Cambridgeshire’s Active Travel Strategy provides a comprehensive set of policies that will enable quality provision of active travel infrastructure and initiatives in Cambridgeshire to contribute to the County Council’s target to achieve net zero carbon by 2045. By enabling and encouraging more people to travel by active travel modes, the number of journeys made by car can be reduced.
Whether directly through living more active lifestyles, or indirectly through improving the environment, all people in Cambridgeshire will benefit from making more journeys on foot, cycle or other ‘wheeled’ modes of active travel. Alongside other local policies, this Active Travel Strategy will build on achievements so far, such as the high levels of cycling in the city of Cambridge, and further improve and increase the proportion of journeys made by active modes across all of Cambridgeshire. Over time, this Strategy will enable and encourage more people to switch some of the journeys they once made by private car to active modes, making it a natural first choice.
Cambridgeshire’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) has been developed and will sit under Cambridgeshire’s Active Travel Strategy. The LCWIP process identified the top priority active travel routes in each district for new or improved infrastructure for walking and/or cycling, and are included in the Tier 1 list of schemes within the Active Travel Strategy Action Plan. Proposals that did not make the priority Tier 1 schemes have been included as Tier 2 schemes in the Action Plan.
Cambridgeshire’s Active Travel Strategy was adopted by the Highways and Transport Committee on 7 March 2023 (Cambridgeshire CMIS website).
The Strategy can be viewed below. At the same committee Cambridgeshire’s Active Travel Design Guide was also adopted. The Design Guide provides information for the planning and design of paths for active travel in the County of Cambridgeshire.
The Active Travel Strategy recognises the overlap and balance required to address potential pressures between providing for Active Travel whilst maintaining existing networks of public rights of way for ‘non-motorised users’ (NMUs). Part of the purpose of the Design Guide is to reduce these pressures by defining what is and is not acceptable when designing for active travel.
The Design Guide is a live working document and will continually evolve to include new techniques, materials, and applications as they become available and appropriate. The Design Guide can be viewed below.
Active Travel Toolkit
Cambridgeshire’s Active Travel Toolkit for New Developments was adopted by the Highways and Transport Committee on 5 March 2024 and can be viewed below.
The toolkit aims to provide planning authorities, County Council and developers with comprehensive guidance throughout the planning process, ensuring the prioritisation of active travel in new developments. Developments of all types and sizes should consider the key considerations and expectations within the Toolkit. The checklist will need to be completed for all the developments, as defined in the Toolkit. This is to make sure that active travel is considered at the earliest stage to ensure provision of or impact on active travel is accounted for.
Developing the strategy and emerging action plan
The draft strategy was produced with input from key stakeholders during a six-week stakeholder engagement exercise in May and June 2022.
The report is available to read below.
The Strategy includes an emerging action plan of schemes to deliver the strategy vision and objectives.
Equality Impact Assessment
We are committed to achieving equality and diversity by ensuring we are fair and accessible to all. As part of this process we have carried out an Equality Impact Assessment for the Strategy which can be read below.
Public Consultation
The draft Active Travel Strategy public consultation ran between 26 September and 7 November 2022. Consultation documents can be viewed on the consultation page.
The report is available to read below.
