Greater Manchester committed to widening access and participation in active travel

Supporting more people to participate in active travel, more of the time, is a key priority for Greater Manchester (GM).  We recognise that this is essential to the physical and mental wellbeing of those living in Greater Manchester to reducing the impact we are having on our planet and to creating better places to live, work and play.

In Greater Manchester, around 250 million of the car journeys we make a year are less than one kilometre, which is the equivalent to a 15-minute walk or a five-minute cycle ride.   

Providing a healthier, more sustainable and more affordable alternative to the car for everyday journeys is key to delivering our clean air commitments and achieving our ambitions as a city-region to be net-zero Carbon by 2038.  Also key to how we support our struggling high streets and town and district centres to thrive is creating more liveable and loveable neighbourhoods, safer more inclusive streets; and tackling the high levels of health inequality across GM, which have been exposed and exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic.

Active travel is key to people being happier, healthier and more connected, to making GM  ‘A great place to grow up, get on and grow old’ and to achieving our Greater Manchester ambition of good lives for all.

Work has been underway since 2018, to make Greater Manchester ‘a great place to walk and cycle’. Led by the Transport Commissioner for Greater Manchester, Chris Boardman, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) and Greater Manchester partners have been working together to support a transformational growth in active travel. This includes delivering ‘the UK’s largest cycling and walking network, making it safe and attractive for people to travel on foot or by bike for everyday trips.’

Levels of physical activity and of active travel drop off rapidly with age. Supporting people to travel in an active way is beneficial for their health and also boosts their independence and their social and economic inclusion.

Increasing active travel for over 50s in Greater Manchester can make a real contribution to addressing the health inequalities we’ve seen so starkly exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential for change is massive, for example, in the UK the percentage of trips cycled steadily decline for women and men over the age of 50. In contrast, in cycle-friendly Netherlands, the percentage of trips cycled increase for both women and men between the ages 50-70.

Widening access and participation in active travel for everyone, including over 50s, is therefore a core commitment in our new Greater Manchester whole system strategy for physical activity, ‘GM Moving in Action.’ Making active travel the natural choice for as many short trips as possible across the life course, through supporting population-level behaviour change, system change and culture change, is critical to achieving our GM goal of Active Lives for all. This needs to be for all generations, by all generations, in the spirit of our GM mantra of doing ‘nothing about us, without us’.

Recognising the need and opportunity to do more, in June 2020 we convened an Active Travel and Over 50s Steering Group. The group brought together a number of GM partners including GreaterSport, Transport for Greater Manchester, The Greater Manchester Ageing Hub, The Centre for Ageing Better and The University of Manchester.

The purpose of the group was to consider opportunities to increase levels of participation in active travel among people in mid and later life, to pull together the existing evidence base, to identify key gaps and barriers and understand what more we could do.

Our approach:

• Building on the current strategic architecture in GM, including the new Streets for All Strategy and Interim Active Travel Design Guide and the positive momentum and focus on active travel that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Understanding over 50s in all their diversity and the intersecting demographic, spatial and socio-economic inequalities and prejudices they experience.
• Taking a ‘whole-system’ approach, drawing on the learning of GM Moving and the GM Ageing Hub, that acknowledges the disparate and multiple nature of factors that influence peoples’ active travel habits, as captured in this GM Moving animation on working in complex systems. 

The Centre for Ageing Better has been a key strategic partner in this journey. The publication today of Ageing Better’s report is very welcome and helps address a gap in existing insight. It is great to see how clearly aligned the report’s findings and recommendations are with our own learning in Greater Manchester. The way forward is clear. Now time for collective action! 

The views and opinions expressed in this guest blog are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the policy or positions of the Centre for Ageing Better