TRL has launched a new service to guide local authorities in making their cities, towns, and villages safer, more accessible, and better equipped to deal with the diversity in users and micro mobility modes.
Active Travel Audits are designed to identify and address the key safety, accessibility, and comfort concerns of two key user groups: pedestrians, and cyclists / micro mobility riders. TRL provide practical recommendations for improving the design and provision of the street environment to encourage sustainable and safe modes of transportation.
As governments make changes to traffic and movement laws, increasing active travel with the goal of making progress towards their Net Zero goals, keeping traveller’s safety at the centre of decision-making becomes imperative.
TRL’s Active Travel Audits service takes a comprehensive and holistic approach to assessing the street environment with the aim of improving provision for pedestrians, cyclists, and micro mobility riders.
In particular, the audits focus on increasing women’s safety though looking at lighting, directness of routes and personal security; on increasing accessibility, considering factors such as surface gradients, tactile paving, kerb heights, lane widths and street clutter; and on optimising for the diversity in micro mobility by considering surface quality, lane widths, turning radii, and signage.
The outcomes of the audits are designed to create safer, more sustainable, and more accessible streets for all, enabling greater adoption of active travel and micro mobility. It builds on other auditing approaches by taking into consideration the specific needs of different users – pedestrians, cyclists, e-scooters, and other micro mobility riders.
“Through the Active Travel Audits, TRL is working to ensure that the street environment is safe and accessible for all, creating sustainable and efficient means of transportation,” says Dr George Beard, head of New Mobility at TRL. “All roads should consider all users, including the most vulnerable. Through this service, we want to help councils make UK roads safer for all, while taking the next step forward in promoting safe active travel and micromobility.”
