Westminster’s Active Travel Academy celebrates fifth anniversary

The University of Westminster's Active Travel Academy (ATA) celebrated their fifth birthday on 24 October, thanking their supporters and friends who had helped in achieving this milestone. The ATA brings together a broad spectrum of expertise to lead research, teaching and knowledge exchange on walking, wheeling, cycling and other active travel modes, the use of micromobilities and reduction in car use.

Photo credit: Dulce Pedroso

The event was organised by Dr Tom Cohen, Dr Ersilia Verlinghieri and Dr Jamie Furlong, all members of the Active Travel Academy in Westminster's School of Architecture + Cities.

Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Bonfield spoke about his first meetings with ATA Director Professor Rachel Aldred which led to the establishment of the ATA in 2019. Transport journalist and ATA member Laura Laker then interviewed Professor Aldred about the last and next five years.

Active travel refers to types of transport that involve some physical activity, such as walking, cycling, and use of a manual wheelchair.

Originally funded by the Quintin Hogg Trust, the ATA is currently funded by organisations including the National Institute for Health and Social Care Research (NIHR), the Department for Transport (DfT), Transport for London (TfL) and Motability Trust.

The Academy believes all disciplines and expertise are needed to address the acute global problems that car-dominated transport systems have created. It brings together practitioners, academics, students and others with an interest or expertise in active travel. The ATA contributes to addressing issues around air pollution, climate breakdown, an inactivity epidemic, road injuries and deaths, unequal access to transport and the loss of independent mobility in childhood and at older ages. It critically approaches pressing policy problems, drawing on a wide range of tools and methods, from Big Data to auto-ethnography.

Researchers including Professor Rachel Aldred, Senior Research Fellow Dr Ersilia Verlinghieri, Research Fellow Dr Jamie Furlong and Research Associate Dr Harrie Larrington-Spencer are leading high impact projects on all aspects of active travel. These also benefit students, who have been engaged with different aspects of the various projects, as well as working on ATA-hosted PhD and MSc projects, helping with the ATA's regular events and podcast, and taking the Modifying Travel Behaviour module developed and led by Dr Tom Cohen. The ATA also runs a platinum open-access journal, Active Travel Studies, publishing leading-edge research in the field.

The ATA's largest project, funded by the NIHR, observes the impacts of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in London and uses an innovative mix of methods, from sensors counting pedestrians and cyclists in real-time, to mapping people's experiences, and analysing Google Application Programming Interface (API) data on car journey times. It is led by Dr Verlinghieri with Dr Anna Goodman of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Students have been involved as interns contributing to the collection and analysis of qualitative data gathered from "go-along" interviews with local residents.

Most recently, the ATA's Dr Larrington-Spencer won funding from Motability Trust to examine the impacts of removing physical barriers on active travel routes. These barriers, such as A Frames, are often placed on routes by local authorities with the hope of deterring illegal motorbike use. However, they also mean that many people with disabilities cannot use the routes, because their wheelchairs, scooters, or cycles cannot fit through. Dr Larrington-Spencer's study looks at what happens when barriers are removed in terms of legitimate and other use.

Photo: ATA Director Rachel Aldred with University of Westminster Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Bonfield

The team have worked on an ongoing basis with TfL, having completed a six-year longitudinal study, the People and Places Survey. This research, led by Professor Aldred, evaluated the impact of Outer London "mini-Holland" schemes which built new walking and cycling routes in Enfield, Kingston and Waltham Forest. It found substantial health benefits from increases in active travel, with the majority of this coming from walking. These benefits were concentrated among residents who lived in new LTN areas as well as near new infrastructure such as cycle tracks. Linked to the study, Transport Planning MSc student Joseph Croft completed a set of interviews with survey respondents and analysed these for the dissertation, for which he obtained a Distinction.

Dr Furlong has led a follow-on study for TfL called Travel and Places, which covers Greater London and looks at changes in travel behaviour and attitudes. Dr Furlong, with ATA researcher Dr David Fevyer, have developed a new measure of cyclability as part of this research, to capture how supportive someone's local environment is for cycling. This not only looks at how close an individual is to a cycle track, but also assesses the quality of the local network of roads and routes and how this helps people access local destinations.

Professor Aldred said: "Five years into the ATA's existence, we've established ourselves at the forefront of a range of active travel related research and built partnerships in London, the UK, and beyond. We've collected qualitative and quantitative data ourselves and made use of existing data collected by local and national government, to answer important questions from how cyclists are represented in the media to the impacts of low traffic neighbourhoods on road injuries. I'm looking forward to seeing what we achieve in the next five years building on this early success."

Dr Furlong said: "Looking forward, the team is continuing to develop new ideas for research, including a focus on Disabled people's experiences of transport and travel, and new work that builds on methods and concepts developed like the cyclability score, using these in new contexts."

The Active Travel Academy directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities and 13: Climate Action. Since 2019, the University of Westminster has used the SDGs holistically to frame strategic decisions to help students and colleagues fulfil their potential and contribute to a more sustainable, equitable and healthier society.

Find out about more ATA projects.

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