Walking Cities: Greater Manchester
Living Streets wants all Greater Manchester to be healthier, cleaner and less congested – by making walking safer, more pleasant and the easiest option for short journeys we can make change happen.
And we are delighted that new Mayor Andy Burnham has delivered on his pledge and appointed a Cycling and Walking Commissioner - thanks in no small part to your campaign support!
Manchester to Chorlton walking and cycling route
Have your say
Greater Manchester has unveiled plans for one of the country's most ambitious cycling and walking routes.
The Manchester to Chorlton Cycling and Walking Route is being proposed by Manchester City Council, the One Trafford Partnership, Transport for Greater Manchester and Greater Manchester’s Cycling and Walking Commissioner, Chris Boardman.
A consultation is now open - and Living Streets is urging people to support this ambitious plan.
The public consultation is open until 25 January 2019 - here are some suggestions for what to include in your response.
Providing segregated cycle lines will make it safer for all road users, as everyone will have their own space.
Cyclists should give way to pedestrians at junctions (as illustrated with the cycleway zebras in the visualisations).
Support introduction of diagonal crossings at crossroads so that people can get to where they want to go safely and easily.
Providing new infrastructure for cyclists should not be to the detriment of those on foot – space should be taken from motor vehicles rather than footways, as per the road user hierarchy - and places where those walking need to cross cycleways should be kept to a minimum.
Creating wider footways will provide more space for socialising and greening of streetscape. Important to ensure footway surfaces are high quality and easy to maintain.
Improving side road crossings along the route will make it safer and easier to cross. These should include continuous footways or side road zebras with raised table crossings to avoid the need for dropped kerbs, reducing the width of junction mouths and introducing traffic filtering so that through-vehicle movement into and out of side roads is minimised.
#walkingcities
Creating a buzz in the city
Hard to resist an invite to shape the future. 🔮 These super powers are being offered up to #greatermanchester folk to create ideas for a city centre transport strategy. Have your say. https://t.co/uMIlAXEVRb
— Living Streets (@livingstreets) October 12, 2018
Whether its the Beelines innovative plan to create a city-region-wide cycling and walking network made up of more than 1,000 miles of routes plus 1,400 safer road crossings, Transport for Greater Manchester are leading the way. They are asking for people of Manchester to have their say through various consultations running. The vision is to give priority to the movement of people and where more public spaces to sit, play and socialise will be created.
Living Streets Chief Executive, Joe Irvin says:
"We are excited to see this next stage in Chris Boardman’s ambitious plans to make Greater Manchester a great place for people."
We are delighted at the appointment of Chris Boardman as the city region's first-ever Cycling and Walking Commissioner.
It comes after hundreds of our supporters backed our campaign for the postholder to have a brief that included walking - so thank you to you, too!
Our research found that over a quarter of parents in Manchester (29%) think their city is unsafe for children walking to school.
After a generation of decline in the number of children walking to primary school (from 70% to 47%), the government has recognised the importance of walking to school and set a target – to get 55% walking to primary school by 2025.
In his manifesto, Andy Burnham also promised to introduce a new Clean Air Action Plan for Greater Manchester and put forward a plan to modernise our local train stations, making them more accessible.
Greater Manchester’s first-ever cycling and walking commissioner
These are our campaign aims in Greater Manchester
Our Walking Cities Campaign
Living Streets is calling on the new leaders in our major UK cities to make their cities healthier, cleaner and less congested.