Free 'Get Walking Day' Event to be held on Saturday to Promote Healthy Living

Get Walking, Keep Walking Birmingham are holding a free event on Saturday 7th May 2011 for the Ramblers' Get Walking Day to promote everyday walking for everyday people. The event will take place at Sarehole Mill and Recreation grounds from 12-4pm. Everyone is welcome to come along and enjoy this beautiful site. There will be stalls with a variety of activities, and healthy lifestyle information. Birmingham Friends of the Earth will at the event, holding a stall and discussing our campaigns.

Walking is a brilliant way to get and stay healthy, and is easy to fit into everyday life. Walking is a 'lifestyle exercise' - which means you can make time for it without much change to your daily routine. Walking is the easiest, most accessible, cost effective, and enjoyable way for most people to increase their physical activity. It requires no special expertise, and no equipment other than a reasonable pair of shoes. It is generally safe for individuals with medical conditions and those who have never exercised because it is possible to start gently and increase capacity over time. Walking needs little preparation; it can happen at any time by stepping out of your front door. It can be fitted into lifestyles, such as using stairs rather than lifts and getting off the train a stop earlier. It is one of the forms of exercise that will be most appealing to women — as well as being social rather than competitive, it fits into a busy day.

Regular walking can also improve your health. Walking can burn 500-1000 calories a week by walking 6-12 miles for an average weight person, which can reduce the risk of premature death by 20-30%. Other health benefits of walking include reducing: cardiovascular disease (coronary heart disease and stroke), as well as ‘risk factors’ such as high blood pressure and cholesterol; cancer (particularly bowel cancer, and breast cancer in post-menopausal women); type 2 diabetes; and obesity. Walking also improves musculoskeletal health (for example osteoarthritis and lower back pain); and mental health, happiness and well-being.

The UK’s Department of Health guidelines state: For general health, adults should do 30 minutes a day of moderate intensity physical activity, on five or more days of the week. Children and young people need to exercise for at least an hour each day.

Not only does walking improve people’s health, but as a sustainable way of travelling short journeys it also helps the environment. It is integral to a large range of policies, such as social inclusion, community engagement, sustainable transport, safe routes to school, climate change, biodiversity and tackling obesity.

So now that you know what you need to do, why not find your walking shoes, come to the 'Get Walking Day' on Saturday and start walking your way to a longer, happier and healthier life?

Also, come and talk to us about our campaigns to make the streets safer for everyone who wants to walk, cycle or just enjoy their local area. As we said in our response to the Birmingham core strategy, "We agree completely that pedestrians should be “at the top of the road user hierarchy and ensure that in centres and residential areas, the public realm environment reflects this priority” . Levels of public funding should reflect this above providing extra capacity for cars, air travel or High Speed Rail."

Low Cost and Low Carbon Transport session at the Conservative party conference fringe

Yesterday I went along to the Climate Clinic at Baskerville House to hear the secretary of state for transport, Philip Hammond, answering questions on how we can deliver low carbon transport at low cost (the age of austerity is mentioned everywhere at the moment).

I was hoping to hear something about what's happening to transport funding ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review to give us an indication of what to expect and how the government will achieve cost savings and to be able to put a question the Philip Hammond myself, but neither of those happened.

I was pleased that the transport secretary does make all the right statements about the need to reduce carbon emissions, even if he doesn't seem to get all the issues, just yet. What I would definitely disagree with him on, is the idea of economic growth and carbon savings not being incompatible. Consumption seems to be so linked to economic growth and consumption = using levels of resources which are environmentally unsustainable on the whole. Also, the government has someone looking at reducing the need to travel as their remit, but this doesn't seem to be in evidence from a lot of the schemes that are going ahead; regional airport expansion, High Speed Rail etc. There still seems to be too much of a feeling that large transport schemes that encourage people to travel more are essential to a good economy.

Philip Hammond is very careful to say that he is “not anti-car, but anti-carbon” and sensibly said some things about which mode of transport was more suitable for which journeys. We agree that in rural areas, there is not always an alternative to the car and it would be very difficult to create an affordable one with such a lack of dense housing. However, there needs to be a lot more ambition in getting people out of cars for those journeys in urban areas, such as Birmingham, where the roads are totally clogged up and many areas have so many cars parked all over the pavements that it makes it hard for pedestrians to walk along them.

He stressed the importance of “greening the grid” for electric vehicles to play a full role as low carbon vehicles, but did admit that we can't make the change quickly enough with technology alone. Quite how he plans to go about achieving the necessary level of behaviour change is still unclear, though.

On land use planning, he said that we need to ensure that we build the homes people want (ones with gardens), not loads of 2-bed flats which nobody wants to live in, as has been the case. Doing this intelligently, and “without restricting people” is part of the solution according to Mr Hammond.

He also spoke about buses needing to change their image (and the people who introduced the meeting had stuff about marketing them for the greener journeys campaign), smart-ticketing across different transport modes and the need for innovative local solutions that are suitable for each area, rather than nationally decided policy.

The other speakers then had a turn – Sir Moir Lockhead from First Group talked more about buses and how they are friends with cars and want to have space for them in the roads, too. He also patted the industry on the back for offering 1million free tickets to people as part of a drive getting people onto buses. No mention was made of the potential cuts to the Bus Service Operators Grant and whether that will stay.

Next up was Edmund King of the AA, who was actually very sensible in what he was saying and quite positive and gave some good stats. He said that 90% of motorists said they would take steps to reduce their environmental impact, 70% of the people who lift-share say they do it for environmental reasons, but more people want incentives for doing it, such as exclusive parking spaces for lift-sharers. He also said that the scrappage scheme had meant 90% of the people switching to smaller, cleaner cars – is that true? He also emphasised the benefits of eco-driving which can reduce the amount of fuel used by 20% and gave the fact that 86% of journeys in the UK are made by car at the moment – another one I'm not sure of – is that true?

Doug Parr from Greenpeace was next and he said that transport is fundamentally different from other forms of carbon reduction because people really feel it in their everyday activity, unlike insulation, changing light bulbs, energy generation etc. he also spoke about oil and the dangers of extracting deep sea oil, as we've seen from the Gulf, and that we should be leaving it in the ground now to avert more environmental catastrophes in colder waters, such as the Arctic and off the coast of Scotland. Another good statistic that he gave is that there is £19 of benefit for every pound spent on walking and cycling initiatives – unrivalled by any other transport investment. I wanted to ask a question of Philip Hammond on this and why the government didn't invest more in it in that case, but wasn't able to do so.

Questions from the floor were asked on various issues while Mr Hammond was still there, including ones on biofuels, hydrogen vehicles, freight facilities for rail and nuclear power. I really wanted to get a question in on HS2 before Philip Hammond left, but the chair, just wouldn't come to me. He left at 7pm, after which there was time for my question, which was “If this is all about low carbon and low cost, why is everyone still talking about building high speed rail, which will not save any carbon and will cost a huge amount of money?”. The chair said “oh controversial question”, yet none of the panel who were left disagreed with me, so it doesn't seem that anyone but top politicians and a few business people really think it's a good idea.

Edmund King said he couldn't understand the reasoning behind it (maybe they'd rashly promised it when rejecting Heathrow) and spoke to me afterwards saying how convenient and easy he found the train for travelling between cities with no need for it to be any faster. Doug Parr was reluctant to rule it out but all the reservations that he gave are ones that the current plans do not meet and where on earth the funding for the transport infrastructure to link in other modes of transport as well as building HS2 is going to come from, nobody seems to have the answer.

Unless we are making the power supply truly green and the rest of the transport system geared to getting people door-to-door, we cannot support HS2 taking people between interchange stations based at airports – that is not low carbon or low cost.

Joe Peacock

Birmingham Transport Summit 2010 – Len Gregory's last one!

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Transport Summit at the council house in Birmingham. Whilst it wasn't quite so full of middle-aged businessmen in suits as the High Speed Rail conference the week before, it still seemed a case of style over substance and trying to impress everyone with big flashy projects, rather than local transport improvements on the ground.

Councillor Gregory was first up and did make some of the right noises about low carbon transport, but there was an insistence that this was a “carrot not stick” approach. To me this misses the point, as he is not offering a carrot to cyclists, as there is a lack of safety for them on the roads of Birmingham, to public transport users whose buses get snarled up in the congested roads of the city without being given priority or to pedestrians for whom the pavements are often in a shocking state of repair, aren't gritted and are often expected to cross busy roads without proper crossings or enforcement of speed limits to make it safer. Even though there is a pedestrian taskforce and I have heard good things of the meetings, there is little evidence of improvements on the ground.

Also notable was that he did not once mention cycling in the time he was speaking until a question was asked by John from Pushbikes at which stage he gave an answer that they had invested over a million pounds in cycling – really? I still remain convinced that he would rather bikes were kept off the agenda as much as possible, though.

There was much talk of the Camp Hill line and re-opening the stations that we have been campaigning for, which was encouraging in terms of the fact that we are listened to when public opinion is so strongly in favour, but short on substance of how quickly it can be done. With all the fervour about HS2 and “the opportunities” this brings (when it won't open for another 16 years at least), I would really like some more urgency on getting rail sorted locally in the short term, not in another 10 years' time. Unfortunately, he'd rather focus on glamorous projects like the “Gateway” project at New St, the new coach station (Mike Whitby called this the Selfridges of coach stations!) and HS2.

On buses, Councillor Gregory suggested that “the bus network works well”, which will be news to many people who suffer unreliable services and are unable to reach anywhere but the city centre with any ease. He instead blamed Birmingham's climate and the fact that it rains here, which prevents people from walking to a bus stop apparently, for the fact that people still choose car over bus. Well, in my experience, it's the waiting times and lack of reliable information at bus stops, anti-social behaviour on buses and fact that they get snarled up in traffic (making reliable journey times impossible) that puts most people off. Many people do use the bus, so obviously it's not always that bad, but I'm not sure everyone would agree that perception matches Gregory's claim that the safety record has improved dramatically and the operation to do this has been “highly successful”.

What he seemed to be most proud of was the PFI for the highway network, which he claims will bring in huge amounts of investment into this infrastructure, sort out all the problems with pavements and potholes. Generally, PFIs fall well short of what is promised, so we'll have to wait and see on this one and I don't see any point in commenting further at this stage.

There was also mention of a freight hub for distribution of good throughout the city and using canals for freight with waste carried along them too, as facilities are next to them. Promising projects, but there was not enough detail on those for BfoE to comment at this stage.

Len Gregory admitted that he would not be missed by many when he leaves his post during this speech and I for one will be looking for much more ambition from the next cabinet member for transport, to take Birmingham towards a low carbon transport future.

20's Plenty for Birmingham - Help our Campaign

Birmingham FoE has been campaigning for a default speed limit of 20mph on all residential areas across Birmingham and recently I have been helping to organise the campaign locally.

The recent successes in other UK cities, such as Portsmouth and Oxford, have been very encouraging and research has showed that the public is definitely in favour of a lower speed limit.

The example of Birmingham as the second biggest city in the UK would send a positive message all over the country and really help in creating a greener and cleaner city. But more importantly it would help make Birmingham a safer city and encourage its inhabitants to walk or cycle more on roads where they do not feel secure at the moment. The change in attitude fostered by drivers associating residential areas with safer speeds would reduce road casualties and improve the quality of life.

To raise awareness in the heart of communities and get people involved to spread the word around where they live, we are looking for Community Champions following the successful example of Bristol's campaign.

If you are interested in becoming a community champion for your neighbourhood or knows somebody who might be, please contact us at campaigns@birminghamfoe.org.uk. There is a lot of work to do to persuade the people in charge of roads at Birmingham City Council that this is the way to go, but we really feel this is an important campaign and we need your help.

It's time to get together and make Birmingham a safer place to live!