Tuesday, 18 February 2025
News

Adam Tranter takes West Midlands Cycling and Walking Commissioner role

Adam Tranter, Coventry’s Bicycle Mayor and Founder of bike industry marketing agency Fusion Media, has accepted a new broader West Midlands Cycling and Walking Commissioner role.

Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street has sought an active travel leader and Tranter became an obvious choice thanks to his local and national work to put cycling for transport on the agenda. In taking the new position he will step down from the voluntary Bicycle Mayor role.

Adam will retain his role as head of Fusion Media Services, the agency behind the #BikeIsBest industry campaign.

In the Walking and Cycling Commissioner role, he will now work with Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), local council partners and the Department for Transport to steer the region’s cycling and walking policies and plans.

Adam said of the role: “I want our region to achieve its active travel potential. We saw during lockdown that vast numbers of people will cycle given the right environment to do it in; our goal has to be giving these people a genuine alternative to using a car for short journeys. We can only do this by building high quality, direct and connected infrastructure.

“Congestion really drags down our region’s health and prosperity; cities that have embraced active travel have been rewarded with better air quality, less carbon emissions and happier citizens. I want the West Midlands to have these rewards too.”

Among the first orders of business will be planning and developing the business case for ten or more safe cycling routes on the Starley Network. There is a hope that fresh funding from the Department for Transport could be obtained via the Government’s Gear Change fund.

Since 2018 the West Midlands has secured £40 million in active travel cash for deployment into projects such as the West Midlands cycle hire, something that will be within Tranter’s remit to improve upon further.

His task is to convert a high driving rate for short journeys into trips made by active means. The Walking and Cycling Commissioner has momentum on his side, with as much as three quarters of people in the region open to cycling more if the conditions to do so are safe and traffic segregated.

Adam concludes: “I am also looking forward to meeting and working with communities across the region to give people genuine choice in the way they get around as we strive to make the West Midlands a national leader for cycling and walking.”