The deadline for the North East Combined Authority Local Transport Plan is midnight, this Sunday, January 26th 2024.
Yes we’ll be responding, but we’d like you to respond too – it’s so important to have as many voices as possible making the case for cycling in the region.
To help you, here’s our whistlestop guide to explain what it’s all about and how to respond:
What is a Local Transport Plan?
The Transport Act 2000 requires all Local Transport Authorities to have a Local Transport Plan (LTP). As part of the North East Devolution Deal, NECA was required to refresh their 2021 Transport Plan and finalise it once the mayor was elected. Want to know more? The excellent Low Traffic Futures have prepared a guide that you can find here which gives more detail on the background and what to ask for in our LTPs.
What Does It Say?
It’s looooong. It is a comprehensive transport plan and delivery plan. The full document, a summary document and the delivery plan can all be found here (scroll down to download as pdfs). The full document is just shy of 100 pages. Please read it if you have time – if not, there’s the much more digestable summary document and we’ve also been working on our response to give you an overview of the issues.
How Can I Respond?
There’s two main ways to have your say.
You can email NECA directly [email protected]
OR you can complete their survey here.
The survey is pretty brief with a number of questions asking how you usually travel, and asks you to rate aspects of the plan such as the ambition for a green, integrated transport system that works for all (hard to argue with!)
To give you time to have a think about what you would like to say if you choose this option, the questions where you can give more detail are:
- What difficulties do you experience when travelling in our region?
- What improvements would make travelling in our region better for you?
- What would increase your use of sustainable travel (walking, wheeling, cycling, public transport, zero emission vehicles)?
For those of you who would find some inspiration helpful we have both been preparing our response, as well as collaborating with other north east sustainable transport campaigners across the region to ensure our key asks are clear.
We’ll post links to all responses here shortly.