The Active Travel Research Group (ATRG) is a multi-disciplinary collection of researchers based at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), with members of the group drawn from across all four of the University’s Research Institutes.

The group has a strong track record in undertaking research directly focused on active travel but also benefits from extensive experience and complementary research from across SHU. Our group and portfolio of skills includes: outdoor recreation, social prescribing, public health, wellbeing, physical activity, sports engineering, planning and design, behavioural change, mathematical / statistical modelling, and spatial analysis.

Our aims

• To enhance active travel research and insight by bringing together a diverse group of researchers with complementary skills and specialisms.
• To promote interdisciplinary activity and broaden research collaboration.
• To utilise our interdisciplinary nature to develop and promote innovative methodological approaches to underpin research.
• To influence the rapidly changing policy and funding landscape seeking to contribute to a step-change in active travel.
• To work in partnership with local, regional and national stakeholders to communicate and enhance to impact of our research.

Our work

We have delivered a wide range of projects in recent years, from developing monitoring and evaluation frameworks for active travel, to working in schools exploring barriers to school-aged active travel. Methodologically, we have utilised wearable video cameras to understand different experiences of cycling and applied randomised control trials to explore the role of motivation and goal setting on switching to active modes.

We have received support from a range of funders, including:

• Department for Transport.
• Economic and Social Research Council.
• Engineering and Physical Science Research Council.
• Living Streets.
• Local Government Association.
• Regional Studies Association.
• South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.
• Welcome to Yorkshire.

A selected summary of these projects can be found on the Projects page.