We have developed highly regarded guidance on how to design infrastructure that will make walking and cycling a more attractive option, but we need to do more to train and upskill professionals in its use. So I can today announce, Llywydd, that we will be setting aside some of the £30 million to invest in improving skill levels and spreading good practice.

I have met with most of the councillors and front-line officials who we are working with to deliver this project and listened to their concerns. A key one is that good active travel schemes can be complex and annual funding rounds make it difficult to deliver them. So I will be making a total of £6.3 million available to local authorities on a pro-rata basis to allow them to design and plan schemes in advance of submitting full funding bids.

Resources will always be scarce and we must ensure that we invest in a way that maximises outcomes. We can’t afford to spread the jam so thinly that communities get a bit of path but not enough to get them anywhere. We have to concentrate our resources on building routes that will allow people to make whole journeys to places they need to get to, in safety and comfort from their home to work, or school to the shops. Only then will we be able to convince significant numbers of people to change their travel habits. I am prepared to take flak for building fewer miles of route in fewer places if the routes we do build enable many more people to become active travellers.

We must reward ambition, but also, crucially, help those authorities who have not been ambitious enough to become more ambitious. We will shortly be starting a new round of consultations on local authorities’ plans for their active travel networks, the integrated network maps. I don't want to see random lines on a map that may score high on deliverability but do not create seamless networks that link people up with the places that they want to go. So, I am setting aside money to fund a much more engaging approach to consultation so that the next iteration of the integrated maps that councils submit are based on the views of our target group—those who do not currently walk and cycle—and result in a pipeline of projects that will make a real impact. 

Of course, it’s not just about new routes. I want local authorities to use some of their new resources to identify those small changes in roads and paths that can make a big difference. Perhaps widening a popular path or removing poorly designed access barriers that prevent disabled people, parents with prams, parents with children on buggies on the back of their bikes, from being able to get through. Anything that can demonstrate the advantages of people shifting their mode of transport. Local authorities are therefore encouraged to use part of their allocation to fund small projects that deliver continuous improvements to their local networks.

In February, the whole Assembly backed a motion calling for more ambitious active travel targets. I'll deliver on that promise, but for those targets to be meaningful and impactful we must have effective monitoring schemes in place. We are currently funding routes that do not have automatic counters installed in them as a matter of course, for example, and we need to look at that. So I am working with local authorities to develop a much more systematic approach than exists at the moment.

I have outlined the challenges I think we are facing, and they are many. However, I don’t think we should be pessimistic. We are starting to make some of the more difficult decisions that can radically change this agenda. The First Minister announced last week that Wales will begin work to make 20mph the default speed limit in residential areas, which is a real game changer. Lower speeds will not only reduce casualties and improve public health; they will also create an environment that is more friendly to active travel. We have begun work on a new Wales transport strategy, which will be central to realising this ambitious agenda and ensuring that active travel becomes a vital part of major infrastructure projects such as the metro. My colleague Ken Skates and I will keep Members updated on this work. 

There is no sweep of the ministerial pen, or single initiative, that can bring about the changes we need to see to reverse the transport trends we’ve seen develop over the last 50 years. It will take ongoing, granular efforts, focused on hundreds of different details, to create an active travel culture. But if we want to improve air quality, increase levels of physical activity and lessen the harmful impacts of transport on our environment, we must dedicate ourselves to it.

And I finish with a sincere invitation to Members that I want to hear from you what more you think we should be doing together in your particular communities to allow us to be at the forefront of the active travel movement. Diolch.