Active travel’s only part of the solution
Bath Chronicle, 20th May 2021
The recent Liberal Democrat reshuffle of the Bath & North East Somerset cabinet was both dismaying and encouraging when it comes to hopes for a constructive regional approach to the climate emergency.
It was dismaying to recognise that two years have been wasted with little progress toward addressing the climate emergency, and in fact quite the contrary — a descent into factionalism and piecemeal schemes likely to do as much harm as good.
It is encouraging, then, to believe that the new council leader Kevin Guy recognised that a change was needed and took necessary action so that residents can benefit from more joined-up thinking for the remainder of the current council term.
The parting speech from outgoing climate leader Cllr Joanna Wright attracted applause for its forthright tone, but to some of us it evidenced just how out of touch she had been. Aggrieved because the active travel schemes she shepherded had been stymied, Cllr Wright failed to appreciate that the fault lay with her for embracing such a narrow view of how to address the climate emergency.
Active travel is a wonderful idea. Who doesn’t want more cycling and walking, and less car use? I’ve designed my life to be car-free; I don’t own a car at all, I walk everywhere and when I need to travel further I take public transport whenever possible. I ought to be a poster child for active travel.
But unlike Cllr Wright and some of the cycling activists she seemed to favour, many of us recognise that active travel is only one element of a joined-up approach that is necessary in order to truly address the climate emergency — not simply by aiming for a carbon reduction target a decade from now, but doing what we must immediately to reduce harms to individuals including, especially, air pollution which in Bath frequently exceeds World Health Organisation recommended healthy limits.
Unfortunately, the active travel schemes promoted by Cllr Wright and her supporters paid no mind to air quality impacts, such as the displacement of traffic, congestion and pollution onto nearby roads. The North Rd scheme in Bathwick, for example, made no provision for benchmarking air pollution at the start, nor measuring the relative change resulting from the scheme. There was no plan to benchmark traffic levels at the start nor what happened to the car traffic subsequently.
As the chair of WalkRideBath blithely told residents on Twitter, “Suck it and see.”
This is not how to solve the climate emergency. Kids growing up along nearby roads should not have to breathe dirtier air, with the resulting long-term damage to their lungs, heart and cognitive abilities, increased risk of asthma and other consequences, in order to let a few dozen cyclists toodle up North Rd to the university.
Doing long-term damage to residents’ health, especially the youngest and most vulnerable residents, is not strategic climate leadership. Going for quick wins without regard for consequences is nothing more than politics. And one shouldn’t play politics with peoples’ lives.
Unfortunately, Cllr Wright’s climate blind spots encouraged aggressive local cycling activists to think they had won the debate and to be dismissive and disdainful of the concerns of fellow residents. People who ought to be on the same side — people like me, already living a car-free life by choice — have instead been turned into antagonists simply because we want to protect the air we breathe. Instead of cooperation and collaboration, we’ve had factionalism. It will take a while to repair the damage.
But it’s not all bad news. Some of the new cabinet members seem to have a broader, more integrated view of how to address our climate emergency. Unfortunately, the real solutions aren’t so easy or quick. They don’t provide instant gratification. But in the long run, they are the right approach.
In Bath, some of the necessary steps to properly address the climate emergency include implementation of more extensive, real-time air quality monitoring so that we can benchmark pollution levels on an ongoing basis and identify problems quickly; a commitment to discourage home wood burning (which creates far more air pollution than road traffic); keeping giant HGVs off the Cleveland Bridge permanently; closing car magnets such as the University of Bath’s giant subsidised car parks; preservation of parkland and open space, such as the Recreation Ground; and implementing more public transport options around town.
And, yes, support for active travel as much as possible, with an awareness of the potential knock-on effects.
Both local politicians and residents need to understand that active travel is not the solution to the climate emergency. It’s one part of a solution, and it needs to be treated thusly. Zealots who demand active travel schemes at any cost either misunderstand, or simply don’t care about, the broader considerations. This, sadly, was Cllr Wright’s undoing.
I’m hopeful that our new cabinet members for transport and climate will begin to take a more joined-up approach toward addressing climate and clean air, and will consult with a broader range of stakeholders in doing so.
They will not fix the climate emergency in the three years remaining in the current term, but they can begin to lay the groundwork. Acting as leaders rather than as politicians, they can bring stakeholders from across the community to the table to begin to form consensus around what are some really hard problems.
That would be a good legacy. After two years lost, it’s the least we ought to expect.
