Sustainable travel is moving closer to the centre of transport planning

New transport planning guidance is putting greater emphasis on walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport, changing how councils in England outside London are expected to approach their future transport plans.

Some of the biggest changes to a road scheme can happen before anyone gets near the carriageway.

New statutory guidance from the Department for Transport is asking local transport authorities to take a more integrated approach to transport planning, with active travel and public transport forming a clearer part of how future networks are planned.

In brief:

• New DfT guidance sets out how local authorities should prepare statutory Local Transport Plans.
• Councils in England outside London must include active-travel policies in those plans.
• The guidance covers walking, wheeling, cycling, public transport and driving as part of the wider local transport network.
• The approach is linked to wider objectives around health, accessibility, carbon emissions and transport choice.

New transport planning guidance changes the questions councils have to ask

The DfT published its updated Local Transport Plans statutory guidance in April 2026. It applies to local transport authorities in England outside London and sets out the overall approach they are expected to follow when preparing their statutory transport plans.

The significance for highways is that the guidance treats local transport as a network covering all the ways people travel, from walking and wheeling to cycling, buses and private cars. That means future transport planning cannot be considered purely through the lens of vehicle movement and road capacity.

Active travel is given particular attention. Local transport authorities must set out their active-travel policies as part of their Local Transport Plan, including how walking, wheeling and cycling will be enabled, prioritised and integrated with other forms of local transport.

That has practical implications for highways teams. A junction improvement, corridor scheme or development-related transport package may still need to accommodate motor traffic, but planners are expected to consider how walking, cycling and public transport fit into the wider solution.

The guidance also links active travel with highways maintenance. It says local transport plans should include approaches that tackle key safety and accessibility issues for people walking, wheeling and cycling.

That is an important distinction. This is not simply a document about building more cycle routes. It brings active travel into the wider transport planning process, including the condition and accessibility of existing infrastructure.

There is also a stronger emphasis on understanding how people actually move around an area. The guidance expects authorities to gather information about existing walking, wheeling and cycling patterns, identify potential new journeys and understand barriers to those modes. That evidence can then feed into the development of local cycling and walking infrastructure plans.

For highways professionals, the interesting part is what happens when that evidence reaches scheme development. A road improvement may still be needed to address congestion or safety, but its assessment increasingly sits alongside questions about access, public transport, active travel and the wider objectives of the local transport plan.

That does not mean road capacity has disappeared from transport planning. Driving remains explicitly part of the local transport picture, alongside walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport. The change is more about how those different modes are considered together rather than treating vehicle movement as the starting point for every transport problem.

It also fits into a wider shift in how authorities are approaching transport investment. Rather than looking only at individual projects, councils are being asked to set out policies and plans that connect transport with health, accessibility, economic activity and carbon reduction.

That broader approach is already visible in local transport strategies, where councils are increasingly looking at sustainable travel alongside network management and infrastructure maintenance. We have previously looked at how that thinking is feeding into highway investment too, including innovative resurfacing work aimed at creating a greener road network.

For councils, the practical challenge will be turning the guidance into deliverable plans. Setting an objective to improve walking or cycling is relatively straightforward. Providing continuous routes, maintaining them properly, connecting them to public transport and fitting them around existing roads and development is considerably harder.

The same applies to public transport. The guidance calls for local transport plans to consider accessibility and improvements to public transport alongside active travel, meaning the different parts of the network increasingly have to be considered together rather than as separate policy areas.

For the highways sector, that makes the change worth watching. The guidance does not build a single new road or change a speed limit overnight. Instead, it influences the framework in which councils develop their future transport priorities.

The eventual result will be seen much later, when transport plans turn into designs, funding bids and schemes on the ground. But that process starts with the questions authorities are required to ask now.