Ask your council to prioritise walking and cycling
Getting in touch with your local representatives is a really important thing to do if you want to see more walking, cycling and other forms of active travel become the new normal for our towns and cities after Covid-19.
We’ve put together some information below on different ways you can do this - either directly yourself by email, or through other brilliant organisations working hard on space for walking and cycling.
If you haven’t written to your councillors before - don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be a big job. In fact, some of the options below are designed to make it as easy as possible for you!
More space for walking
Our friends at Living Streets (who have been campaigning on walking for over 90 years!) have created a form that makes it really easy to email your councillors and let them know that you want to see more space for walking in our towns and cities. Just pop in your name, email and postcode and off you go!
Redraw the map where you live
The clever people at Cycle Streets have created an interactive map where you can directly suggest new measures you think are needed in your local area to open up active travel for us all. Bike lane needed on your highstreet? Wider pavement needed outside your local school? Just put in your postcode and get plotting - Cycle Streets will then use all the information submitted to pressure councils to take action.
Get in touch with your councillors directly
If you’re up for emailing your councillors personally, that’s a really good option. They’re there to represent you, and the more of us getting in touch to let them know this is important, the more change we’ll see.
Here’s how to get in touch:
First off, enter your postcode in here to find out the names and contact details of your local representatives.
Click the ‘Write to all your councillors’ link to the right of their names, or you can click on an individual councillor’s name if you’d prefer to write to them only.
Write your message! It’s up to you what you’d like to ask for, but here’s some suggestions. You don’t need to mention them all - or any of them! - so just focus on what feels most important to you. Feel free to get in touch if you’ve got any questions - and do let us know if you hear back from your councillors!
Implement a network of temporary bike tracks and wider pavements. You could give the brilliant example of Leicester’s ‘Key Worker Corridor’, that created a safe cycle track leading to Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Develop ‘low-traffic neighbourhoods’ to support walking and cycling at a neighbourhood level. Many changes to enable these can be done using an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order, where consultation on changes runs alongside their experimental implementation.
Identify locations where additional cycle parking may be needed to support new cycle trips, and work with employers as needed to provide these.
Provide subsidised or free access to bikes and e-bikes. This is particularly important for medium-distance commutes, such as between Outer and Central London.
Provide subsidised access to repair and maintenance services, and to cycle training, offered in England through Bikeability.
Bring forward plans to control demand for driving, particularly where these generate space or resources that can be allocated to active and sustainable travel. This could include workplace parking levies and clean air zones.
Photo by Paris en Selle, widenmypath.com