New public transport routes are coming to Harlow & Gilston Garden Town and they will prioritise active travel across the local area.
Clearance works have already started on the first of these routes, which will connect Burnt Mill Roundabout to Harlow Town Centre.
And as the Garden Town starts to be built, the route will head up to Gilston where 10,000 homes are proposed across seven new villages.
Hertfordshire County Council are one of the Garden Town’s five local authority partners and Matt Cottam is their Local Plans and Strategic Development Lead for Environment and Transport.
Check out his Introducing Active Travel blog below.
It is a question I get asked a lot, what is active travel?
Put simply it is walking, cycling and wheeling, any mode of transport where you are using physical movement to get from A to B.
People traditionally look at Europe as the home for this kind of travel, Netherlands, France and Germany in particular.
Netherlands came to the forefront for cycling as they were having so many issues with pollution and children being hit by vehicles in the sixties and seventies.
Look at any book on Amsterdam across that period and you’ll see that there were cars everywhere, very different to its reputation now.
In 1971 more than 3,000 people were killed by motor vehicles in the Netherlands, 450 of them children and a social movement called Stop The Child Murder came to the forefront.
The oil crisis and the lack of export to Western Europe also caused significant problems so, from that point, the Dutch authorities invested heavily in cycling infrastructure to solve the issue and now it is ingrained in their culture.
Families in the Netherlands will default to cycling and walking for local journeys while the UK has had years of car based behaviour.
And it makes the transition to active travel here quite challenging as it is a fundamental change from the norm for residents.
But Harlow has great infrastructure already in over 30 miles of cycling paths, a legacy from Gibberd’s New Town where the design principles balanced access for private and public transport journeys and that extended to active travel as well.
Cycling also has a different reputation over here, especially in cities where it is someone in lycra trying to get somewhere as quickly as possible.
But the Dutch approach is completely different.
You take your time cycling there and it might take a little bit longer to get to work.
But you wear your normal clothes, you’re not hot and sweaty when you arrive and you don’t need a shower.
It’s this approach that will make active travel a success locally, people that have been brought up walking and cycling and maybe don’t want the expense of car ownership.
The Dutch have shown us that if you start sustainable travel as a youngster then you’re more likely to carry it on as you get older.
And this will be key if we’re to hit the long-term target of 50% of journeys by sustainable means across the local area and 60% in the four new Garden Town neighbourhoods.
What we’re also looking to introduce to Harlow & Gilston Garden Town is the idea of mobility hubs which is a base for integrating multiple modes of travel.
Again, very popular in towns on the continent but a relatively new concept here.
A mobility hub might have a bus stop, car club bays, cycling hire storage, things that will help residents and visitors to travel conveniently, sustainably and rapidly without having to rely on a private vehicle.
But to make this all work we need to add infrastructure and the early work on new public travel routes has already started in Harlow.
The long term aim is to have these across the Garden Town, ensuring quick and easy travel and better connectivity for journeys.
The Garden Town partnership will be providing corridors dedicated to public transport and active travel, meaning users can get to places as quickly as possible, bypassing the delays encountered by car travel.
Reducing unnecessary travel has always been a big part of the Garden Town’s transport plans in terms of tackling congestion and reducing carbon emissions.
We obviously saw a lot of this in the pandemic as well.
People were working from home and the trips that they made were often much shorter, around their local area for the most part and maybe had an element of recreation about them as well.
Again, this goes back to Gibberd’s New Town and the concept of hatches that gave Harlow neighbourhoods the things they needed on their doorstep.
Given the existing infrastructure, Harlow is a great place to introduce active travel locally.
The Garden Town partnership understands that some of these routes need upgrading, given how old they are.
But connecting them to the new public travel routes will hopefully make local journeys a lot more convenient for residents in the future.
The Garden Town is a great opportunity to inspire people to walk and cycle more and create a healthier population.
