CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
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RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
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Spokes CycleCampaign (@SpokesLothian)
20/11/2014 12:15
New @scotgov #2030 cycling 'vision' improves on #2020 #CAPS vision but will stay 'vision' without funded action plan!
http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/news/minister-launches-active-travel-vision
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"This document sets out how we hope Scotland will look in 2030 if more people are walking and cycling for short, everyday journeys allowing us to reap the benefits of active travel. I would like to offer my thanks to members of the working group and the many stakeholders who have helped develop this vision. However, having a vision is only the first stage, our next challenge is to implement it. I am confident that, with our delivery partners, we will be able to achieve this"
http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/system/files/Active_Travel_Vision.pdf
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I am confident that, with our delivery partners, we will be able to achieve this
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Wish I was.
Does this mean Sustrans and Paths for All, or is SG going to make sure all LAs do a lot more??
Ha - was just about to post on this. Truly one of the most bizarre documents I have ever seen. The SG seems to have confused making something happen with saying it will happen.
EDIT: Posted too soon there. Obviously, the main aim of this document is to push action well into the future (2030). There are no firm targets in the document, so no-one can ever be accused of not meeting them. This may well be the death knell for the Cycling Action Plan for Scotland, with its nasty 10% "vision" for 2020 - although I could be wrong on that.
"The SG seems to have confused making something happen with saying it will happen."
Isn't that normal for cycling/active travel?
Well, of course, Holyrood will need "more powers" first. Hence the "vision" will stay just that, until Scotgov either:
a. actually owns up to the fact it's not serious about active travel
b. realises it can use its existing powers
c. is willing to divert funding from ROADS to pay for active travel infrastructure
Is a "vision" by date x decades into the future needed to dual more roads, or is that a given?
Oh, duelling roads is a given. It's tantamount to the LAW.
Active travel is and will be "additional" to the main business of awarding big civil engineering contracts for roads. A few scraps will be thrown in our direction, for which we are supposed to be VERY grateful. We're a bunch of weirdos anyway, haven't you heard?
Anyone care to read my IWRATS 2030 Vision Paper? Some exclusive extracts, even if you don't...
...muscles are honed and ripple under silky, lightly bronzed skin...
....dwelling places are spacious, oak-framed, sun dappled and set in acres of old-growth Scots Pine near a rocky coast....
.....career as sculptor, writer, public intellectual and world-renowned wilderness cycling photographer is in full flow...
...Penelope Cruz's sexual advances become floridly persistent and quite impossible to resist....
....Keith Brown begins his fifteenth year as Chief LED Polisher on the Union Canal Towpath...
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PROMOTING ACTIVE LIFESTYLES
GOOD IDEAS FOR TRANSPORT AND HEALTH PRACTITIONERS
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Ten points for "floridly persistent".
you've got to wonder who thought this was a good idea. and then why anyone would commit time and resources to it.
Interesting that in the PROMOTING ACTIVE LIFESTYLES doc, they look for examples from other countries like...
wait for it...
...the USA and Australia - 2 nations also with horrific obesity & inactivity problems.
No mention of Holland, Denmark, Finland, Seville, etc...
sally's blogpost is rather wonderful too:
https://cityexile.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/my-long-term-vision-for-scotlands-weather/
Well I've read it.
Wot's so special about 2030?
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Creating the infrastructure to encourage active travel is only one part of the puzzle. In order to maximise the investment in infrastructure, we need to ensure that active travel options are clearly signposted, well promoted and that people have the skills and confidence to use them. This can be very simple; in the form of maps showing local routes, more intensive such as personal travel planning, or by offering cycle training.
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Right, so the "investment in infrastructure" is all planned, and this report is all about making sure people use it??
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ACTIVE TRAVEL IS A LASTING LEGACY FROM THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES IN 2014
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Is that a fact or a vision or a promise or a complete load of #%€$¥?
"Is that a fact or a vision or a promise or a complete load of #%€$¥?"
Is that a rhetorical question?
I have a vision......Scotland will be independent, and a beacon of international socialism. Babes will rejoice in their mothers' arms, as happy peasants reap harvest on the collective farms. Everyone will receive according to their needs, and contribute according to their abilities. The people will march, hand in hand, into a glorious future free from want, fully satisfied with their lives and needing nothing more.
Nurse, is it time for my pills yet?
ACTIVE TRAVEL IS A LASTING LEGACY FROM THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES IN 2014
Were the athletes housed in a Potemkin village?
I think I hate every single thing about this document.
Except the fact that one bicyclist isn't wearing a polystyrene hat in their photo.
Presumably we'll see Mr Brown at PoP 2015 on that bicycle?
Actually, several bicyclists aren't wearing polystyrene hats. What's telling though is that every child is, and that the Transport Minister felt obliged to wear one even for a posed photo on a cycle path.
Funnily enough, there aren't any polystyrene hats at all in this picture.
(picture taken from a polemical article by the Alternative Department for Transport)
...and isn't the point that you can have as many visions as you like, but until people think it's safe to put their kids on bikes without magic plastic hats and magic reflective vests, this vision is going to remain just a vision.
Not so much a vision as a chimera; a phantasmagoric visitation; a flight of fancy; pie in the sky; a dream.
Can I have some of what the minister is on, because when I look around I'm not seeing this vision at all. I'm seeing a motorised nightmare; a carmageddon.
Worth a re-read
http://pedalonparliament.org/vision-creep
in view of new minister(s).
Also
http://pedalonparliament.org/an-open-invitation-to-nicola-sturgeon
Well, I suspect this "vision" will be quietly laid to rest, and instead we'll have populist pandering to the motorist, akin to that we get from English Tories.
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The leader of Renfrewshire Council, Councillor Derek Mackay, said: “When pedestrianisation was delivered in the town a lot of people felt it went too far and was over restrictive.
We want to bring people back into the heart of the town.
The current lay out [sic] of the High Street is very attractive and amenable to car access which would mean, with a fairly limited budget, we could cars back in [sic] on a shared basis with pedestrians”
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The same Derek Mackay who is no Scottish Transport Minister...
The significant difference between a vision and a hallucination has not been explained to me yet.
Today's CTC Scotland gathering in Edinburgh included some discussion of the vision though it all seemed as if it was a good thing rather than a fairy story about a far-off land. I am not so optimistic.
"The significant difference between a vision and a hallucination has not been explained to me yet."
One requires a suspension of normal belief the other may require drugs (or need them for treatment?)
"some discussion of the vision though it all seemed as if it was a good thing rather than a fairy story"
Well, think there should be some questioning of how this Gov plans to make it (begin to) happen.
Of course it was produced 'under a different regime' (though I assume the civil servants that actually compiled it are still firmly in place).
So the new people (particularly 'fresh' transport minister and 'different approach' Sturgeon) could disown it (unlikely) or 'plan to achieve long before 2030' - maybe it should be in the 2016 manifesto.
Politicians need to do 'the vision thing', but in the face of increasingly wised-up/sceptical population (voters) they also need to be credible - and deliver...
The problem is, Nicola was Keith Brown's boss for the last few years. There has never been any sign she was interested in active travel. Now Keith Brown is Derek Mackay's boss.
Derek Mackay is seen as a rising SNP star (tipped as possible future leader). This is bad news for active travel. No-one makes their political name by backing cycling. Far better to be seen with the big scissors at the opening of huge road projects.
Also, his super pro-development stint as planning minister leads me to think he has little time for environmental concerns. He seems to be easily house trained by the civil service (see his statement on not calling-in Craighouse) which is worrying given the pro-roads culture in Transport Scotland. He also seems keen to please business interests - who are generally pro-car/anti-cycling.
@Morningsider
Don't forget the press. If either of us were politicians we'd avoid being seen on our bicycles too. If we were so pictured we'd be smörgåsmeared from this list of insults;
* Odd
* Irresponsible
* Obsessed
* Inelegant
This is why Keith Brown is wobbling about in a polystyrene hat and a lounge suit in that photograph. Nicola would be quite metaphorically hung drawn and crucified if she ever turned up at Holyrood on a push bike - sweating or perfectly made up, clad in Goretex or Rapha or Next, tartan high heels or SPDs.
PS
I've taken to thinking of your user name as 'Morning Cider'. This is entirely my problem and I apologise for it right now.
@chdot, this is a politician who de-pedestrianised a town centre just because "a lot of people felt it went too far".
No principles whatsoever, if you ask me. Just "listening to the grapevine" and caving in to the slightest murmurings of discontent in the car driving majority.
I can't see the combination of his appointment, and the promotion of Broon, as anything other than a calamitous disaster for active travel at Scottish government level.
Look forward to more dual carriageways, sooner: "Bypasses For All". (That's roads, followed by heart operations 30 years later).
Probably a good time to think about moving to the Netherlands, Denmark or Germany...
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