Move Free Report by Create Streets

A new report called Move Free has been published by an organisation called Create Streets.

Introduction: Twin Inventions

The Introduction to the report notes that the safety bicycle and the motor car were invented within months of each other in 1884.

The bicycle took off more quickly, and the motor car was much more of a slow burner. It was before and after World War II that cars became more popular. Some local and national governments thought that towns and cities should be designed for cars, with multi-lane streets, little space for walking and cycling, and people living in tower blocks.

The report aims to find out what patterns of movement are associated with more prosperity, more successful high streets, more happiness and freedom of choice, and with building more homes.

Why Movement Matters

The report describes how good transport links are important for jobs and income. It does this largely by reference to house prices in different areas.

It says that cars are an inefficient use of space, and people like walkable and cycleable neighbourhoods. House prices are lower where they are too close to noisy railway lines or busy roads.

High streets that are less car-dominated do best. Removing car parking spaces does not affect retail businesses negatively.

‘Retailers often over-estimate the importance of the car. Surveys in Graz (Austria), Bristol and Dublin found that retailers overestimated the number of customers arriving by car, by around 100 per cent in most cases, and underestimated the number arriving on foot.’

move free report, p26

Walking and cycling are good for our health and happiness. Physical activity generates endorphins that make us feel good, and the activity is good for our health. The more people exercise, the more it saves the NHS money.

Walking and cycling also provide opportunities for interaction with other people, and for contact with nature.

There is an odd passage in the report about ‘insulting’ cars and their drivers.

‘Those who foolishly campaign for cycling or for public transport by insulting not just cars but their drivers, should hardly be surprised that both main political parties adopt rhetorical positions on the side of the majority. It is called democracy. Most households (77 per cent) own a car. Both major British political parties have therefore been very clear that they support car owners.’

move free report, p33

This is followed by good explanations as to how ‘cars diminish liberty as well as enhancing it’ – by taking up lots of space, creating danger, polluting, and ‘destroying the liberty of the child and the teenager to move around safely’.

‘Children’s freedom to move has declined in parallel with growing traffic’. Over four generations of a Sheffield family, there was a 97% reduction in an 8-year-old’s home range – from 6 miles to 300 yards.

There’s a wafer-thin difference between the perceived anti-car campaigning that Move Free rails against, and its own arguments against car domination. It’s rather odd.

As the report points out, children are happier when they have more freedom, including the freedom to cycle to school. Parents would be happier if they didn’t have to chauffeur their children.

Requirements for large numbers of car parking spaces per dwelling mean that house-building takes up far more land than it would otherwise. We should instead build ‘gentle density’ developments with less provision for cars and more houses per acre.

Examples of Getting it Right

Altrincham is given as one example of getting it right.

Its 2014 Town Centre Masterplan aimed to create joined-up pedestrian routes as well as cycle tracks and hubs. The town has put in wider pavements and narrower carriageways. Some streets have been pedestrianised altogether.

The objective is to create streets that put people first.

Over 5 years, footfall in Altrincham town centre grew 13%.

Other examples of getting it right quoted by Move Free are Pontevedra, and Lancaster (California). In Lancaster, five traffic lanes on the main street were reduced down to three.

Conclusion

‘Cars are great. Cars are awful. Cars can boost liberty. Cars can destroy it. Cars can help the economy. Cars can undermine it. It is largely a question of where. They add most value in areas of lowest density. They add least and do most harm in areas of higher density’.

move free, p53

The conclusion of the report is that transport is political, and to win the argument you need to move the debate from car to choice and place.

It says that you should only make small and very gradual changes – for example, planting street trees or part-pedestrianising certain streets on a given Sunday or Bank Holiday.

Does this amount to solving the problems described in the rest of the report, including loss of freedom for children? I doubt it.

It’s also noteworthy that there doesn’t appear to be a single reference in the report to greenhouse gas emissions from transport, and the need to reduce vehicle miles travelled to prevent climate breakdown.

Overall, Move Free is a good report which identifies some of the ills created by our transport system, but then – apparently out of fear of upsetting people – fails to prescribe the medicine that would cure them.