TEN ASKS FOR LIVERPOOL CITY REGION
Ask 1: Make our streets and roads safe for children
by rolling out school streets and supporting child-friendly neighbourhoods and public spaces.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Create car free school streets outside school gates during the hours of school drop off and pick up
- Improve crossings and signage in the catchment area
- Tackle pavement parking in nearby streets
- More support to schools to encourage active travel, with bike and walking buses, and secure bike parking
- Make it easy for people to apply for temporary street closure and 'play streets'
- Follow Greater Manchester CA's School Travel policy which sets a target of 100 School Streets across GM by 2028
- School Streets to be enforced through Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), which pays for itself within a year
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- Safer school journeys
- Better air quality around schools
- Improved physical and mental health
- Lower school traffic as more children walk, scoot and cycle
- More social interaction
- Greater independence of older children
- 'Play streets' restore children's freedom to play out near home. Just 27% of UK children said they regularly play outside their homes
- Currently, only 49% of LCR residents think it’s safe for children to walk or wheel in their local area.
- 72% of LCR residents support reducing speed limits, improving crossing points and introducing protected cycle paths in school neighbourhoods.
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Ask 2: Ensure clear and accessible pavements for all
and especially people with impaired mobility, older residents, families and others who rely on them, by restricting and enforcing against pavement parking.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Take advantage of forthcoming powers to restrict and enforce pavement parking.
- Remove unnecessary and obstructive guard railing, street furniture and clutter to ensure there is sufficient space for people to walk safely on the footway.
- Minimum pavement width of two metres, where feasible, to enable accessibility.
- Introduce “daylighting” whereby parking is removed around junctions to improve visibility.
- Consider introducing fairer parking tariffs to discourage ‘carspreading’, when cars are unnecessarily large and dangerous.
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- Safe pavements
- Clear and visible crossings
- Increased walkability of local streets
- Local access for people with impaired mobility, older residents, and those pushing prams
- More people making local trips by walking, wheeling and cycling
- Progressive parking tariffs on heavier, bigger cars disincentivises SUV ownership. Smaller cars are less likely to kill and injure in crashes (especially children) and pollute less
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Ask 3: Introduce 20mph as the default speed limit across the city region
to deliver safer streets as evidenced by casualty reductions in Wales and Wirral.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Restrain excessive vehicle speeds through a mix of lower speed limits plus where needed engineering, education and enforcement.
- Using signage, implement area-wide default 20mph speed limits that include main roads and high streets where many people live, work, shop and play.
- Support lower speed limits with police enforcement.
- Make exceptions to the default limit where people and vehicles do not mix and modes are separated (e.g. main roads with protected cycle lanes).
- Encourage pedestrian-friendly driving culture with targeted campaigns and enforcement of road traffic laws.
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- Phase 1 of Wirral’s 20mph limit showed a 23% reduction in the numbers of people killed or seriously injured (KSI).
- Tackling speeds is the most effective way to align with LCR’s ‘Vision Zero’ target for there to be no deaths and serious injuries on our roads by 2040.
- In other urban areas, speed is found to be a contributing factor in almost half of all road fatalities and 37% of serious injuries.
- 20mph speed limits alone (i.e. just with signs) are linked to approximately 25% fewer casualties.
- Fewer collisions
- Cleaner air
- Quieter streets
- Cheaper insurance for car drivers
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Ask 4: Make residential streets calmer, greener and healthier
by removing through traffic, greening (e.g. planting trees), installing benches and traffic calming.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Design ‘healthy streets’ that are accessible and inviting, including people who are older and have impaired mobility, so everyone can enjoy walking and wheeling.
- Remove through traffic from residential areas.
- Design in resilience to changes in the weather and our climate, e.g. trees for shade and sustainable drainage systems to reduce the risk of flooding.
- Reduce car parking spaces over time with footway build-outs, cycle parking or planting as demand for private cars decreases.
- Introduce traffic calming in targeted locations.
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- Cleaner air
- Lower temperature streets
- Lower speeds
- Less anti-social driving
- Places to rest for those with impaired mobility
- Lower road noise
- Less congestion at junctions from drivers making shortcuts
- More local trips walked, wheeled and cycled
- Greater interaction between neighbours
- 84% of LCR residents would like nicer places along streets to stop and rest, like more benches, trees and shelters.
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Ask 5: Create an extensive network of bus lanes
as part of upgrades to public transport.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- As public control of bus services is introduced, improve bus speeds and reliability with the creation of an extensive network of bus lanes
- Better integrate active travel with public transport for longer trips, such as with improved walking and wheeling access and cycle parking at railway stations.
- Introduce measures such as improved street lighting and better bus stops with more information, to help women and minorities feel safer using public transport, especially late at night.
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- Reduce dangerous overtaking, speeding and conflict. Improve reliability, cut congestion and support those who depend on public transport.
- Greater accessibility, ensuring people of all ages, abilities and mobility levels can reach bus and rail services safely.
- Enhanced personal safety, particularly for women and minority groups, through well‑lit routes, high‑quality shelters, and real‑time information.
- Stronger social inclusion, expanding access to jobs, education, healthcare, and social activities.
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Ask 6: Create a world-class network of cycle lanes
on main roads and cycle-friendly neighbourhood streets with no through traffic.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Build cycle lanes on main roads to modern standards: coherent, direct, safe, comfortable and attractive.
- Build cycle lanes with temporary materials at first and upgrade later.
- Create cycle-friendly neighbourhood
streets by removing through traffic
- Make parks and green spaces more accessible and safer for everyone by improving lighting
- Avoid conflict between people walking and cycling by reallocating road space to cycling rather than mixing people on foot and bicycle together.
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- A more active population with better health
- Fewer and less severe collisions
- Improved air quality
- Reduce congestion; more people cycling locally
- Women are more likely to be encouraged to cycle by safer roads and improved lighting in parks and green spaces
- Only 2% of journeys in LCR are currently taken by bicycle, and only 39% of people think it’s safe to cycle in their local area.
- A network of protected cycle lanes is the difference between cities where most people cycle, and cities where most people don’t.
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Ask 7: Tackle dangerous junctions
to reduce the high numbers of deaths and serious injuries amongst people walking, wheeling and cycling.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Monitor casualties and people’s perceptions of road danger across the network and target physical interventions at the worst performing locations.
- Install safe crossing points with minimal waiting times and enough time to cross for everyone, including people who are older and who have impaired mobility.
- Councils should make rapid, temporary improvements, followed by a programme of permanent improvements that comprehensively removes all critical safety failures.
- Identify lessons that can be quickly learned, so that new standards of junction design can be replicated elsewhere as part of ongoing works.
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- Fewer road casualties, as continuous monitoring ensures that high‑risk locations receive timely, targeted interventions that address the root causes of collisions.
- Rapid improvements where they’re needed most, allowing councils to fix urgent problems quickly rather than waiting for large capital projects.
- Cost‑effective delivery, as temporary measures allow early testing of designs before investing in permanent solutions, reducing the risk of costly mistakes.
- Consistent, high‑quality design standards, thanks to systematic learning that helps embed best practice across all future schemes.
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Ask 8: Give priority to walkers and wheelers in high streets and town centres
by upgrading crossings, reducing wait times and giving enough time to cross.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Make it easier and safer to cross the road with frequent crossings, shorter crossing distances, shorter wait times, and lower assumed crossing speeds.
- Upgrade crossings so they align with current statutory guidance and reflect best practice for accessibility and active travel.
- Introduce dropped kerbs and continuous footways,
- Undertake a trial of side‑road zebra crossings; if successful, introduce at scale.
- Roll out a standard maximum wait time for pedestrians and cyclists of no more than 30 seconds
- Install countdown timers on routes with high footfall.
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- Improved safety: people cross more quickly and predictably.
- Greater accessibility for wheelchair users, people with mobility impairments, and those pushing buggies, thanks to dropped kerbs and level footways.
- More inclusive streets that support children, older adults, and those with visual or cognitive impairments.
- Reduced delays for pedestrians, making walking more attractive for short trips.
- Increased footfall for local businesses.
- Lower vehicle speeds at junctions, resulting from pedestrian‑first designs.
- Support for climate and health from a shift away from short car trips.
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Ask 9: Deliver secure and plentiful bike storage
at public buildings and in residential areas.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Install secure bike racks at train stations and public buildings (e.g. libraries and leisure centres) and on high streets.
- Introduce a city-region-wide programme of residential cycle hangars located on-street (not on the footway), especially in areas of high density housing.
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- Safe storage of residential cycles
- Increase in cycle ownership
- Uptake in cycling
- Residential cycle hangars are very popular. In the London Borough of Hackney, there are over 1,300 hangars, providing more than 8,000 bike spaces - and with a long waiting list for more.
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Ask 10: Publish, educate and act on air quality data
to achieve WHO target levels.
| How to achieve it |
Benefits |
- Every day, cars, trucks and other road vehicles release hazardous nitrogen dioxide (NO2) into the air. In urban areas, vehicles can be responsible for up to 70% of air pollution.
- High levels of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) are linked to respiratory conditions (such as asthma), cardiovascular disease (CVD), and lung cancer. There is emerging evidence for associations with dementia, low birth weight and Type 2 diabetes. Road transport is the single largest source of PM2.5.
- In order to understand the scale of the problem in LCR we have to collect data with air quality monitors.
- It will then be possible to show how dangerous levels of air pollution can be improved with measures to reduce motor vehicle traffic.
- Introduce measures to reduce idling engines, especially around schools and town centres
- Agree urgent and ambitious healthy air targets that align with World Health Organization (WHO) guidance to clean up the air we breathe.
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- Low income and ethnic minority communities can especially benefit from reductions in car traffic as their neighbourhoods are statistically more likely to be pollution hotspots.
- Children are exposed to up to five times more air pollution on the school run than at any other time. School Streets are proven to reduce air pollution around a school.
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