This session provides an introduction to green and blue infrastructure, why it is important, and how it can be successfully integrated into the design and delivery of active travel networks.
You will see successful examples of rain gardens, sustainable urban drainage systems, and other innovations in the field. In addition, the webinar will cover how green and blue infrastructure is currently being embedded in Scotland, as well as common delivery challenges and mitigations.
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Jon Rowe CMLI is an experienced landscape architect, with over 14 years of experience, who has worked in a range of global consultancy and third sector roles. His interest and experience predominantly lies in leading projects involving movement. This has included projects on the Thames Path, railway stations and travel hubs, and – more recently – active travel.
Jon is currently the head of Sustrans Scotland’s Design, Engineering and Mobility department with responsibility for the design and delivery of active travel infrastructure projects throughout Scotland. He has a particular interest in the integration of green and blue infrastructure into active travel networks and is currently working on Sustrans design guidance for publication later in 2025.
With new housing underway in towns and cities around the world, local authorities are in a unique position to influence developers to create opportunities for sustainable mobility and behaviour change. The City of Rotterdam is doing just that with targeted frameworks to meet the city’s climate and mobility goals.
This webinar will chart Rotterdam’s approach to standardising sustainable mobility within housing developments, and how the council influences developers to make it easier to choose active travel and public transport. This webinar will start by setting out the political and strategic context in the Netherlands and the greater Rotterdam region, followed by a case study to show how these principles are working in action.
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We would appreciate you taking a moment to complete our short feedback survey after you’ve watched the recording.
If you found this webinar useful, see our previous Rotterdam case study Rotterdam: Moving Ahead Safely, or see our webinar series Gender and Place in Europe, for more European case studies. If you want to read more about this webinar’s topics, check out the resources below.:
Please note, some web pages appear in Dutch and can be translated using a translation widget.
Presenters
Thorsten Willemstein is a Mobility Advisor at the City of Rotterdam, where he specializes in traffic safety and urban mobility initiatives. Since February 2023, he has led projects to enhance traffic safety around schools and improve overall traffic safety in the city with different stakeholders. With a background in built environment from Breda University of Applied Sciences and previous advisory roles in the City of The Hague and ABG-councils, Thorsten applies his expertise to make Rotterdam’s transportation systems safer and more efficient.
Safety by Design: Crossings and Junctions is an introduction to designing junctions to provide good conditions for active travel for all. Junctions can be major barriers that deter people from walking and cycling and are where most collisions occur. The training covers safe and compliant design approaches for junctions and tools such as the Junction Assessment Tool and the crossing selector tool.
Feedback Survey
We would appreciate you taking a moment to complete our short feedback survey after you’ve watched the recording.
Julie Plichon – is Head of Design and Engineering for London.Julie has worked extensively in the private and public sector, primarily in London in areas covering urban design, inclusive design, urban planning and transport projects. Her focus is on projects that reallocate road space for people centred uses through designing spaces that make streets safer, green and healthier. She has worked on the design, delivery and monitoring of LTNs in Islington, north London.
Ellie Holliday – A Principal Engineer, Ellie has over 10 years of experience leading design of transportation schemes across UK and Ireland, ensuring buildability and delivering accessible designs that meet the needs of all users. Her focus is promoting active travel. She has led the design of major and local cycling, walking and wheeling infrastructure, LTNs and healthy routes. She has working knowledge of best practice and implementation in constrained conditions and has delivered LTN 1/20 training to local authorities across England, including training on junctions and crossings.
This webinar is an introduction to the principles and design of low traffic neighbourhoods. The training covers LTN design in its stages, from understanding the street network, to agreeing boundary roads, placing modal filters, to activating streets and wider interventions that support walking, wheeling, and cycling. The webinar also touches on other key aspects of Low Traffic Neighbourhood delivery like in depth engagement and robust monitoring, with a primary focus on design.
Feedback Survey
We would appreciate you taking a moment to complete our short feedback survey after you’ve watched the recording.
Check out these other Showcase pages on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods:
Active Travel in Europe: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: In the second edition of the series Active Travel in Europe, we explore low traffic neighbourhoods, also known as superblocks, across Europe with practitioners from five different cities – Barcelona, Utrecht, Vienna, Berlin, and Edinburgh.
Low Traffic Neighbourhoods-an introduction: Low traffic neighbourhoods (LTN) are when private cars can access local homes and businesses, but can not cross through, reducing traffic volumes.
Diving into Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: As part of the Places for Everyone event programme – Engage · Inspire · Learn – partners from local authorities and organisations around Scotland were invited to hear from a variety of voices on the challenges of Low Traffic Neighborhoods.
Transport for all: Pave the Way: Pave The Way is the only independent and in-depth research into how disabled people have been impacted by Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, and the barriers to Active Travel.
Presenters
Julie Plichon – is Head of Design and Engineering for London.Julie has worked extensively in the private and public sector, primarily in London in areas covering urban design, inclusive design, urban planning and transport projects. Her focus is on projects that reallocate road space for people centred uses through designing spaces that make streets safer, green and healthier. She has worked on the design, delivery and monitoring of LTNs in Islington, north London.
Rajiv Ratan – A Principal Engineer,Rajiv has delivered projects across a wide range of areas with particular focus on active travel and highways, from feasibility and concept design through to detailed design and supervising construction. This has been for local authorities in London and more widely in the UK. In London, Rajiv has worked on the feasibility, design and delivery of a number of LTNs in the London Borough of Haringey, as well as on quality assurance for the design of interventions in Lambeth LTNs. Rajiv has brought extensive technical knowledge and construction experience and has delivered projects on site that required contract administration, site supervision and providing design solutions on site.
In this knowledge-sharing Webinar, Thorsten Willemstein discusses how Rotterdam wants to improve road safety, with specific examples of projects Rotterdam is conducting. Topics discussed in this Euroean city case study include:
How to get more children cycling and walking to schools,
Educating children about traffic,
An annual tour around high schools,
Cycling lessons for children and adults,
Providing bicycles for people with a low-income.
Feedback Survey
We would appreciate you taking a moment to complete our short feedback survey after you’ve watched the recording.
If you found this webinar useful, see our webinar series Gender and Place in Europe, for more European case studies. Or check out the recommended resources mentioned in the training:
Licht Aan – interactive game to raise awareness about the importance of lighting on bikes
There are translation tools on both pages.
Presenters
Thorsten Willemstein is a Mobility Advisor at the City of Rotterdam, where he specializes in traffic safety and urban mobility initiatives. Since February 2023, he has led projects to enhance traffic safety around schools and improve overall traffic safety in the city with different stakeholders. With a background in built environment from Breda University of Applied Sciences and previous advisory roles in the City of The Hague and ABG-councils, Thorsten applies his expertise to make Rotterdam’s transportation systems safer and more efficient.
By Design Constructive Conversations – 17 January 2024.
In this session the focus is on preventing pedestrian and child casualties. What makes a road or street safe to walk along and cross? How can design features slow, direct or change driver and pedestrian behaviour to reduce the potential for collisions?
Our expert panel spent half an hour discussing these questions and more around how urban design can increase safety of people travelling actively, and prevent casualties of people walking, wheeling, cycling, or otherwise actively travelling or socialising in public spaces.
Following watching the recording you may find it useful to take a few minutes to reflect on the discussion.
What is still circling around in your head on this topic?
What do you feel is ‘squared away’ – you feel you have a much clearer understanding of?
What key takeaways or highlights do you have from the discussion?
Below are contact details for some of our panelists if you wish to contact them directly, and some links to further information relating to this topic that you may find useful.
Feedback Survey
We would appreciate you taking a moment to complete our short feedback survey after you’ve watched the recording.
See below for some links to further information and projects mentioned by the panelists. Some of our panelists have also kindly provided contact details if you would like to get in touch with them about their work in this area:
Lucy Marstrand Taussig – Design Policy Lead for Streets, Transport Strategy and Policy, Transport for London
Kristina Mattsson – Project Manager, Traffic Safety, Vision Zero Academy, Swedish Transport Administration – kristina.mattsson@trafikverket.se
Cherie Morgan – Director of Projects, Play Scotland
The Vision Zero Academy was established by the Swedish Transport Administration. Vision Zero Academy is a global knowledge hub with the overall purpose to spread knowledge about Vision Zero and support and collaborate with different stakeholders around the world in their strive for safe road transport systems. Vision Zero Academy – Bransch (trafikverket.se)
Some visual examples of traffic calming measures from the Vision Zero Academy in Sweden:
Zhero is Heroes on route to Vision Zero – this is a campaign to bring together multiple stakeholders across society to achieve vision zero. Together we are Zhero – Zhero.se
The Swedish Transport Administration (STA) have requirements how to build roads and streets. But the municipalities can have their own requirements for design of the streets they have responsibility for. STA has some supporting documents for how to plan and design the traffic environment. This is a website with description and links to these documents: Traffic strategic work – Accessibility in a sustainable society
Note: the above website is in Swedish – there is a language option, but it takes you away from this page. We found google chrome was better than microsoft edge for translating this page.
Police Scotland works with Transport Scotland to regularly publish collision and casualty data. There is more information with links to the relevant databases here – Road traffic collision data – Police Scotland
Grab a cuppa, get comfortable and join us for some informal constructive conversations about some of the challenges in delivering active travel infrastructure.
At each 1 hour session, our expert panel will spend half an hour discussing key questions and more around the chosen topic. Following this, you can take part in an optional small group discussion where you can share your own experiences on the topic, present a related issue in a live project, and receive advice and feedback from peers.
Other sessions
The ‘By Design’ series of constructive conversations explores how urban design in active travel projects can help to address some of the big issues facing society today.
Look out for more series on different topics in future, and if there is a topic you would like to suggest for a series, or a standalone session, please do get in touch with us placesforeveryone@sustrans.org.uk
By Design Constructive Conversations- 15 November 2023.
How can urban environments and public spaces be designed in such a way as to make them feel, and be, safe spaces for women and girls? Our panel discussed how urban design elements can make women and girls feel safe, and be safe when walking, wheeling, cycling, or otherwise actively travelling or socialising in public spaces.
Following watching the recording you may find it useful to take a few minutes to reflect on the discussion.
What is still circling around in your head on this topic?
What do you feel is ‘squared away’ – you feel you have a much clearer understanding of?
What key takeaways or highlights do you have from the discussion?
Feedback Survey
We would really appreciate if you could take a moment to provide feedback on this session.
Below are contact details for some of our panelists if you wish to contact them directly, and some links to further information relating to this topic that you may find useful.
Further Information
See below for some links to further information and projects mentioned by the panelists. Some of our panelists have also provided contact details if you would like to get in touch with them about their work in this area:
Scottish Women’s Aid Equally Safe learning framework and the tools available to increase gender and VAWG competence & use of gender lens across policy/practice plus information and a resource page (The framework is aimed at orgs across public sector, local authorities, third sector.): https://womensaid.scot/equally-safe-in-practice/
(Note: The next two links take you to the City of Vienna website which is in Austrian German, a Chrome browser was better able to translate the pages than Microsoft Edge).
Grab a cuppa, get comfortable and join us for some informal constructive conversations about some of the challenges in delivering active travel infrastructure.
At each 1 hour session, our expert panel will spend half an hour discussing key questions and more around the chosen topic. Following this, you can take part in an optional small group discussion where you can share your own experiences on the topic, present a related issue in a live project, and receive advice and feedback from peers.
Other sessions
The ‘By Design’ series of constructive conversations explores how urban design in active travel projects can help to address some of the big issues facing society today.
Look out for more series on different topics in future, and if there is a topic you would like to suggest for a series, or a standalone session, please do get in touch with us placesforeveryone@sustrans.org.uk
Grab a cuppa, get comfortable and join us for some informal constructive conversations about some of the challenges in delivering active travel infrastructure.
This series of constructive conversations will explore how some of the big issues facing society today can be addressed ‘By Design’.
At each 1 hour session, our expert panel spent half an hour discussing key questions and more around these topics. Following this, participants were invited to take part in optional small group discussions where they could share their own experiences on the topic, present a related issue in a live project, and receive advice and feedback from peers.
The Wishawhill Wood path links the suburb of Craigneuk in North Lanarkshire with Wishaw town centre via a high-quality active travel route.
Previously, the only option for walking, wheeling and cycling away from the busy road, and without the use of an inaccessible footbridge over the railway, was a muddy and overgrown path.
Construction on the new route was completed in 2020.
It has since provided a safe and easy way for people of all abilities to travel between Craigneuk and Wishaw, as well as improving access to the local woodland and Wishawhill Wood Pump Track.
The project was led by Green Action Trust (GAT) and part-funded by the Scottish Government through Sustrans Scotland’s Places for Everyone programme. Match funding was provided by North Lanarkshire Council who have also taken on maintenance responsibility for the route.
Sustrans’ Research and Monitoring Unit (RMU) evaluated the impact of the project in 2022 by counting and surveying people using the path, as well as interviewing local people and stakeholders.
The Wishawhill Wood path links the suburb of Craigneuk in North Lanarkshire with Wishaw town centre via a high-quality active travel route. Credit: Green Action Trust.
What were the findings?
RMU analysis found that the path has contributed to substantially more trips being taken through Wishawhill Wood – particularly by young and older people.
Before the path upgrade, an estimated 16,000 trips were made during 2019 by people passing through or visiting the pump track. After the upgrade, an estimated 41,000 trips were taken during 2022 – about two and a half times as many.
The path is mainly used for recreation and has helped local residents increase their regular physical activity.
In 2022, 40% of survey respondents said they made a journey along the route daily, compared with 15% in 2019.
The path upgrade has also helped people access a much wider range of local services than before.
Many people using the route strongly agreed that it is easily accessible, enhances the area and meets the needs of the community.
85% of respondents said they were walking or cycling because the path was the most convenient route to get to their destination, up from 18% in 2019.
Numbers of people strongly agreeing that the path is well maintained, feels safe and is well lit have also increased, but are still relatively low.
RMU analysis found that the path has contributed to substantially more trips being taken through Wishawhill Wood.
A community asset
Reflecting on the impact upgrading the path has had on the local community, interviewees were positive.
One person told us:
“It’s a great green transport link, in terms of from the centre of Wishaw, right the way down through…it certainly has opened the area up.”
Local resident, Wishaw
Dan Scott, the Managing Director at Socialtrack, a local social enterprise that encourages people to cycle, scoot, and skateboard, explained how the upgraded path had encouraged pump track users to cycle rather than drive.
“Six lads travelled from another part of Wishaw, which was two miles away from the pump track. The first time they came, six lads came in four cars and then six lads came in three cars, and then eventually six lads came themselves on their own bikes.”
Dan Scott, Managing Director, Socialtrack
Communicating the results
By presenting the findings of the study as a StoryMap, which uses a combination of interactive maps, graphs, voice recordings from local people and “before and after” photos, users can simply and interactively learn more about the project.
The webpage details the story of the path, how it was developed, how it connects people and place, and its impact within the local community.
Alan Boyd, Evaluation Officer in Sustrans’ Research and Monitoring Unit, said:
“We are pleased to share our findings which detail the increase in walking, wheeling and cycling as a result of the path upgrade in Wishawhill Wood.”
“The new path has created a safer and more accessible route for people of all abilities travelling between Craigneuk and Wishaw.”
“We have uploaded our analysis onto a StoryMap for those who would like to find out more about the project. The StoryMap is flexible, so users can zoom in and out of the maps, easily skip to whatever research they find most interesting, and listen to local people discuss the changes that they have seen since the path opened.”
Alan Boyd, Evaluation Officer, Sustrans
The upgraded path had encouraged people to cycle rather than drive to the local pump track. Credit: Holly Musgrove/Sustrans, 2022.
Mike Batley, Development Officer at Green Action Trust, added:
“The Wishawhill Wood project has been a great opportunity for the Green Action Trust and partners to make a real difference to people’s quality of life through access to greenspace and active travel.”
“Anecdotally the path has clearly had a positive effect, however this new piece of evaluation has put firm data behind its impact, which is very encouraging for future projects.”
“The StoryMap brings the work to life in an easily understood and engaging way, so I’m delighted to see the results in this format.”
Mike Batley, Development Officer, Green Action Trust
