Mahmud Henry Rogers- Making Local Streets Safer for Walking and Cycling

Making our streets safer for everyone is one of my top priorities and I am proud to say that it has been Liberal Democrat Councillors who have been at the forefront of many successful campaigns in Bedford and across the UK to make residential streets 20mph zones.

In my view, new communities should be built with the needs of pedestrians already in mind. Planning laws should be updated to ensure that all new developments promote walking, car sharing and public transport and all new roads in residential developments should have a 20mph speed limit as standard. Liberal Democrats would also encourage councils to make more use of their existing powers to introduce 20mph speed limits on existing roads. We would make a minister in the Department for Transport responsible for working with them on this and making annual reports on progress.

I was pleased that Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced in December that the Government would speed up completion of the English Coast Path. By investing an extra £5.3m, we will be able to ensure the Coast Path will be open for all to enjoy by 2020, ten years earlier than originally planned.

We want to introduce a Nature Act in the next Parliament, one of five new green laws that will help us to protect our natural habitat and deliver a massive increase in accessible green space for everyone to enjoy.

It is important that we also do more to help encourage the next generation to walk to school. That's why Liberal Democrats in Government have set a target of increasing the proportion of children aged 5-10 who are walking to school to 55% by 2020. Our support for the Bikeability scheme will allow more school pupils to start cycling too.

Since 2010, we have invested £588m in cycling, including match funding, almost trebling the investment the last Labour Government made in the previous Parliament. In 2012, a further £159m was made available to help create better cycle links for communities, improve cycle facilities at railway stations and create more cycle-friendly layouts at road junctions.

The decision earlier this year by Liberal Democrats in government to introduce a Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy will ensure there is a clear plan to support cycling and walking schemes and spell out how they will be paid for. It will also build on the £1.5m we made available to support the Active Travel Consortium to build capacity in local government to deliver local cycling and walking strategies.

Locally, under Liberal Democrat Mayor Dave Hodgson, Bedford has benefited from a grant of £655,000 from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, following a successful bid by Bedford Borough Council. The first major scheme to benefit from this funding is the lighting of the cycle route from Priory Country Park to Aspects, on National Cycle Network Route 51. This means that a route, which was previously very dark and unwelcoming at night, is now well-lit and allows this path to be used all year round.

The Liberal Democrats are committed to promoting cycling as a sustainable and healthier way to travel and Bedford Borough Council currently provides more than 75km of cycle routes across the Borough.