Confusingly, there are two organisations called ‘Western Gateway’. One is a government-mandated Sub-national Transport Body (STB) covering Gloucestershire, Bristol, Bath, Wiltshire and Dorset. The other is a partnership between councils and governments spanning South Wales and Western England.
The first of these, the Western Gateway STB, is putting together a Strategic Transport Plan 2025-2050 for its area, and has asked for views on what its priorities should be. BWA has responded to its document ‘Making the right choices’ which sets out some of the issues and opportunities facing transport planning in our region.
In our comments, we point out that there are some important omissions in the list of issues and opportunities. Walking is not explicitly mentioned at all. We have suggested that improving health and wellbeing should be a high-ranking issue, and that Liveable Neighbourhoods provide one of the opportunities to address this issue.