Greater Manchester has committed £5m to creating enhanced space for pedestrians and cyclists across the city-region, to support social distancing during and after the coronavirus lockdown.
Brought together under the Safe Streets Save Lives campaign, local authorities are looking to prioritise a range of temporary, pop-up measures such as footway extensions, one-way streets, removing through traffic on certain roads, adding extra cycle lanes and removing street clutter such as pedestrian guard rail at pinch points.
The emergency changes will be matched to help ease social distancing at specific locations such as areas outside shops, transport hubs or routes to hospitals in the districts, with £5m made available through Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s Cycling and Walking Challenge Fund.
While traffic volumes have fallen by about 60% across Greater Manchester, walking and cycling now account for approximately 33% of all journeys, with cycling up 22% compared to pre-lockdown data.
According to Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), these trends have also led to congestion almost being eliminated and significant drop in pollution.
“Peoples’ travel behaviour across our city region has transformed during lockdown,” said Burnham.
“As more people turn to walking and cycling, we want that to continue as we move into life beyond lockdown.
“That’s why we’ve proposed measures, backed by up to £5m of funding, to create space that allows people to continue making safe, sustainable journeys.
“Whatever peoples’ motivation – these choices are contributing to cleaning up our city’s air and causing less congestion on our roads, and that’s something we must sustain for the immediate future.”
The Safe Streets Save Lives initiative forms part of Greater Manchester’s Build Back Better coronavirus recovery plans, which also supports its ambition to be carbon neutral by 2038 and to become a walking and cycling city-region.
Key to this is providing people with safe and direct routes around their local area by fast tracking the approval of side road zebra crossings, as part of the emergency response.
Burnham has written to transport secretary, Grant Shapps, asking him to enable local highway authorities to utilise these measures immediately.
Local authorities have prioritised schemes that sit within the mayor’s Cycling and Walking Challenge Fund and can be used as coronavirus response measures, with TfGM providing support to help design and implement the measures across the districts.
Once approved, a list of the Safe Streets Save Lives schemes will be listed on TfGM’s website with further information available via the local authorities.
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