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Ten Points about Active Travel Fund 4

Cycle track at Sand Hill Lane, Leeds
Cycle track at Sand Hill Lane, Leeds

Active Travel England (ATE) has published the guidance it gave to local authorities to enable them to complete their Active Travel Fund 4 (ATF4) bids.

The bids have already been submitted and decided upon, but the guidance is nevertheless interesting. It helps explain why some bids failed and others succeeded; and presumably guidance for future ATF bids will be similar, so it will be relevant then.

Also, it gives an insight into how councils are expected to deliver their schemes.

Here then are ten points drawn from the ATF4 guidance.

1) Objectives of the Fund

The principal objective of ATF4 is to help deliver the CWIS2 goals including:

  • double cycling from 2013 to 2025
  • 55% of primary school children to walk to school by 2025
  • increase active travel from 41% of short urban trips in 2018 to 46% in 2025
  • 50% of short urban trips to be walked or cycled by 2030

2) Most of the Money Goes to Competent Local Authorities

Most of the money has gone to competent local authorities or, as ATE puts it, ‘ensure the majority of investment is focused on authorities with high capability, defined by the authority self-assessment tier…’

Later, the guidance reminds councils that they should put forward schemes that reflect their capability to deliver. In the case of Level 1 authorities like North Yorkshire, they are not deemed capable of delivering cycle schemes in urban areas.

ATE are looking for schemes that can convert high volumes of journeys to walking, wheeling and cycling relative to the cost of the scheme and the needs of the area (urban vs rural).

3) Schemes Must Comply with National Design Standards and Local Strategies

Schemes must comply with:

  • Manual for Streets
  • LTN 1/20
  • inclusive mobility

Authorities should develop Local Cycling & Walking Infrastructure Plans (LCWIPs); the LCWIP forms part of the local transport strategy. Bids should fit in with the local transport strategy as well as strategies for:

  • sustainable development
  • air quality
  • carbon
  • health
  • deprivation
  • cost of living

4) Value for Money

ATE wants to maximise Value for Money (VfM) and meet minimum quality standards. VfM should be assessed using the Active Mode Appraisal Toolkit, shortened to AMAT.

Schemes should offer:

  • Medium VfM (BCR of 1.5 to 2) or
  • (most schemes) Medium to High VfM (BCR of >2)

This does not exclude schemes with high strategic importance or network effects.

There is an important sentence in the guidance, which may indicate where North Yorkshire fell down in its ATF4 bid:

‘To note: high quality cycling schemes that conform to ATE quality standards may struggle to reach medium or high VfM. It is therefore recommended that schemes of this type demonstrate benefits to people walking as well.’

guidance on atf4 and value for money

5) Assurance that Design Standards Can Be Met

The guidance says that ATE wants to ensure at the bid stage that national design standards can be met.

It therefore asks for preliminary checks to be made on the space available. ATE has produced design tools for this purpose, ‘to test whether a desired layout is feasible along the length of the proposed route’.

‘Overall, this provides a sense check that major constraints along a route have been considered prior to funding being allocated to a scheme’.

Atf4 guidance on design information and constraints

6) Assessing and Scoring Bids

The criteria on which bids are assessed and scored are:

  • compliance with key principles
  • design quality
  • VfM
  • deliverability based on past record and robust construction scheduling
  • propensity to convert short journeys to walking, wheeling and cycling
  • tackling deprivation and poor health outcomes

‘Schemes prioritised by local authorities within their proposed funding allocation will be funded if they meet minimum scoring thresholds. Where these are not met, funding will be recycled and provided to remaining unfunded schemes with the highest scores’.

atf4 guidance on assessment criteria and scoring process

7) Delivery Dates and Change Control

ATE wants councils to set out a schedule that includes timings for:

  • consultation
  • feasiblity and design
  • construction
  • date open for public use

Timeline information is ‘a key delivery metric’.

ATE has a change control process where there are changes to the timetable. This is presumably designed to prevent councils like North Yorkshire letting milestones slip endlessly, with no on-the-ground improvements ever achieved.

8) Equality Approach

Schemes should comply with DfT Accessiblity guidance, and there should be engagement and consultation with representatives of people with protected characteristics who may be affected by the scheme.

9) Outputs

Bids should detail outputs of the schemes, such as miles of new cycle track.

This helps ATE measure success and make the case for continued investment in the right types of infrastructure.

10) Monitoring and Evaluation

ATE’s aim here is to generate evidence on the delivery and impact of active travel schemes. There will be revised monitoring and evaluation guidance in early 2023.

Monitoring

Monitoring appears to relate to the progress of the scheme, and ATE expects councils to provide data every 3 or 6 months.

The data should include details of budget spent, project status, miles/number of schemes built.

Evaluation

If I’ve understood it correctly, evaluation relates to the impacts of the schemes once built. It can include cycle counters.

The guidance recommends using a ‘counterfactual’ – i.e. collecting data at the site and at a comparable site, before and after the scheme is implemented.

Councils can also use Road User Intercept Surveys.

A sub-set of councils will be asked to work with a national evaluation partner responsible for analysing data.

Ten Points about Active Travel Fund 4