The Active Travel Budget is an annually set allocation from the overall Scottish Transport Budget. The Active Travel Programme contains a blend of Grants awarded in accordance with the Scottish Public Finance Manual, contracts drawn down from Scottish Government procurement frameworks, and budget transfers to support investments managed in other areas of the portfolio. A breakdown of years 2012-13 to 2023-23 is set out below, our figures for 2023-24 are also shown with the caveat that these should be considered as indicative of the year end process completing;

The North East Bus Alliance has spent £9.94 million from the Bus Partnership Fund. This includes funding for the business case for Aberdeen Rapid Transit (ART) and bus priority on its associated corridors. This also includes £0.33 million for the development and delivery of bus gates in Aberdeen City Centre, which opened in August 2023, and supporting works of £7.98 million on South College Street, which enabled the bus gates. The North East Bus Alliance have reported that bus gates in Aberdeen City Centre have reduced journey times for passengers by up to 25%, benefitting over 600,000 passengers each month.

Future work on ART, led by Nestrans and its partners Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeenshire Council and the North East Bus Alliance, will be funded through the Aberdeen City Region Deal.

A new model for delivery of active travel behaviour change interventions has been introduced for 2024-25. The People and Place programme will be delivered by Scotland’s seven Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs). Grant offer letters have been issued to all of the RTPs which contain the information required for drawing down funding from their allocation once the grant offer is accepted. This funding will be available to the RTPs, working with their delivery partners, to spend on behaviour change interventions during the 2024-25 financial year.

The current financial year marks a very significant change in our delivery model for active travel behaviour change initiatives, being the first year the Scottish Government has allocated grant funding for this purpose across all seven Region Transport Partnerships (RTPs) under the umbrella of a new Active Travel People and Place programme.

The grounds for the creation of this programme are the increased scale and pace of the government’s ambition in active travel, which has already brought wholesale reform of the delivery model for active travel infrastructure through the creation of the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund (ATIF) working primarily with Local Authorities through a new tiered system.

Similarly, the previous active travel behaviour change delivery model whereby Transport Scotland continued to centrally grant fund several national third sector partners across 30+ projects and programmes also needed to be reformed to deliver at scale.

For 2024-25 we therefore developed a new regional approach whereby this funding has instead been invested in RTPs, who in turn have designed programmes of active travel behaviour change initiatives which are more responsive to local circumstances and suit their needs. This is a more streamlined, scalable, and strategic model, with strong alignment to wider Scottish Government priorities and ways of working. This includes delivering on STPR2 Recommendation 6 that we build on existing behavioural change initiatives, and the Verity House Agreement principle that public responsibilities should be exercised by authorities closest to the citizen, with presumptions in favour of local flexibility.

STPR2 recommends that these initiatives are likely to be most effective if they raise awareness of new infrastructure and services. In taking a behaviour change approach we want to ensure that interventions tackle the individual, social, and material (ISM) factors that influence people’s travel choices. We have therefore developed four ‘themes’ that sit across the Active Travel People and Place programme that address long-term social trends, target our largest trip generators, help secure a Just Transition, and systemically strengthen delivery, as well as providing structure for our overarching monitoring and evaluation framework. These themes are: Schools and Young People, Workplaces, Accessibility and Inclusion, and Capacity and Capability Building.

We recognise that these programmes of behaviour change initiatives, some directly linked to infrastructure development, do require an appropriate blend of capital and revenue funding. Of overall spend across our legacy behaviour change / access to bikes programmes in 2023-24, capital accounted for 82%, and revenue 18% of funding. Of spend on the RTP Active Travel People and Place programmes in 2024-25, capital accounts for 63% (£12m), and revenue 37% (£7m) of funding. This has been achieved in the context of a particularly challenging budget and resource spending review, which has required, and will continue to require, difficult decisions to be taken across government.

We do not currently record data across our behaviour change programme in a way that would allow us to establish how many different schools or what proportion of schools have participated in projects.

This is possible, however, on an individual project basis. For example, in the academic year 2022-23, Bikeability Scotland training was delivered in 66.7% of schools covering over 60,000 pupils across 30/32 local authorities. Living Streets’ Walk to School / WOW programme has run for over 25 years and was introduced in Scotland in 2014. A total of 463 primary schools, 23% of the total number of primary schools in Scotland, have had active participation in WOW at some point between 2012 and 2022. 160 schools participated in WOW in 2022-23.

A new model for delivery of active travel behaviour change interventions has been introduced for 2024-25. The People and Place programme will be delivered by Scotland’s seven Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs). To support this new model we are developing a monitoring and evaluation framework which will improve our understanding of the performance of the projects that we fund and enable us to make better informed funding decisions across the active travel behaviour change programme.

Scottish Government funding for active travel projects is not allocated based on STPR2 recommendation delivered. We fund a range of projects throughout Scotland that deliver on recommendation 4 of the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) to connect towns by active travel. This includes funding for the National Cycle Network programme, investment in active travel infrastructure on the trunk road network, and funding provided to local authorities via the Sustrans Places for Everyone programme and the new Active Travel Infrastructure fund, and directly through the Cycling Walking Safer Routes (CWSR) grant.

Nestrans and its partners Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeenshire Council and the North East Bus Alliance, are working to develop the business case for Aberdeen Rapid Transit (ART). Building on work undertaken to support the Regional Transport Strategy and the second Strategic Transport Projects Review, Nestrans is drafting the business case which includes detailed planning to understand how ART could be implemented. This includes work on transport corridors identified as being potential routes for ART to identify opportunities for transport improvements, including bus priority.

There is a known and growing gap when it comes to active travel modes to travel to school between primary and secondary school pupils in Scotland. Sustrans’ Hands Up Scotland Survey, that looks at how pupils travel to school and nursery, shows that in the past 15 years walking and cycling to school are declining when it comes to secondary school pupils, with cycling to school only accounting for around 1% of the total trips and skating/scooting stagnating at around 0.1%.

Whilst walking levels are also declining for primary school children, it is still at a higher level than for secondary school pupils, and cycling and skating/scooting has been increasing with much higher levels than for secondary school pupils (cycling stands at 5-6% of all trips for primary school age pupils).

Since 2021, Cycling Scotland have conducted a cross sectional evaluation of Bikeability Scotland. This evaluation shows that Bikeability Level 2 training has a positive impact on cycling behaviours, knowledge and skills, and that pupils who receive Bikeability training in primary school have higher rates of bike ownership and cycling frequency in Secondary school compared with those who did not receive training.

STPR2 is a national appraisal and identifies recommendations to be delivered over the long term. The delivery of the recommendations is subject to the funding allocations agreed by Parliament each year through the annual budget process.

In the case of Recommendation 3, which focuses on village-town active travel connections, investment will likely be phased over numerous years. Currently, projects are identified by local authorities and regional partners who then apply for funding through the Sustrans Places for Everyone programme, the new Active Travel Infrastructure fund, and directly through the Cycling Walking Safer Routes (CWSR) grant.

In the case of the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund, we accept proposals for funding the construction of various types of active travel interventions, which can include village-town active travel connections.

The assessment and prioritisation of projects considers a multi- criteria approach and includes two main factors: the impact they achieve and the deliverability of the project. Some of the factors considered in the prioritisation of projects are: potential for mode shift; the quality of proposed infrastructure; safety and security; integration with existing active travel infrastructure and/or public transport; impact on the most deprived 20% of communities; impact on community severance; access to schools; access to employment; access to other locations and value for money.