Daniel Zeichner – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Daniel Zeichner on 2016-01-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he is taking to monitor and evaluate levels of cycling and attitudes to cycling in (a) London, (b) the Cycle Cities and (c) the rest of the UK.

Mr Robert Goodwill

Transport is largely a devolved matter in the UK, and the delivery of scheme-level monitoring and evaluation is the responsibility of the transport authority implementing the intervention. In London, transport is the responsibility of the Mayor and Transport for London (TfL). The Department has no direct involvement and therefore does not undertake monitoring and evaluation of cycling levels or attitudes in London; this work is the responsibility of Transport for London.

Outside of London, there are a number of work-streams that the Department is involved in which directly or indirectly monitor uptake of and / or attitudes to cycling. These are listed below. Much of this monitoring and evaluation work applies to England only; where the work expands geographically, this is clarified below.

• The Department is working with the Eight Cycle Cities on the Cycling Ambition to capture evidence on levels of cycling and attitudes to cycling.

• Active Lives Survey (formerly known as the Active People Survey) publishes data on cycling by adults in England. This is available at Local Authority level, and DfT is currently funding a temporary boost in numbers of people completing the survey in Cambridge, Norwich and Oxford.

• On attitudes to cycling, we fund a specific transport module on the British Social Attitudes survey.

• The National Travel Survey (NTS) also captures information on uptake of cycling. From 2013 onwards, the National Travel Survey has covered England only.

• The Department will deliver an analysis of programme-level findings (also known as a ‘meta-analysis’) from the twelve Large Projects from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) 2011 -15. We estimate around a third of LSTF funding is invested in cycling interventions. An interim meta-analysis was published in November 2015 and a final meta-analysis is due Spring 2017.