Pathways for Progress
MAG asks the Government to mandate discrete motorcycle policies in all local transport plans.
Transport policy increasingly focuses on the need for sustainability. Unfortunately, sustainable transport as a concept currently lacks any kind of definition. Conversations quickly reduce to a list of three favoured options rather than a consideration of what makes a transport system sustainable.
Sustainability is the intersection of three fundamental pillars: economy, society and environment. To achieve sustainability there will always be trade-offs between the three in a careful balancing act. The conversation, however, seems to be increasingly reduced to focus purely on environmental concerns creating the very imbalance that is the enemy of true sustainability. The lack of coherent policies supporting and promoting motorcycling over the last two decades has led us to a position where a quarter of local transport plans fail to acknowledge even the existence of motorcycles, with many more only viewing them as a road safety problem.
Motorcycles can and should play an influential role in a diverse multi-modal transport system.
MAG has consistently campaigned for pro-motorcycling transport policy and regularly offers help and advice to policymakers based on our Pathways for Progress document: https://wiki.mag-uk.org/images/9/96/Pathways_For_Progress_v2.0_2019_10_30.pdf
Individuals can be forgiven for a lack of understanding of a transport mode of which they have no direct personal experience. But that lack of understanding and interest results in the benefits of motorcycling being, at best, under-exploited but in most policy areas, wilfully destroyed.
Government must mandate clear guidance on pro-motorcycling policies within the sustainable transport vision. These policies must be introduced to all Local Transport Plans.
A healthy and growing community of riders will be one benefit of pro-motorcycling policies, certainly, but wider society will also benefit. Benefits can only be delivered if the Government is prepared to Move on Motorcycling.
Pathways For Progress- Campaign Progress
MAG continues to get motorcycling issues on the political agenda. All riders can get involved in helping to make that happen. Visit the ACT NOW page to see what you can do today to help us make the future of motorcycling better.
Colin Brown Director of Campaigns and Political Engagement and Mathew Humphries also spoke last week at the Highways UK Event at the NEC to introduce transport planner to motorcycles. It is doubtful that many motorcyclists will find it hard to believe that transport planners don’t really give riders much thought, but all local authorities are required to produce a local transport plan. These local transport plans are supposed to cover ALL transport modes, but 1 in 4 local transport plans ignore the existence of motorcycles altogether. What can we do about it? Recently MAG have been able to quantify the problem and back up anecdotal claims. MAG partnered with the University of Nottingham to carry out a detailed analysis of almost all the local transport plans in England. This formal academic research has for the first time given us empirical evidence of the issue.
View the previous YouTube video about the research project with Professor Matthew Humpries:
Why a quarter of councils don’t believe motorcycles exist! How we are going to fix it.
MAG continues to get motorcycling issues on the political agenda. All riders can get involved in helping to make that happen. Visit the ACT NOW page to see what you can do today to help us make the future of motorcycling better.
If you have never been a MAG member, have let your membership lapse, or are thinking you need to save some money by not renewing this year, we would love you to join, re-join or stay with us. If, like us, you are passionate about motorcycling, want to see motorcycling continue in the future, and want to preserve all that you love about it, we hope it will be an easy choice to make. MAG’s strength is in numbers. The riding community can demonstrate strength when it unites. If you want to say you played your part to defend motorcycling, please… join MAG today