Active travel – good for our communities, good for our health

Scotland’s Climate Week is a great opportunity to celebrate and promote climate action across NHSScotland.

Collectively, we’ve made progress towards increasing the use of sustainable transport in the past year, and some of this success can be attributed to a renewed focus on ‘active travel’.

We caught up with Michael Simpson (Sustainability Manager, Transport and Active Travel, NHSScotland Assure) and Emily Farquhar (Senior Project Officer, Active Travel, NHSScotland Assure) to find out more.

As Emily explains: “The term ‘active travel’ encompasses all people-powered modes of transport – such as walking or cycling – and is hugely beneficial for health and wellbeing, community cohesion and tackling climate change. In fact, encouraging more active travel is crucial to achieving NHSScotland’s net zero targets.”

Realising the benefits

Emily continues: “As a healthcare provider and anchor institution, NHSScotland is both committed to realising each of these benefits for its patients and employees and well-positioned to do so.

“For example, as of January, a total of 51 sites across NHSScotland had received Cycling Friendly Employer awards.

“This is a wonderful signal that many boards are supportive of those wishing to travel by active means and have put in place mechanisms to make cycling a viable choice.

“This is hugely significant because a major benefit of cycling is reduced mental ill-health, leading to a potential decrease in the use of prescribed medications for such conditions by up to 15%.”

Embedding sustainable travel principles into our healthcare built environment

Improving public health and reducing emissions are intertwined, meaning increasing active travel is a key part of achieving our net zero goals, as well as our broader commitment to improving Scotland’s health and wellbeing.

As Michael explains: “Another aspect to mention is the recently updated NHSScotland Sustainable Design and Construction (SDaC) guide.

“Published by our NHSScotland Assure colleagues in the Architecture and Design team following consultation, the SDaC guide helps to formally recognise the importance of embedding the sustainable travel hierarchy into the healthcare built environment – we see this as a real success from an active travel perspective.

“This guidance helps boards deliver high-quality infrastructure and mitigate climate-related health impacts.

“It is perhaps unsurprising then, that the guidance recommends boards capitalise on opportunities to increase physical activity by designing spaces that encourage movement and interactions with nature.

“This may be achieved by ensuring routes for walking and cycling are accessible and intuitive, properly lit, protected from traffic and incorporate opportunities for rest.”

Linking active travel and public transport

Emily continues: “Active travel routes should also be linked to public transport networks wherever possible. This encourages ‘multi-modal’ travel (where more than one type of transport is used on the same journey) and, in turn, greatly increases the distances across which active travel is possible.

“ScotRail’s decision to scrap peak rail fares this year was good news for multi-modal travel too. The move will contribute to reducing transport poverty (where there is a lack of reliable, affordable, accessible and safe transport options) by ensuring train tickets are more affordable. Last year’s publication of guidance on transport poverty as a threat to health and wellbeing by Public Health Scotland has also been a major step forward in recognising the impacts of car-centric policy on health and climate.

“It’s clear there’s a lot of progress on active travel to celebrate this Climate Week! Let’s see what we can achieve before next year.”

Photo by Alexandre Dinaut