A small Welsh town of roughly 12,000 people will receive a major injection of public money to redesign its streets and travel habits, and researchers will track whether it works. Only 52% of adults in Wales currently use active travel—walking, cycling, or wheeling—for everyday journeys, and the figure drops to 35% for secondary school children. This matters because low active travel means less physical activity, worse air quality, and more road danger. The Welsh Government is funding a four-year, multi-component intervention in one town, combining infrastructure changes, education, and behaviour-change programmes. The evaluation will compare the intervention town to a matched control town, using survey data, travel diaries, accelerometers, and qualitative interviews. Researchers will also map the complex system of factors that shape travel choices and assess the cost-benefit of the whole package. If the intervention succeeds, it could provide a replicable blueprint for other small towns across the UK. The project will produce a toolkit for practitioners, showing how the findings can be adapted to local contexts. The practical payoff would be quieter, safer streets and a population that gets more physical activity without thinking about it.
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Background: Active travel refers to everyday journeys made by walking, cycling or wheeling. Active travel increases physical activity, which improves physical and mental health, and reduces vehicle use, improving road safety and air quality. However, active travel use is low across the UK, and in Wales only 52% of adults, 48% of primary and 35% of secondary school children use active travel for transport. Intervention: This study will evaluate the Welsh Government funded ‘Active Travel Town’, which seeks to change the active travel system within a small town (population ~12k) in Wales. This is a novel multi-component intervention, co-produced with local stakeholders, and implemented over a 4-year period. It will receive significant capital (~ £5m per year) and revenue (~ £1m per year) between 2025-2029 in addition to routine funding, to implement a range of active travel interventions aimed at infrastructure, education and individual behaviour change working together. Aims: The aim of this project is to evaluate the impact of the Active Travel Town intervention, both intended and unintended consequences, using a mixture of quantitative data, qualitative interviews and complex systems mapping to address the following objectives: · Determine the overall impact on active travel · Explore how intervention components interact in a complex system · Determine the cost-benefit of the intervention · Assess the generalisability to other UK small towns Methods: This evaluation will use a controlled before-after cross-sectional design to compare Welsh Government funded survey data from adults and school children in the Active Travel Town to a Control Town, matched on town characteristics. We will use difference-in-differences models to compare outcomes across 3 time points, and triangulate results by comparing to synthetic controls constructed from national data. A mixed method sub-study of travel diaries, accelerometer data and qualitative interviews in children, working adults and community residents will provide in-depth data on perceptions of active travel and the intervention, as well as a descriptive annual process measure. We will use systems mapping approaches to provide a baseline picture of the interconnected factors of the system and how that changes over time. We will also assess the cost-benefit of the Active Travel Town, and the extent to which findings can be generalised, to create individualised active travel plans for 6 small towns across Wales and England. Timelines: This is a 54-month project from May 2025 to October 2029. Funding for the intervention will begin April 2025, and the Welsh Government will collect outcome quantitative data at 3 time points: Time 0: Autumn 2024; Time 1: Autumn 2026 and Time 2: Autumn 2028. We will also use qualitative measures (along with travel diaries and accelerometers) to assess intervention impact annually in the autumns of 2025 to 2028. Impact and dissemination: Policy and practice impact will be through a co-produced lay report, policy brief and slide deck shared with local government and the Department for Transport. Community engagement will include an infographic, video and two public dissemination events. Academic impact will be through peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations. A TRAVELS toolkit will be produced for practitioners to show how the findings from the study can be applied to local contexts across the UK to support scalability and translation.
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