6. 6. Statement: Update on Active Travel

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:17 pm on 20 September 2016.

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Photo of David Melding David Melding Conservative 5:17, 20 September 2016

Minister, I walked into work this morning and I’ll also walk home. I walked across the barrage from Penarth. I sometimes take the other route across Pont y Werin bridge. That’s a slightly longer walk. Neither of these routes would have been available to me five or six years ago. The only way I could have walked into the Assembly then was down Penarth Road, a much longer route and a very much less pleasant one. I think what you’ve got to encourage is the development of key infrastructure like that connection in the barrage, like that pedestrian bridge I just mentioned, and linking perhaps new paths—not necessarily always along the main roads, though sometimes that is appropriate. We must use infrastructure for key targets—that is, people who can walk to work. You can have satellite car parks, incidentally, and allow people to walk a mile or so from them, freeing up our urban areas, reducing the number of cars and improving air quality. Also, surely it is around schools that we need to be developing our infrastructure and aiming there, because if schoolchildren just get into the habit of walking and cycling, then there’s fitness for life, potentially, for them.