Question
The sum of the commitments to reduce CO2 in the Transport Section of the Council’s Climate Emergency Action Plan is that, by 2030, vehicle traffic will be reduced by 40%, and levels of walking and cycling will be 250% and 450% respectively of their current levels.
How confident is the Council in achieving this target based on the current actions and investment and what further actions does it intend to take to improve this confidence?
Minutes:
Question
The sum of the commitments to reduce CO2 in the Transport Section of the Council’s Climate Emergency Action Plan is that, by 2030, vehicle traffic will be reduced by 40%, and levels of walking and cycling will be 250% and 450% respectively of their current levels.
How confident is the Council in achieving this target based on the current actions and investment and what further actions does it intend to take to improve this confidence?
Answer
Thank you for your question.
Wokingham Borough Council has made a commitment to play as full a role as possible – leading by example as well as by exhortation – in achieving a carbon-neutral Wokingham Borough by 2030. The Council has demonstrated this commitment by developing a clear and ambitious climate emergency action plan. The plan was prepared as a predictive tool that provides a clear picture on the scale of the challenge and the approach needed to reduce our carbon emissions.
The Council’s powers to reduce carbon emissions are, though, limited and we need to look at the wider picture where our role as a community leader and influencer will be equally, if not more, critical. More than half of the emissions cuts needed will rely on people and businesses taking up low-carbon solutions - decisions that are made at a local and individual level. Many of these decisions can be positively influenced by having supporting infrastructure and systems in place.
Reducing carbon emissions from transport is one of the biggest challenges in the Borough. The Council is taking a holistic approach that will support our residents with both infrastructure and education and awareness programmes. The Council strives to engage and involve the community through events and educational activities such as cycle training, air quality monitoring, anti-idling campaigns and through supporting our schools.
We want our residents to adopt more active and sustainable ways of travel, and for this the Council is increasing and improving the infrastructure through the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan, the Greenways and other initiatives, and working closely with public transport providers.
The Council recognises that our current efforts alone are not sufficient to achieve these ambitious targets. The targets in the Climate Emergency Action Plan are attributed to projects though we acknowledge that we will need to refine these targets as they progress and seek alternative and additional policies and projects over the coming years to meet the same level of CO2e reduction. To assist with this, a Low Emissions Transport Strategy has been in development which informs our targets in the Climate Emergency Action Plan.
The Council has set very ambitious targets for its climate emergency agenda, and we continue to innovate and seek new opportunities to deliver our goals.
Supplementary Question:
I am concerned that outside of what it says in the Climate Emergency Plan, the Council’s wider commitment to improving active travel rates is not entirely clear or quantified, in contrast to the commitment to making driving easier, which is well funded and regularly publicised by Executive Members. Tonight’s budget falls well short of the estimates in the Climate Plan for improving active travel, and that funding actually goes down in 2024.
My supplementary question is, is the whole of the Council committed to increasing walking and cycling as stated in the Climate Emergency Plan, or some other target, and if so, when can we expect to see this quantified as an objective for the Council as a whole, and see the resources put behind it?
Supplementary Answer:
There are a couple of different answers to what you have just asked. So, the first is, is the entire Council committed? Yes, we are. To give you some numbers, the amount we have put into the investment of certain things; cycle routes £1.5million, Safe School routes £0.25million, the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan £1.2million, the A327 cycleway £0.75million, Borough Council cycling network £1.5million, and the cycleways with Scape £4.4million. So, we are investing across our community and across the different departments in our Council in order to deliver against more active transport capability,
The follow up to your question is, we need to change people’s behaviours, in order to get them more active in their transport. That means providing different solutions to the journeys that they do at the moment, and that means understanding the need. It also means looking at different behaviour change programmes that we can put in place to actively encourage our residents to get moving, get travelling in a more active way. We saw with Beat the Street last year, a very popular programme, it got people out walking, schools in particular, but there are other initiatives that are coming in terms of behaviour change, that we will be working on at the moment. We will be looking forward to announcing them very shortly.