Recommendation 2

DfT is not on track to meet its objectives to increases rates of active travel by 2025. DfT told us that its targets to increase active travel were deliberately ambitious. They include objectives to double rates of cycling and to increase the proportion of children walking to school by 6 percentage points. But progress has been disappointingly slow. There has been no sustained increase in cycling rates and, in some cases, for example the proportion of children walking to school, levels of activity are lower now than when the targets were set. The existing national measures that DfT uses to track progress on cycling rates are too high level to capture the impact of local investment accurately. Although DfT suggested that funding has not been a key issue in the failure to achieve its targets, we are not convinced that progress against DfT’s active travel objectives will be unaffected by the decisions made by the department to reduce funding. DfT states that it can no longer promise to deliver all 33 actions in Gear Change due to funding constraints and the shifting priorities of Ministers, but that it would focus on the activities could have the greatest impact on increasing active travel. Recommendation 2: DfT should include in its Treasury Minute response: • its review of its objectives for active travel in England, setting out what it expects to achieve with the funding now available for active travel to 2025; • how it plans to improve the monitoring of progress against its objectives. This should include better measures that can track progress on cycling rates where there has been local investment.