“How can we make space for new ideas and creative energy while staying in place?”
That was the question put to Sheffield’s creatives ahead of #CMTransit with Dame Sarah Storey AKA Active Travel Commissioner. Dame Sarah has spent the last 18 months working with Mayor of the Sheffield City Region Dan Jarvis to make South Yorkshire a place where people can cycle and walk more, to benefit the health of both people and the planet.
Britain’s most successful female Paralympian, with 38 world titles, 14 Paralympic Gold medals and 76 world records to her name, Sarah started her career in the pool in her early teens, before competing in her first Paralympic Games in Barcelona in 1992 and picking up her first medals aged just 14. After switching to cycling she’s had more than two decades of success on the roads and in the velodrome.
Sarah was due to compete at Tokyo 2020 before the Games were cancelled amidst the pandemic. Whilst training continues for the postponed Games in 2021, she’s been keeping herself busy training in her pain cave (the garage), competing in elite para-cycling races (when coronavirus restrictions allowed it!) and developing young female riders in her very own cycling team, Storey Racing.
Along with the Games, coronavirus shut down the shops, offices, schools and gyms. We were told to stay home, but one thing we were still allowed to do was leave the house for exercise.
People across the country began exploring their local area more than they ever had done before. Sometimes on foot, discovering ginnels (or snickets, jitties or alleys, depending on where you call home) they’d never been down that led to green spaces they hadn’t realised were just a few minutes walk from the front door. Or on their bike, enjoying the freedom and safety of roads abandoned by commuters and vehicles on the school run.
This, says Sarah, turned most neighbourhoods into a low-traffic neighbourhood. And people experienced how pleasant the place they live was without car congestion, exhaust fumes and dangerous parking. It was easier for people in wheelchairs to get around, safer for children to play out on their street and the air became cleaner.
Something Sarah wants to see more of in the future, and something she hopes more people will fight for in their own neighbourhood, now they’ve experience the benefits during lockdown. In the midst of the UK’s lockdown, Sarah and Mayor Jarvis published their 20-year plan for walking and cycling in South Yorkshire. Their ambitions include safe, segregated cycle routes that families would feel safe traveling on and that are wide enough for adapted bikes and trikes, residential streets which prioritise people over cars, and neighbourhoods where everything you need is no more than 20 mins walk or cycle away, taking away the need for a car for those short, everyday journeys.
For Sarah it’s about the next generation and she is determined to overcome the media criticism that all too often hinders active travel schemes, to make our neighbourhoods healthier and more pleasant places to be.
Children born today are the first generation who have a life expectancy lower than their parents. A reliance on the car for short journeys like the school run mean children are more inactive than they’ve ever been, the sheer amount of cars on the roads cause pollution that damages young lungs, and from the confines of a car seat, children miss out of engaging with nature and the wellbeing benefits that brings.
Coronavirus has touched every part of our lives in 2020. It’s changed how we socialise, educate and work in the short-term and Sarah hopes it’ll change how we travel in the long term, helping us become happier, healthier people, living in more pleasant, less polluted places.
Words by Molly McGreevy.
