Author: Sally Hinchcliffe

Update: Due to the snow, this event was postponed until Saturday 31st March (Easter Saturday).  There’s still time to book your free place, whether you were booked on the original one or not

Don’t miss out! We’re holding our third annual Walk Cycle Vote Campaigners’ Day on the 31st March in Glasgow – a great opportunity for anyone who’s keen to do more to support active travel in Scotland. It’s a chance to learn new skills, share ideas and network with other people who are passionate about improving conditions for walking and cycling.

We’ve got some great speakers, but it won’t all be just sitting and listening; there are two breakout workshops giving you a chance to get your hands on and discuss issues in smaller groups. Note that if one or two of them prove oversubscribed we will aim to repeat those. 

Whether you’re already a veteran campaigner, are just starting out, or are wondering whether it’s all for you, please do sign up – it’s free (although a donation to cover lunch would be appreciated).

10.30 Registration
10.45 Welcome – Anna Richardson, Glasgow City Council
11.00 Community Links/Plus – Matt Davis, Sustrans
11.30 Break – tea/coffee (help reduce impact on the environment – bring your own mug or keep cup)
11:45 Workshops:
• Using graphics to visualise better street designs – Space for People Byres Road
• 5 Go Mad in Mini Holland: lessons from London for Scotland – Sally Hinchcliffe, Pedal on Parliament
• A Thousand Words – Iona Shepherd – Using images to give your event even more impact.

12.30 lunch

1.00 Air quality, health and cycling – Emilia Hannah, Friends of the Earth
1.30 Place Standard tool – John Howie, NHS Organisational Lead
2.00 Workshops:
• Running a councillor tour – John Donnelly, Go Bike
• Psychology of change – Brenda Lillicrap
• Local Authority Cycling Strategies – Sustrans
• Long game campaigning – Drem Gullane Core Path Campiagn
2:45 Break – tea/coffee
3.00 Panel Q&A
3.30 home

One of our goals for We Walk, We Cycle, We Vote this year was to promote more positive campaigning that gets ideas out of our social media bubbles and out into the real world. Sometimes this can be a substantial effort, such as our Firestarter Festival Popup Park (of which more later) – but sometimes it can be as simple as a stencil, some chalk, and a little bit of overnight action.

This Valentine’s Day we joined forces with Walk Cycle Vote supporters the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, GoBike, Cycling Dumfries, Bike4Good and a few assorted volunteers to ‘love bomb’ some of our favourite bits of cycling infrastructure with a (temporary and ecologically friendly!) “Insert Loved one Here” #ILOH heart tag .

The point was to highlight the benefits that the best quality infrastructure brings – the routes you’d be perfectly happy to see any of your loved ones using, young or old, fit or not.

It didn’t have to be something big – sometimes a couple of well placed dropped kerbs make all the difference

And if it triggers a bit of friendly rivalry between cycle campaigns (and councils) then all to the good …

The campaign was inspired by the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, whose online “Insert Loved one Here” tool launched last year to highlight the dangers of poor quality cycling infrastructure. Go Bike then took the campaign out onto the streets of Glasgow, with striking effect:

But we wanted to make sure that we didn’t just complain about the things we didn’t like – we need to be clear about what we do like. And both Go Bike and Cycling Dumfries took up the baton despite snow and freezing temperatures.

Thanks to everyone who ventured out on a baltic night to spread a little infrastructure love! And if you missed the fun, don’t worry – you can take part online with the updated version of the Cycling Embassy tool, which now lets you flag up the best conditions with a positive heart …

Even if you might have to cross the North Sea to find the very best examples

By the way  if you’re interested in refreshing your campaigning skills, sharing ideas or networking with other campaigners, then do sign up for our Campaigners’ Day in Glasgow on Saturday March 3rd.  More details to follow!

Now that voting is open for the leadership of Scottish Labour and both candidates have announced their manifestos, where do they stand on active travel – and have they responded yet to our letter?

We haven’t had a direct detailed reply yet, but we have had a response from both on Twitter – and both manifestos do mention active travel

First up, Richard Leonard (because he was the first to respond) who tweeted:

Active travel does make it into the very last paragraph of his manifesto, and suggests he will increase investment and explicitly mentions infrastructure, although there are no real specifics:

“Support methods of ‘active travel’ such as walking and cycling through more investment in our transport infrastructure. Not only will encouraging more people to walk and cycle reduce carbon emissions, it helps contribute to a healthier society.”

Anas Sarwar wasn’t far behind, tweeting:

His manifesto also leaves it right to the end, but explicitly promises to increase active travel’s share of the transport budget:

“We will re-regulate Scotland’s bus system to save lifeline routes, and fight for public ownership of ferry services. We will create a loan fund to encourage councils to consider municipal bus services, modelled on the success of Lothian Buses, and increase the proportion of the transport budget spent on Active Travel.”

If you’re a member of the Labour party and want to know more about the two candidates’ policies, please do get in touch with them directly – the more they hear about active travel during the campaigns, the more they will understand that it’s not just an afterthought – it’s key to such things as health inequality and childhood health, both of which they emphasise in their policies.

And whether you’re a member of the party or not, do please get in touch with your MSPs because there is a debate next week on active travel. Let them know what points you think are important at this crucial time, as the government prepares to spend the extra investment it has promised. Both Spokes and Pedal on Parliament have some thoughts on this that might help.

 

 

Short notice – but please join us this Sunday for a small celebratory event to mark the government announcement that it will be doubling spending on active travel. We will be gathering outside the SNP conference at the SEC Centre at 3pm for a celebratory ringing of bike bells, and presenting the transport minister Humza Yousaf with a thank-you slice of “rocky road” cake, in recognition of the fact that investment in better infrastructure for cycling and walking is set to be doubled from £40m to £80m per year.

Although this is by no means the end of our campaigning journey, this year’s Programme for Government marked an important milestone on the road to an active Scotland and we wish to positively welcome it.

Join us if you can, with your family, and feel free to wear whatever campaign-group t-shirt, hoody or hat you belong to, to mark the diversity of our collaborative campaign, and to celebrate the many different organisations that have contributed towards this moment.

With nominations closed for the leadership of the Scottish Labour Party, we’re writing to both candidates to find out where they stand on active travel:

Dear Richard Leonard / Anas Sarwar

Congratulations on your nomination for the leadership of the Scottish Labour Party.

We are writing on behalf of We Walk, We Cycle, We Vote, a collaborative campaign supported by a wide range of organisations across Scotland, from community and active travel groups to health charities. We want to see all parties in Scotland support three ‘asks’ which we believe will turn Scotland into a healthier, wealthier, happier country and help transform our lives and the lives of our children.

We would like to know where you stand on the following three asks, and whether you would make these Labour party policy if you were elected leader:

• Investment: Provide sustained, long term investment in both cycling and walking, reaching 10% of the transport budget.
• Infrastructure: Build and maintain dedicated cycling infrastructure suitable for people of all ages and abilities.
• Local action: To solve the main local barriers to active travel, as identified by residents and businesses.

We would be happy to discuss any of these policy pledges in more detail but it is now well understood that investment in the right conditions for active travel brings many benefits, from reduced congestion and pollution, to improved health benefits and reductions in social isolation. The current SNP administration has already raised the bar with the announcement of a doubling of spending on active travel over the course of the current parliament. We hope that Labour party policy would not reverse this progress, and indeed would go further.

We will be publishing this request to both candidates on our website, along with your replies, with your permission.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sally Hinchcliffe and Suzanne Forup

On behalf of We Walk, We Cycle, We Vote

We will keep you posted with any replies as they arrive.

We will not be running a Walk Cycle Vote campaign for this snap general election – we rely largely on voluntary efforts, and coming on top of an intense local election it was not possible to muster the resources again.

Besides, with transport largely being a devolved matter, there’s little that our Westminster MPs can do to make a difference to walking and cycling in Scotland, although Westminster policies will have a significant impact on conditions for walking and cycling south of the border.

However, even though we won’t be collating candidate this election or canvassing their policies, that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth raising active travel yourself with your own candidates.

To help with this, our briefing note and our social media tools are all here, for you to use and share over the next few weeks.

Briefing note:

Material to share on social media:

Tomorrow is the local elections and with all but possibly a handful of last-minute responses in, we thought we’d give you a final look at the responses we’ve had over the past few weeks of campaigning (we already covered the manifestos, in case you missed it).

FIRST we’d like to start by thanking all of you who have emailed, tweeted, facebooked and otherwise taken the time to get in touch with your candidates – it’s makes a big difference as to whether we get a response and even if the answers aren’t quite what we’d want, it still means that candidates have had to think about where they stand on active travel – and also that they know it’s important to at least some of their voters.

Overall (at the time of writing) we have had 444 of 2569 candidates who responded in one way or another to our asks – just over 17%. We never, sadly, got a reply from a candidate in Shetland (although we did hear from 4 in Orkney). At the other end of the scale, almost half of all candidates standing for election in Edinburgh have responded followed by Aberdeen (after a late surge!) at 32.7%, Dundee at 27.5%, East Lothian at 27.3% and East Renfrewshire at 27.3%. With strong support also in Dumfries and Galloway, Aberdeenshire and Fife, it’s not just council candidates in urban areas who see the benefit in active travel.

Looking at the responses by party the picture has changed a little from our update a week ago:

The Greens are still well out in front, with two-thirds of all Green party candidates having taken the time to get in touch and give their response. The Lib Dems have pulled into second place, at 18.1%, followed by Labour at 17.4%, the Tories at 14.2% and the SNP at 13.3%.

When it comes to the level of support for each of our three asks, the differences have widened slightly on the investment question, with the Tories most likely to be cautious about committing themselves to a figure of 10%, followed by Labour.

Infrastructure suitable for all ages and abilities attracted the most wholehearted support

And removing local barriers remains somewhere between the two.

Don’t forget to get the final picture of where your individual candidates stand here – which will also allow you to see the relevant local manifesto commitments where available.

So now, all that remains is for all of us to complete the third part of our campaign name and actually go out and vote tomorrow!

Just a matter of hours before Scotland goes to the polls, and we’ve been working to see where individual parties stand on walking and cycling:

There are 32 local councils in Scotland. We looked for manifestos from the five main parties at the Scotland-wide level, as well as at the manifestos in each council area, totalling a possible 165 manifestos in total.

Manifestos from the parties nationally

Looking at Parties’ HQ manifestos, only the Scottish Greens have supported our 1st and principal ask on investment that 10% of transport budgets be spent on walking and cycling. They have promised to:

“Push for councils to allocate at least 10% of their transport budget to walking and cycling, to create new and safer routes including paths separated from roads.”

However, all five major parties made some helpful nods in the direction of active travel which touched on our 2nd and 3rd asks around safe infrastructure and tackling local problems around active travel, as follows:

SNP: “SNP Councils will support active travel and encourage people to switch to cycling as a viable and enjoyable means of commuting.” Read the Scotland-wide  SNP manifesto for local elections at http://bit.ly/2oBdpPw

Labour: “In Scotland, only one per cent of all trips are made by bike and 23 per cent are made on foot. As well as providing good quality, affordable public transport we also want to see more investment in active travel, not just to improve people’s transport choices, but to improve people’s health and wellbeing, and make our communities safer” Read the Scotland-wide Labour manifesto: http://bit.ly/2p06q5U

Conservatives: “Active travel is not only the most affordable and, for many, accessible form of travel, it has clear bene ts for the environment as well as physical and mental health. Local authorities, in partnership with central government and the third sector should work towards improving their local walking and cycle path network…. As an overarching aim, we should work towards providing at least one segregated cycle route in each of Scotland’s seven cities, linking from outer city limits through city centres.” Read the Scotland-wide Conservative manifesto: http://bit.ly/2oHbZ6M

Liberal Democrats: “Potholes cause accidents to pedestrians and cyclists, rough roads destroy the comfort of bus and car journeys alike, while constant ad hoc road repair works are an inconvenience and a drag on the economy….. [We Will] Introduce modern and innovative designs for local streetscapes to make residential streets places for walking, talking and playing…” Read the Liberal Democrat Manifesto at http://bit.ly/2p5o30Q

Scottish Greens: “Scottish Greens want to improve our buses, make walking and cycling more attractive, and make our streets safe and healthy for everyone to use.” Read the Greens’ manifesto at http://bit.ly/2pXsgbT

Individual local authority party manifestos: where do your parties stand?

In reality, we were only able to locate 47 local authority party manifestos across Scotland – many local councils chose not to issue manifestos, and unfortunately in some cases, there were news stories about a given party’s manifesto but with no link to the actual manifesto!

So, of the 47 local authority party manifestos that we could get our hands on, 12 fully supported, and 2 partially supported our ask on

Investment: provide sustained, long term investment in both cycling and walking, reaching 10% of the transport budget

We have divided our analysis into three categories: Partially supportive, fully supportive, and “above-and-beyond” supportive, as follows:

In terms of our second and third asks on infrastructure and local action, 31 of the 52 local authority party manifestos which we could find made some sort of reference to these asks, from helpful nods towards active travel as important modes of transport right through to fully fledged and developed policies to put active travel at the heart of transport policies. The asks are:

• Infrastructure: Build and maintain dedicated cycling infrastructure, suitable for people of all ages and abilities.
• Local action: To solve the main local barriers to active travel, as identified by residents and businesses

The following table outlines the sorts of things we picked up in individual manifestos.

Don’t forget to walk or cycle to your polling station tomorrow and make your vote count!

 

 

 

With just over a week to go before the elections, we’ve been crunching the numbers again. We’ve now had more than 350 candidates respond in some way or another to our three asks – which is over 13% of the 2,569 candidates standing in total.

You can see the full table online, but here’s an overview of which candidates have responded by party:

The Greens are well out in front, with 58.3% of candidates responding, followed by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats who are almost neck and neck with 12.6% and 12.5% of candidates responding respectively. The SNP are on 11.5% and Labour are on 9.5%.

Of course responding is one thing – the more interesting question is whether candidates actually support our asks or not. At the moment, almost every candidate who has actually responded has done so positively, either fully or partially supporting some or all of our pledges, but the parties do vary somewhat as to the degree of support. The graphs below show the share of all candidates standing who have either partially or fully supported each ask, by party. The difference is clearest when it comes to our question on investment:

Perhaps because this is the most ‘measurable’ of the asks, it’s tended to attract the most cautious replies, particularly among Conservatives. Looking at the individual responses, this seems to be a mixture of candidates not wanting to commit themselves to a figure, or feeling that 10% of the transport budget is too high.

Support for decent ‘all ability’ infrastructure has attracted the most whole-hearted support – it’s clear that most candidates recognise that if we’re going to build cycle paths, then it’s worth doing it properly.

Support for removing local barriers was somewhere in the middle – and when you analyse individual candidate responses it’s clear that some of them have taken ‘barriers’ fairly literally, to mean the removal of bollards or other obstructions on cycle paths, which might explain why some are less enthusiastic! Clearly we need to work on our wording – but if you’re contacting your candidates you might want to explain that this is the removal of any kind of barrier, which could translate into the need for a dropped kerb or a new pedestrian crossing, as much as removing an actual physical barrier.

We’ve also now added several party manifestos to our candidate information base so even if your candidate hasn’t responded you can still find out where your local parties stand (and they vary widely from local authority area to local authority area!). But we’d still rather hear from the candidates directly if we can. Not only does it mean they’ve had to think about active travel and realise it’s an issue for some of their voters – remember, they’ll be hearing all about parking and potholes from others – but because some of the individual responses have been great. We’ve been heartened to learn how many of our wannabe councillors actually get the issues, ride a bike and walk themselves, and are excited about our campaign!

We’ve a week to go, so there’s still time for more responses! We’ll be updating our website every night with new data so keep on contacting your councillors and letting them know we want to hear from them! They can email us on contact@walkwheelcyclevote.scot, contact us on Twitter at @walkcyclevote or just fill in our super-quick candidates’ survey.

NB: If you’re interested in the actual data you can see the figures here.

 

We hope that eventually our campaigning efforts will radically change our streets so that this dilemma goes away completely. Until that happy day, one of our supporting organisations, Playing Out, has a radical solution that transforms our streets now – albeit temporarily – to give children the freedom some of us remember as kids to just ‘play out’, whether on two wheels or not.

By Daniella Radice of Playing Out.

Ok, so you’ve hauled your children around for the past few years, first in a seat and then graduating to an axle-challenging trailer.  They’re now just too heavy to cart around with your own steam but yet to master two wheels on their own.

In your mind’s eye you can see family cycling trips at weekends, with the children happily racing along and enjoying the freedom of two wheels as much as you do. But where and when do they learn to ride safely?

Many kids learn to ride on the pavement, often with the stabilisers on. But pavements are usually narrow or cluttered with bins, making it hard to learn. Also, learner cyclists can disconcert younger toddlers, older people and other pedestrians. As they get bigger, they need more space to get the feel for a bike, and yet you don’t feel happy to let a wobbly five year old onto the road.

One option is to take the children and their bike to the local park or nearest flat car park at the weekend so they can master manoeuvring and balance in a safe space. This can mean the hassle of putting bikes into the car or attempting to carry a bike whilst safely ushering small child(ren) along the pavement and across busy roads. A recipe for meltdown (theirs and/or yours) if ever there was one.

But there is another way! Many streets around the UK are now regularly closing to traffic as a way of allowing children to play safely outside their own front door. When their street is closed to cars for up to three hours a week, children can simply get out their dusty bikes and ride. They have the freedom of a largely car-free space but experiencing the feel of a road. In a recent survey of parents involved in ‘playing out’ sessions, 80% reported that children have learnt to cycle or improved their skills and confidence as a result. This quote from Louis Schafer (aged 5), who has been ‘playing out’ on his street since he was two, says it best:

 “Well I was playing outside on my bike and then I kept on falling off and then I gradually got my balance and I started to go faster but I kept on crashing into things at the end so I had to learn to make it controlled and slow down, and I learnt that and I started to learn other things and I started building ramps for it and stuff like that and bumps for it, and I went to the end of the cones and I went back down again and cycled up and down and I kept on doing that ‘til I found it really easy to do it, and that’s why I know how to do it now and now I do loads of other stuff !!”

Well, you can’t argue with that.

To find out how to open your own street for play, go to www.playingout.net or contact me directly: daniella@playingout.net Twitter: @PlayingOutCIC

A final PS: If you and your family do cycle – or scoot, or walk – to school, School Run Stories wants to hear from you what it’s like this week!