54 UK groups urge government to boost cycling, walking — SkimNews
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- Campaign for Better Transport led 54 civil society groups in pressing the UK government to promote cycling and walking, calling this summer's heatwaves and wildfires "immediate, real-world manifestations of the climate emergency."
- Domestic transport accounted for almost a third of the UK's net greenhouse gas emissions last year, with sector emissions rising 2% over the previous year.
- Labour had pledged before the 2024 election to set targets shifting travel away from private vehicles, but by this summer the government's cycling and walking strategy contained no such modal-shift goals.
- Ben Plowden, chief executive of Campaign for Better Transport, tied the intervention's urgency to the summer's repeated heatwaves and to oil price inflation caused by the US war on Iran.
- The coalition called for policies to grow journeys by public transport, shared transport, walking, wheeling and cycling, alongside targets to shift freight from roads onto rail.
- The Department for Transport said it is lowering the bus fare cap to £2, freezing rail fares, investing £4.5bn in cycling and walking, and backing a £7.5bn zero-emission vehicle mandate.
Why it matters: With domestic transport the UK's largest carbon-emitting sector and emissions up 2%, Labour's quiet drop of pre-election modal-shift targets gives 54 civil society groups a concrete ask to press. The government's existing £4.5bn cycling investment and £7.5bn ZEV mandate are now being challenged to include binding mode-share targets.
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