Recommendation 14

DfT estimates that for every £1 invested in active travel, government will achieve around £4.30 in benefits. We therefore asked DfT about the benefits of active travel. DfT told us that active travel had many different benefits, including for health, air quality, decarbonisation. It explained that most of the benefits were found in health, including 21 Qq 11-12 22 C&AG’s Report, para 2.2 and 2.5 23 C&AG’s Report, para 2.8 24 Q 31 25 C&AG’s Report, paras 15, 21 26 Q 47 27 Q 52 28 Qq 48-49; C&AG’s Report, para 3.5 29 Q 48; Letter from Dame Bernadette Kelly DCB, Permanent Secretary for Transport, to Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair Public Accounts Committee in relation to Active Travel in England, 1 August 2023 Active travel in England 13 reduced incidence of heart attack which it measured.30 DfT told us that it had conducted an evaluation of the Cycle City Ambition Fund, which showed that while infrastructure had increased cycling by about 40%, it can take between three to five years for a piece of new infrastructure to have a maximum impact on behaviours and active travel participation.31 DfT recognised that it was “actually measuring quite a limited number of benefits in a qualitative sense” and ATE explained that the data available was inconsistent. It said that it was working to establish a common framework for assessing the benefits of active travel, while minimising the burden on local authorities of collating this data. We were pleased to hear that ATE intended to standardise the approach to evaluation and simplify the process for local authorities. We asked DfT when its plans for evaluating the impact of spend on active travel would be in place, and why it had taken setting up a new body in ATE to make progress. DfT told us that the establishment of ATE provided “five times the people capacity” that DfT previously had working on active travel.32 ATE told us that it will have 18 staff on its analysis and evaluation team and was working with the Alan Turing Institute