Rachel Aldred Research 2025

Active Travel Academy

Now in its fifth year, The Active Travel Academy believes all disciplines and expertise are needed to address the acute global problems that car-dominated transport systems have created. The Academy brings together a broad spectrum of expertise to lead research, teaching and knowledge exchange on walking, wheeling, cycling and other active modes of movement and transportation, and takes a critical approach to pressing policy problems by drawing on a wide range of tools and methods, from Big Data to (auto)ethnography to do so. 

The ATA has several projects, all at different stages. The £1.5m Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in London project (funded by NIHR) is finishing, with the new NIHR Travel Well project (£2.5m) beginning. The LTNs in London project generated a pipeline of innovative papers, including a novel mixed methods analysis of congestion, and critical reflections on power within go-along interviews. We presented project results at many events in 2024-5 including at a special session of the Transport Practitioners Meeting and the RGS-IBG academic conference.

Our work on active travel equity continues to be highly regarded, with papers this year published on disability and active travel (Harrie Larrington-Spencer) and queer women’s mobilities (Rachel Aldred, Ersilia Verlinghieri). Tom Cohen and Ersilia Verlinghieri authored the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling and Walking’s Active Travel and Social Justice Report. Spatial equity analysis has continued with David Fevyer leading the ATA’s Cyclability analysis, exploring disparities in how the built environment supports cycling.

Ersilia Verlinghieri won City Bridge Foundation funding for the Get Shady: Swapping cars for trees on London’s hottest streets project. Led by climate action charity Possible in collaboration with other London based organisations and local authorities, the project explores strategies to improving walkability and urban greening with London.

Tom Cohen and Ersilia Verlinghieri were awarded £20,000 by the Foundation for Integrated Transport for the Hierarchy of Road Users: What next? This deliberative project will bring citizen and expert voices together in defining how the principle can be converted into reality.

The Active Travel Academy received positive media coverage in The Guardian for research into the impact of LTNs on road traffic injuries. The article, entitled ‘London’s low-traffic zones “cut deaths and injuries by more than a third”’ referenced our article, led by Jamie Furlong, in the high impact academic journal Injury Prevention.