenda
“Active Travel England (ATE) is – somewhat appropriately given the acronym - a body with teeth”
Just as we were writing the words for the CyclingPlus 30th anniversary awards feature on p78 – one that names Chris Boardman as the magazine’s hero of the past three decades – we were forced to make an addition to his long list of accomplishments. As that feature documents, what he’s done over the years made him an easy choice for the award: winning huge races on the road and track, driving innovation off it and, more recently, being one of this country’s great advocates for bike riding, most recently as Greater Manchester’s Transport Commissioner.
Boardman’s CV expanded further in January when he was appointed as the national commissioner of the Government’s new cycling and walking body, Active Travel England (ATE). The appointment, which sees him leave his role with Greater Manchester, is an interim one, with a permanent commissioner to be decided in due course by the Department for Transport, with Boardman involved in recruiting a chief executive and management team. ATE is – somewhat appropriately given the acronym – a body with teeth. When it begins its work this summer, in its York headquarters, it will be in charge of England’s active travel budget and be responsible for driving up cycling-infrastructure standards. It will oversee new schemes, on one hand supporting local authorities to dream big in their designs and, on another, asking for funds to be returned if they’re not up to scratch or have been slow to materialise, as well as identifying highway authorities’ active travel failings where necessary. ATE will also, by law, have to be consulted during the planning of major new developments to ensure that appropriate consideration is given to how people get around them on bikes.
Boardman said that it’s time for a “quiet revolution” in how the country chooses to move around. “The positive effects of high levels of cycling and walking are clearly visible in pockets around the country where people have been given easy and safe alternatives to driving,” he said. “Perhaps most important of all, though, it makes for better places to live while helping both the NHS and our mission to decarbonise. The time has come to build on those pockets of best practice and enable the whole nation to travel easily and safely around their neighbourhoods without feeling compelled to rely on cars. I’m honoured to be asked to lead on this and help deliver the ambitious vision laid out in the Government’s Gear Change strategy and other local-transport policies. This will be a legacy we will be proud to leave for our children and for future generations. It’s time to make it a reality.”
Boardman’s reference to Gear Change is the Government document released in the summer of 2020 that set out the vision for a “golden age of cycling” and to turn England into a “great cycling and walking nation.” This came at a time, following the first lockdown where motorised traffic fell dramatically on our roads, where people – feeling far safer – realised that bike riding could be at the heart of getting about. Of course, the spring of 2020 feels a long time ago now - cars have returned to prepandemic levels and many temporary bike lanes set up in the pandemic to encourage cycling have been ripped out. Lasting change is hard when familiar habits are easy to slip back into. As I write this, there are misleading headlines about how changes to the Highway Code allows cyclists to ride in ride in the middle of the road (they are, of course, nonsense), with hysterical commentary from motoring groups abounding. The opposition is vocal, but they’re in the minority. What parent, for instance, wouldn’t want their child to be able to get to school on a bike? There’ll be setbacks along the way until Boardman’s vision is reached, but he is surely the level-headed, rational messenger that we need.