Leicestershire’s Transport Strategy: Why We Believe It Needs a Change of Direction

Leicestershire Active Travel Alliance has published its response to Leicestershire County Council’s Enabling Travel Choice Strategy.

The response raises serious concerns that the strategy continues to prioritise traffic management, road network resilience and growth, rather than putting community safety, health, wellbeing and liveability at the heart of transport planning.

The key issue is not whether people should have travel choices. It is whether walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport are genuinely prioritised, or simply treated as optional extras within a system still designed around car movement.

The document also challenges the way Leicestershire is often described as a “rural county”. While that may be true of land area, it is not an accurate way to understand where most people live or how many local journeys could be made. Most residents live in urban areas, large villages or sizeable settlements, where short everyday journeys should be much easier to make without a car.

Leicestershire Active Travel Alliance believes the county now needs to take a leadership role: rebalancing transport policy towards safer streets, healthier communities, and places designed around people rather than traffic flow.

Download the full Leicestershire Active Travel Alliance response