Member's statement: Active Travel

Member's statement by Mr Peter McReynolds on 30 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Peter McReynolds

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

30 September 2025

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Active Travel

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5142802

Read the official Assembly record

Text

As chair of the all-party group on active travel, I will respond to today's Northern Ireland Audit Office report on active travel in Northern Ireland. Sadly, the findings were precisely what we expected. Under the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, the Department for Infrastructure is required to spend 10% of the transport budget on active travel. If that had been done, £85 million would have been spent annually, but it has spent a total of only £50 million to date. Moreover, we see that the Department is taking a creative approach, with street lighting repair and footpath repair considered to be appropriate spend from the active travel budget. I see what the Department is doing with that approach, but, unfortunately, that will not increase the number of people walking, cycling or wheeling to get around. Active travel has the ability to make a positive impact on how we move around our towns and cities. It has benefits for health, the environment and our economy, but those benefits are going unrealised as they are repeatedly forgotten and ignored. Underinvestment and lack of targeted investment make it obvious why targets are not being met. Although £50 million has been put towards active travel, what has it actually achieved? The 2015 bicycle strategy aspired to:

"20% of all journeys less than 1 mile, to be cycled"

by 2025, but, unfortunately, the figure is presently only 1%. COVID represented an opportunity for us to reimagine how we get around, given that there were fewer cars and other vehicles on the roads. In Paris, where I used to live, the mayor ordered immediate changes, and it is now completely unrecognisable from what I used to know. In Belfast, we got some cones on Hill Street, which were driven over, and pedestrianisation is only now, five years later, being presented as an experimental scheme. I commend the active travel and cycling lobby, which is calling for strategic investment and collaboration with key stakeholders to ensure the success of active travel, but to do that will also take the will of the Assembly and of departmental officials. Having active travel in a place the size of Northern Ireland should be a no-brainer, but we instead see a failure to get the basics right early on. We are cobbling together things that we know work later and at expense. I call on the Infrastructure Minister to read to the Audit Office report and to work with the all-party group on active travel, the lobby and the Infrastructure Committee to deliver the necessary changes that will make getting around easier, safer and cleaner through active travel.

438 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:16 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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