Letter to the Active Travel Commissioner: Please intervene for a good scheme!

An active neighbourhood with missing filters won’t get us walking, wheeling and cycling.

In an open letter to the Greater Manchester Active Travel Commissioner Dame Sarah Storey, we have warned that a substandard scheme in Levenshulme & Burnage will fail our residents.

The Levenshulme & Burnage Active Neighbourhood scheme is still not connecting people with places they want to go. The isolated improvements introduced and proposed so far – although welcome –  aren’t enough to allow people to make short journeys without a car. Too many dangerous streets remain for most journeys in the neighbourhood.

Despite ‘spades in the ground’ across the area, this scheme is still not funded by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. When a freedom of information request (FoI) showed Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) asking in Spring 2023 for a key filter on Manor Road to be included in the final design for the scheme, we had reason to be optimistic. It seemed that interventions made by Dame Sarah Storey to “rigorously review” schemes was having an impact and ensuring that TfGM were holding Manchester City Council to account.

The FoI showed a TfGM officer stating clearly that the current scheme does not provide suitable active travel routes that allow people to travel safely across a single continuous area and reach core shops and services.

“I wanted to confirm in writing a straightforward description of what TfGM believes that the scheme needs to demonstrate, that it does not currently, as part of a successful … funding [case]. This is that it needs to provide a single, contiguous area, within which network connectivity can be demonstrated, at Bee Network standards, for walking, wheeling, and cycling… It ought to be possible to navigate from any given point within that area, to any other point within that area, on Bee Network routes or other quiet streets.”

The same officer then goes on to provide specific examples of where further filters are needed to ensure residents can travel safely. 

One of these is a key filter location either on the west end of Manor Road, or the west end of Barlow Road. Streets for People have campaigned extensively on the importance of a filer in this area. Including this filter would not only provide an additional 1.7km of streets safe from speeding cars, but is essential to ensure that the planned speed calming on Matthews Lane actually works. Without this filter, traffic would divert from Matthews Lane onto narrow residential streets.

This is illustrated in two images from the FoI produced by TfGM. The blue areas on both maps are the areas of Levenshulme which are connected to each other via safe streets for walking and cycling. The second map shows the dramatic difference just one extra filter makes, giving hundreds more households a safe alternative to car travel.

The Manor Road west filter was removed from designs when a petition was submitted to councillors after the consultation deadline, something we learnt at our public meeting last September. This petition appears to have been accepted by the project team as sign of community opposition to filters when, in fact, several consultations and petitions have been provided in support of more filters in the neighbourhood, including at that location.

Despite support from residents and guidance from the TfGM, Manchester City Council still refuses to put the necessary infrastructure in for active travel. Are TfGM now at the point of conceding to the council’s tactic of building schemes before funding approval in order to pressure the funders to accept substandard schemes?

As we approach the final sign-off for funding, our letter to Active Travel Commissioner Dame Sarah Storey makes clear that if this scheme is allowed to pass without further filters which provide joined up active travel routes across the area, then future standards of the Bee Network are at risk. Moreover, it would be a breach of trust with the community that was promised and has through repeated consultations provided strong majority support for an ambitious and transformative scheme.

By funding a scheme which does not meet the objectives of an Active Neighbourhood, the entire city region’s active travel ambitions would be undermined. Councils would have a clear blueprint for how to deliver sub-standard schemes by building first, and later pressuring TfGM to fund them. We have asked the commissioner to step-in and prevent this.

How will the ‘European Capital of Cycling 2024’ show it is serious about delivering on its plan to reduce the number of short car journeys? Speed humps, crossings and isolated infrastructure won’t be enough. It’s not too late to rescue this scheme from failure.