Travel Actively Annual Review 2008 Avaliable for download
14.01.08 The first Travel Actively Annual review for 2008 is now available for download
The 2008 annual review for Travel Actively has been published today. Available to download here, it shows how walking and cycling projects have changed people’s health and travel behaviour for the better across England. In its first year it has already got 85,000 people more active.
Packed with case studies, it reveals the impact that the projects have had not just on physical health, but on mental health, social cohesion and overcoming barriers to travel. From a women’s walking group in Birmingham helping to bring better social cohesion to the area to a cycling project in the forests of East Hampshire enabling people with disabilities to cycle using specially adapted bikes, the review demonstrates how Travel Actively projects has affected people’s lives.
Sixteen year old refugee Muhammad Ahmad was able to ‘earn-a-bike’ whilst learning important maintenance skills over six weeks and getting a bike at the end with the LCC Spokes project in London. The opportunity to participate in this project provided a welcome distraction. “For the first time I could forget about my asylum claim” says Muhammad. “I am sure the other boys feel like this too. Everyone on the project takes me for who I am.”
Lorraine Strookman suffered the ill-effects of diabetes and asthma. After joining Sustrans’ Active Travel walking project in Cornwall, she now controls her diabetes without medication, no longer needs an inhaler and feels far more positive after losing a stone and a half in weight. “Regaining this freedom is fabulous” she says.
Travel Actively partner and CEO of the National Heart Forum Paul Lincoln says “We know that if we don’t enable many more people to get active, the obesity epidemic will cost our economy billions every year. Not just through our health budgets, but also because of lost economic activity due to absenteeism.
The message from Travel Actively is that we can do something about this. If we create the right environment that enables people to incorporate physical activity into their everyday lives, and then we give them the skills and confidence to achieve this, we could transform the health of our nation.”
Travel Actively is a £30million project of which £20 million has come from the Big Lottery Fund’s Well-being programme. It is a consortium of the leading walking, cycling and health organisations, each dedicated to delivering projects designed to promote active travel more effectively by working together. Fifty practical projects will be delivered over four years, with a target to get two million people with increased awareness of opportunities to be more active by 2012.
The projects are designed to help people change their travel habits and improve their health. By focusing on regular journeys – to work, school or the shops – they address people’s motivation for walking and cycling.
The four year programme will give millions of people who are currently inactive the practical support they need to walk and cycle as part of their everyday lives.
Over the coming years the bespoke projects across England will continue, working towards getting 2 million more people active by 2012.
Published by: Travel Actively on Wednesday January 14 2009
