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A protest campaign over poor walking and cycling safety


Effective road safety planning: what should be happening

What the vision should be
Road safety planning and policing: what we have a right to expect
Poor Merseyside road casualties should be considered
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Past strategies
Options that should be considered

Merseyside road safety failures

Merseyside / national road safety failures

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So-Mo project on pedestrian casualties

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Liverpool City Region Local Journeys Strategy

The Liverpool City Region Local Journeys Strategy was agreed at the Combined Authority meeting of 15 September 2017.

Download the Strategy from here.

The meeting where it was agreed can be viewed on YouTube via John Brace's recording. View the meeting here. The Strategy was discussed between 29 mins and 38 mins on the YouTube recording. At 36:30, Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram appears to be saying that he does not cycle in Merseyside because the roads are too dangerous. If this is the case, why are children being given cycle training and sent out on the roads?

The Strategy is a very poor document:
  • It is rambling and repetitive
  • It makes no apology for the mistakes of the past
  • The vision just seems to be "more walking and cycling provided that motor vehicles are not obstructed" and so it is less amibitious than the vision of Merseyside's Third Local Transport Plan of 2011
  • There are no firm commitments - compare this to London's Transport Strategy (see below)
  • It contains serious inaccuracies e.g. "Road safety has also significantly improved" (p13) - the recent LCR Road Safety Strategy emphasizes that serious casualties have increased over recent years.
  • There is a lot of over-elaborate meaningless text e.g. "The Devolution Deal, which was agreed between the Government and the LCR in November 2015, provides the levers through which the pillars of the Growth Strategy can be supported" (p5). How can levers support pillars? Are levers not used for toppling pillars?
  • There has been no public consultation.

The problem seems to be a belief that safe walking and cycling are incompatible with prosperity, a belief that is never expressed or questioned or justified. It looks like the decision makers have never been to the Netherlands, or looked at Dutch streets on Google Streetview or YouTube, and have no understanding that via prioritising car travel they have produced a dangerous, unhealthy and unfair roads system, and are failing the people of Merseyside.

By contrast, commitments in the draft London Mayor’s Transport Strategy (currently undergoing public consultation) include:
  • "by 2041, 80 per cent of all Londoners’ trips will be made on foot, by cycle or by public transport" [currently 64%]
  • "The Mayor’s aim is, by 2041, for all Londoners to do at least the 20 minutes of active travel they need to stay healthy each day."
  • "Walking will be prioritised across London’s streets"
  • "Streets will be made more accessible for disabled people, with wider, clutter-free pavements and crossings that are easier to access and use."
  • "A new London-wide network of strategic cycling routes ... will transform the convenience and experience of cycling for all types of trips."
  • "More traffic-free areas will be created"
  • "The Mayor’s aim is that no one is killed in, or by, a London bus by 2030, and for deaths and serious injuries from road collisions to be eliminated by 2041."
  • "The Mayor’s aims are for all taxis and private hire vehicles to be zero emission capable by 2033, for all buses to be zero emission by 2037, for all new road vehicles driven in London to be zero emission by 2040, and for London’s entire transport system to be zero emission by 2050."
Merseyside needs similar commitments.


The current LCR Local Journeys Strategy should be scrapped in its current form and rewritten with
  • a clear vision
  • a full summary of evidence
  • a survey of best practice, and
  • clear commitments.

Previous Merseyside strategies

London's transport strategy






Last updated: 12 Jan 2020