Local Government Edinburgh eyes smart city status Scottish Independence Significant long-term spending on safe cycling infrastructure, quieter streets and pleasant places to live is a good investment even at a time when financial pressures are high.
Redirecting spending on active travel and people rather than cars will create a modern vibrant Scotland where people are enabled to live affordable, healthy, active and climate-friendly lifestyles.
People consistently tell surveys that the biggest barrier to cycling in Scotland is that they don’t feel safe on the roads, and as a consequence only 2% of journeys are cycled.
The experience of cities around Europe, however, shows that this can be turned around by reallocating road space and creating safe cycling infrastructure.
Significant annual investment on active travel enables more and more people to ride a bike for short local journeys instead of using the car, leading to a safety in numbers effect for people cycling which encourages even more to join them.
Reaching this safety in numbers tipping point will only come when the outcomes of consistent small and large investments snowball into a situation where society sees cycling as a normal form of transport.
For Scotland we don’t yet know when the tipping point will be when cycling rates take off, but when it happens society will benefit exponentially.The Dutch have been creating safe space for cycling for years and it has paid off, with a quarter of all journeys cycled. In fact, it’s the norm to cycle in cities like Utrecht or Copenhagen.The Scottish Government has […]
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