National charity, Living Streets, has said that the government’s action plan on walking and cycling is ‘a step in the right direction’, but claimed that it does not go far enough.
Walking and Cycling: an Action Plan, was launched last week by minister for transport, Kim Howells, but Living Streets, a 75-year-old charity which promotes the development of streets and public space for the use of people on foot, said the plan lacks a delivery team, targets, timeframes and high-level backing.
Tom Franklin, director of Living Streets, said: “Walking is something we should be able to take for granted, like breathing fresh air, but our opportunities to walk have been reduced over the years as our pavements are too narrow, crossings too awkward or too few and our environments too threatening.”
The organisation claims that these issues mean that every person is walking 66 miles less as year than people were in 1975.
The launch of the programme comes soon after the publication of the health committee report, Obesity, which claimed that the failure of the department of transport to produce a national walking strategy over the last decade was ‘scandalous’.
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