Representatives of cycling safety group, Pedal on Parliament, met with Scottish Government Transport Minister Keith Brown MSP, along with other MSPs and government officials today to discuss the key points of their eight point manifesto.
The group concentrated on their top three demands: more funding for cycling, safer speeds, and better designed cycling networks across Scotland. These were the three areas that their supporters have been raising with them via Twitter, email and their website. They consider them to be the key issues that have to be sorted out if the government is to achieve its target of 10% of journeys being made by bike by 2020.
While they were encouraged to hear that the government would at least be sticking to its manifesto commitments for increasing the level of spending on active travel, Keith Brown made no commitment for the sort of funding they were asking for, which is 5% of the transport budget. The Minister explained that he felt responsibility for cycling is largely in the hands of local authorities, and although he is planning to look at what the Welsh government initiative does (mandating local authorities to create safe networks) he said he was reluctant to impose policy on Scottish councils in a top-down manner.
Without substantial central government funding, then realistically the group feel that there is little The Scottish Government can do to meet its own target for cycling levels. Although the Minister promised to look at making it easier for local authorities to lower speed limits in their areas, he argued that this is largely out of his hands.
However, they have agreed to meet again and to work together to try to identify what The Scottish Government might do. In particular, the Pedal on Parliamenters hope that the road or traffic design guidelines might be strengthened in line with international best practice.
Dave Brennan, one of the organisers, said:-
‘We had a positive meeting with Keith Brown and we are very pleased that he’s invited us to meet again to follow up on some of the points we’ve raised and others we didn’t have time to cover. We are hopeful that this is a start of an ongoing relationship and that together we can make Scotland a cycle-friendly nation. However central funding is absolutely critical, especially if the details of policy are to be left up to local authorities. Strategy, leadership and core funding must come from the Scottish Government.’
The Edinburgh Reporter caught up with the POP representatives after their meeting when they were hard at work putting down on paper what they felt they had achieved at their meeting. (They all look quite different when they are not in cycling gear!) We interviewed the three people who had been at the Holyrood meeting and the audio is here:-
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Conditions for people who want to use bikes are only ever be improved by making towns and cities difficult, inconvenient and expensive to use by car. That’s all, nothing else.
Good that Keith Brown is listening but he needs to pedal a lot harder if Edinburgh – not to mention the rest of Scotland – are going to catch up with the rest of Europe on cycle-friendliness.
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