Evidence base
Track record behind ATFutures: grant-funded development of national transport planning tools.
Evidence base
ATFutures is built on more than a decade of grant-funded research and tool development. This page sets out what that has produced and links to the public tools and sources.
By the numbers
£1,911,050total value of active travel grants
19programmes, 30 awards
£1.47mof that credited to the founding team
12+years of continuous development
Figures are full project value for awards where the recorded role is Principal Investigator or Project Lead, and where the subject is active travel, cycling, walking, traffic, transport or road safety. Multi-phase programmes (PCT, NPTSCOT, Critical Issues, MMLOS) are aggregated.
Grant-funded programmes
| Programme | Value | Total |
|---|---|---|
| PCT | £508,381 | |
| NPTSCOT | £467,426 | |
| SATURN | £169,327 | |
| CRUSE | £127,107 | |
| Critical Issues | £78,335 | |
| STARS | £73,140 | |
| Active Travel Tools | £70,000 | |
| Cycling Toolkit | £65,500 | |
| ActDev | £62,316 | |
| LTN Leeds | £61,813 | |
| ACTON | £58,300 | |
| ML Transport | £34,748 | |
| Urban Planning Tool | £26,915 | |
| MMLOS | £23,925 | |
| Shared Streets | £22,747 | |
| Greener Connectivity | £22,340 | |
| AtumEd | £21,300 | |
| Active M'outhshire | £10,500 | |
| PCT Norway | £6,930 |
Total project value
Credited to the founding team
| Programme | What it produced | Value |
|---|---|---|
| PCT | Propensity to Cycle Tool: national cycling potential modelling and planning tool (all phases, including PCT Wales) | £508,381 |
| NPTSCOT | Network planning tools for Scottish active travel investment (all phases) | £467,426 |
| SATURN | Strategic transport modelling and appraisal research | £169,327 |
| CRUSE | Cycle route uptake and scenario estimation | £127,107 |
| Critical Issues | Data science for safety critical issues in walking, wheeling and cycling | £78,335 |
| STARS | Sustainable transport access to rail stations | £73,140 |
| Active Travel Tools | Expert guidance for evaluating active travel schemes | £70,000 |
| Cycling Toolkit | Cycling infrastructure prioritisation toolkit | £65,500 |
| ActDev | Active travel planning for new developments | £62,316 |
| LTN Leeds | Low traffic neighbourhood data and planning | £61,813 |
| ACTON | Active travel options for new developments | £58,300 |
| ML Transport | Machine learning for transport data | £34,748 |
| Urban Planning Tool | Urban planning and transport health assessment tool | £26,915 |
| MMLOS | Multi-modal level of service for Active Travel England | £23,925 |
| Shared Streets | Shared street design and evaluation | £22,747 |
| Greener Connectivity | Greener connectivity for walking and cycling networks | £22,340 |
| AtumEd | Access to urban mobility and education | £21,300 |
| Active M'outhshire | Active Monmouthshire travel planning | £10,500 |
| PCT Norway | Propensity to cycle modelling, Nord-Jaeren, Norway | £6,930 |
| All programmes | 19 programmes across 2010 to date | £1,911,050 |
What that investment bought
- Methods and software for estimating walking and cycling potential at national scale
- A network matching engine that is orders of magnitude faster than established alternatives
- Traffic and mode split models validated on held-out counter data
- A published risk framework for critical safety issues, mapped to Active Travel England’s nine criteria
- Open data pipelines for collision records, counters and open sensor networks
Already running on real data
Four English regions are built and deployed today: West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Oxfordshire. The Critical Safety Issues application screens a network of road links and junctions, and the Oxfordshire counter explorer covers 832 automatic and citizen science sensors across a 20 km study area.
Sources and notes
- Global road safety figures: World Health Organization, Global status report on road safety 2023, which estimates 1.19 million road traffic deaths in 2021.
- England active travel investment: the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy, covering 2025/26 to 2029/30, with projected investment of £4,555 million across government.
- Grant values: internal grants register, January 2010 to date. Programme values are full award values, not the portion received by any one institution.
- Model validation figures quoted on the product page are held-out statistics from the current Oxfordshire build, September 2026.