“Sorry to be a bore, but it is my conviction that the key to cycle campaigning lies in the housing estates.“
High degree of truth in that.
As I have said on here several times, there has been some discussion at CEC, in the past, about ‘spending where people cycle or where they don’t’.
This was before even 5 ‘% of Transport Budget for cycling’ so the decision was fairly inevitable and probably correct.
I used to do cycling things in and around Craigmillar, mostly in primary schools. Almost all the children had bikes - they didn’t always work. Adult ownership/use much less than ‘we’ are used to.
How to alter this will inevitably involve assumptions and presumptions.
Even the simple phrase “housing estates” may be a distraction. I assume this is normally taken to mean ‘areas of housing built by local authorities with a higher proportion of people on low incomes and a lower % of middle class people than some other areas’.
Clearly there is still a lot of truth in that, in spite of years of right to buy. In addition there are increasing numbers of housing estates mostly dwelled in by home owners which have been built around the assumption of one or more cars per household.
As gembo points out, ‘provision’ for active travel is patchy - indeed quite often the legacy of past centuries of transport provision. One of the great things about doing cycling projects around Craigmillar was the Innocent.
We took about 20 children to the People’s Story Museum, essential all off road. The headteacher came too and was well aware of the educational benefits (not just because of the destination).
We left the bikes at Moray House. Most children didn’t have locks, we used looped cables and several locks to secure them. In spite of this (and the ‘safe’ location) some children were really worried about their bikes being stolen.
There are issues beyond ‘cycling’. CEC really should take an area - WH, Pilton/Muirhouse, Craigmillar, Drum Brae, Gyle etc. and take an intensive look at ‘infrastructure’, ‘desire lines’, missing or potential connections to path networks, schools, shops, workplaces etc.
BUT it shouldn’t be primarily be about cycling. If provision for encouraging people to cycle is poor, it’s likely to be worse for pedestrians and buggy pushers.
‘Should that road be reduced to 20mph?’, ‘do those roads need to be open to rat-runners?’, are there enough pedestrian crossings (including places to make make crossing to/from bus stops easier)?’, ‘are school crossing patrol jobs paid well enough to actually attract people to do them?’, etc.
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