Use this page to find out about our Creating Sustainable Communities policy, and projects throughout Bath and North East Somerset.
What Creating Sustainable Communities means
Our strategy for creating sustainable communities outlines a holistic approach to meeting the transport needs of those living, working, and visiting Bath and North East Somerset. It focuses on:
- reducing the environmental impact of transport
- combatting climate change
- enhancing health and wellbeing
- tackling congestion
- improving air quality
The goal is to create better-connected, healthier, and more genuinely sustainable communities, by enabling the use of sustainable modes of transport. The document below sets out our approach to creating sustainable communities across the district, specifically in:
- Keynsham and Saltford
- Hicks Gate
- Somer Valley
- Whitchurch Village
The ideas behind the programme
The importance of transport
Transport is an integral part of creating sustainable communities. It affects all aspects of our life: from the air we breathe, to the jobs we can access, and the quality of the place we live or work.
As we have outlined in our Corporate Strategy, our transport system needs to deliver more travel choices to make it easier for all people to walk, wheel, cycle and use public transport. This will help enable the different types of journeys we need. This in turn will create better-connected, healthier, and more sustainable communities.
Our approach to planning for future transport needs
We want to provide more travel choices, providing more attractive options that will enable everyone to choose sustainable transport without compromising on time or cost.
To do that, we need to look at the whole transport system, recognising that there is no one-size-fits-all solution: not every mode of travel will suit every trip and every individual. We need to ensure that, as well as providing more travel choices for people, we are also thinking about how those choices work together as a network, enabling people to change between modes. This could be as simple as cycling to a bus stop, or getting a bus to a train station. We need to make these journeys as seamless as possible.
It is also important that we make it easy to string multiple trips together, such as from home to school, to the doctors, to the shops, and back home. Just one missing link in the chain can mean relying on a car to do the whole chain, or unnecessary hardship.
The challenges we are addressing
While each place has a unique context, we have found common challenges which affect many of the places and residents in North East Somerset. These include the following issues.
Availability of public transport services
- access to rail services
- limited bus provision
Geographical problems
- topography and distance to places where people want to go
- distance to the strategic road network
Opportunities for active travel
- low-quality 'public realm', or public spaces that are more orientated towards cars, and don't encourage walking and spending time outside
- inadequate walking and wheeling networks
- fragmented cycle network
The impact of traffic
- traffic congestion affecting journey times in urban areas
- reduced air quality
- traffic noise
- road safety in urban areas
How the programme will deliver change
We plan to invest in a transport network that meets current and future community needs. Our strategy outlines indicative short-, medium-, and long-term measures. Implementing this transformative change will require significant investment and time.
The measures we are looking at using include the following:
High quality, attractive, safe, and integrated network of walking and cycling infrastructure
Supporting residents to be able to access the amenities required to meet their daily needs within walking or cycling distance
Working with our communities to identify and deliver improvements identified through workshops, as part of the community-led Liveable Neighbourhoods programme
Providing and expanding rental schemes of individual electric modes of transport, such as e-scooter and e-bike rental
- Mobility hubs are spaces where public, shared and active travel modes are co-located alongside improvements to the public realm. They enable travellers to make smooth and safe transfers between different modes, swapping private cars for shared vehicles, bikes, buses, trains, scooters or walking. Mobility hubs vary in terms of their scale, from bus stops with parking for shared bikes to at major transport interchanges. They can be strengthened to provide a web or comprehensive network of interconnected sites that link communities with sustainable transport services to provide seamless transition and connectivity. Mobility hubs are not limited to providing transport services, as they can include cafés, community spaces and greenspace improvements. Sporting facilities, exercise points and other public services could also be introduced.
- At a larger scale, transport interchanges have a more strategic function. Sited at key journey points, these would offer more facilities, such as parking for cars and cycles.
There are opportunities throughout B&NES to reallocate road space to prioritise pedestrians, cyclists, and bus users, to achieve a shift to more sustainable travel options, and create healthier and less congested public places.
- Measures to cut bus journey times, by prioritising buses over private vehicles
- Working with the Mayoral Combined Authority to provide new bus services
- Zero emission buses will help local authorities achieve their net zero targets, ensuring cleaner air, encouraging green growth, and improving health and wellbeing
- Supporting connections to the railway network, for longer-range journeys
- Demand-responsive public transport (such as the bookable WestLink bus service), connecting into fixed route bus services
We recognise that car travel will remain a necessity for many. We have introduced a number of policies to encourage drivers to transition to shared ownership and Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicles (ULEV), to help reduce the impact of cars on our communities. These include the following:
- Emission-based charging for car parking and discounts for zero emission vehicles giving drivers a financial incentive to switch
- Bath's Clean Air Zone, which has already shown improvements in air quality
- Promoting car clubs offers more opportunities to share journeys and save fuel, congestion and air quality
- Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy and grant schemes for installation of charging points
How we have developed this strategy
After extensive public consultation, we adopted the Journey to Net Zero (JNZ) for Bath in May 2022 , which outlined our communities’ ideas on how we can transform our transport network within Bath to better meet the needs of our communities, businesses, and visitors.
The Creating Sustainable Communities Strategy extends the approach behind the Journey to Net Zero, and applies these questions and ideas to areas outside Bath, in particular our market towns. We ran a series of public consultations in July and August 2024 to gather community feedback on the transport-related challenges facing these areas. The adopted strategy (below) brings together what we learned from these consultations to form a plan for the future.
Read more about the plan in action
We are now seeking to broaden and accelerate our approach to creating sustainable communities across the district. Select a link below to read in detail about the local issues we have identified, and how we plan to address them.