Active Travel

AM PLEASED WITH ADDITIONAL FUNDING

Neil Hamilton, AM for Mid & West Wales, and Leader of UKIP Wales has welcomed news of more funding for active travel projects in his Region.

This week the Welsh Government announced an additional £14.5 million to improve and create active travel routes and facilities in Wales.

Mr Hamilton, a member of the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee said he welcomed further investment.

 He said:

 “Clearly these days it is vitally important to encourage more people to keep fit and healthy and therefore we need to do more to make this happen.

 “I support any moves to facilitate and encourage people to make journeys by physically active means.  However, we need to make sure the infrastructure is in place so people have the option to walk or cycle to work.

 “The benefit to our health and wellbeing,  just from being able to make short journeys on foot or cycling, is immense and we should be doing everything we can to make sure people have this choice.”

 The £14.5 million investment is part of the second round of capital funding from the Wales Infrastructure Investment Plan (WIIP) this year.

It brings the total grant funding the Welsh Government has allocated to active travel schemes in 2019/20 to more than £40 million.

In total 66 active travel projects, as well as six multimodal schemes, will benefit including £1,050,000 for the Llanelli Masterplan: providing the first step in creating an easily accessible and mostly traffic free shared use route through the spine of Llanelli.

There will also be £407,000 for the IBERS to Penrhyncoch shared use path in Ceredigion: construction of 1km long path linking the new station with the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences of Aberystwyth University.

Lee Waters, Deputy Economy and Transport Minister, said: “These projects are a step in the right direction to achieve the change we need, and we will continue to make significant investment to make active travel the obvious choice for more journeys in Wales.