Hello all, as some of you will already be aware, there has been a concerted effort to develop a common platform for active travel campaigns for the Holyrood elections next year, arising out of the National Cycling Interest Group (NCIG). After lots of consultation and some rather prolonged discussions we came up with three key 'asks':
1) Investment: Provide sustained, long term investment in both cycling and walking, reaching 10% of the transport budget
2) Infrastructure: Build and maintain dedicated cycling infrastructure, enabling people aged 8-80 to cycle
3) Safety: Promote and deliver safer roads for both walking and cycling
There was remarkable consensus that these were the top priorities; getting the exact wording was a little bit more complicated and so we're not really in the market for suggestions on improvements, although I'm aware the current wording isn't perfect as it stands mainly because I don't want to have to have any more hour-long conference calls...
However, the point is that we have created an umbrella campaign to try and promote this over the elections in May, supported by as many campaign groups as we can muster (the current list is Arria Wheelers, Camglen Bike Town, the CTC, the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, Cycle Law Scotland, Edinburgh Festival of Cycling, GoBike, Living Streets Scotland, Paths for All, Pedal on Parliament, Perth ByCycle, Recyke-a-bike, Scottish Cycling, Spokes Lothian, Sustrans Scotland & hopefully more to come). We have a small amount of funding from the CTC for a website and publicity materials. The campaign will be non-partisan - we won't (and can't) tell people how to vote or who to vote for but we can tell them what individual candidates have signed up to, and we can organise events and hustings. More to the point, we can hopefully harness the efforts of various campaigns in their own areas into something that's a bit bigger than the sum of its parts - and maybe encourage some groups to get involved in the election and make sure that cycling and walking don't get forgotten ...
There's no live website yet - it's coming but there's just the two of us (me and Suzanne Forup) doing the bulk of the organising - but for those of you who use Facebook there's a FB page https://www.facebook.com/walkcyclevote
Our first activities will be conference bike rides at (hopefully) all the party conferences - starting with the Green party in Glasgow on Sunday 11th October (https://www.facebook.com/events/1649911321948461/).
There will be more public involvement nearer the elections but for now we're trying to build support among campaigns so if you're involved in a local group or organisation and would like to add its name to our list of supporters (always assuming you agree with the three asks!) then please let me know.
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