So the council wants to see "15% of journeys by bike by 2020". What does this actually mean? Let's presume that some portion of the population takes no journeys for reasons of ill-health, disability, stubbornness. And some proportion takes 100% (i.e. Bill Brockie). the rest of us presumably somewhere in-between. My family is probably 80% bike, 10% bus 5% walking and less than 5% taxi. But what does it mean for others? I was wondering if the Uni had considered getting its service and security guys around on bikes? with cargo bikes they could do it.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Commuting
15% of journeys by bike by 2020
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Posted 14 years ago #
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"What does this actually mean?"
It's a good question.
I think the Council will be happy if it's 15% within a mile of The City Chambers.
Or perhaps that will be - the Council will be lucky to meet that target, even in the city centre, unless they do A LOT more to encourage cycling - both infrastructure and 'softer measures'.
Posted 14 years ago # -
But seriously, do they know how many journeys are currently taken by bike?
Posted 14 years ago # -
"do they know how many journeys are currently taken by bike?"
Another good question.
The answer is yes and no.
They have a variety of sources. General travel habit surveys - where the answer is usually 2%.
Periodic roadside counts and also a range of solar powered grey boxes by the side of various cycle paths.
I believe the one by Middle Meadow Walk stopped working when MMW was resurfaced. Don't know when/if that was fixed.
Posted 14 years ago # -
So we're talking about doubling the number of journeys people make by bike each year? No, my math's wrong, but we're talking a 10fold increase or something, aren't we? I'm no public policy expert, but setting an unreachable goal is surely unrealistic and bad politics. I can see a good dissertation topic emerging....
Posted 14 years ago # -
Ooops. sorry. not only bad math, but bad memory. somehow 15% by 2020 transmogrified into 20% in my brain.
Posted 14 years ago # -
I think the figure for 'Edinburgh' is nearer 4%, with even more in central/studenty areas.
Personally I'd be happy if the Council defined the 15% area as 'within the bypass' - certainly if you're talking 'journeys within CEC boundaries' the bypass, M8 and Forth Bridge must surely be excluded (all roads where cycling is mostly banned anyway).
Setting unrealistic targets IS a bad idea. Properly defined, this is an ambitious target, but not an impossible one.
http://cyclingedinburgh.info/2009/06/05/it-can-be-done/
BUT it can't just rely on Spokes, The Bike Station (even with its new funding) and a few people on this forum setting up BUGS at work, or getting their friends/neighbours on bikes.
However it shouldn't just be down to the Council either (universal Cycle Training for all P6/7 pupils would be a good start). NHS should be involved - cycling/physical activity isn't just about 'transport'.
Spokes has been pressing the Scottish Government to allocate relatively tiny sums of money to walking/cycling. In spite of support from the relevant Committee, the SG is showing no sign of adopting a sensible policy (in accord with lots of its key aims and ambitions) this year either.
Posted 14 years ago # -
Is there evidence that more kids bike after bike training? (I'm not assuming they don't, just curious).
Posted 14 years ago # -
Plenty
(Don't ask me for stats)
Doesn't just have to be the formal CT.
Have a look at the stuff Sustrans has done (particularly south of the border). Next week CTC is launching a new scheme - initially down south but due Edinburgh and Glasgow this year.
I know from stuff I've done in Edinburgh schools (e.g. bicyclefundays), kids love bikes.
One problem is that too many of the current generation of parents don't cycle.
I'm involved In a project starting in nurseries with 'training' bikes. THOSE children will be teenagers in 2020...
Posted 14 years ago # -
"One problem is that too many of the current generation of parents don't cycle." Exactly. People leading by example is important (albeit not essential). Which is why I think it's important to keep parents cycling!
Posted 14 years ago # -
15% by 2020 no chance, they might as well have gone for 20% by 2020 at least that is memorable.
They could start with their own employees (if there will be enough of us left by 2020). Currently, they pay employees to cycle (not to and from work, that is inadmissable due to tax law, but anyone who drives as part of their job with the council can switch to bike and claim a decent mileage allowance - you don't make any money out of it but it keeps you in tubes and lube.) THe bike to work scheme runs well with big uptake (but unclear how many people then actually use their bike as principal means of getting to work, as tax inspector would want). The council is therefore partially committed to the 2020 thing for its own employees and could push this further among staff. As all the teachers in Edinburgh are council employees they could start with incentives there. THis would help the pupils too. IKEA gave all their staff a bike last Xmas.
SRD 80%bike, 10% bus 5% walking and less than 5% taxi is admirable. There is a tiny bit of missing percentage to get to 100% but you don't have a car(?) Skateboard, pogo stick, roller skates etc could make up the difference?
Posted 14 years ago # -
lifts from friends? i knew it didn't quite add up but it would have suggested more accuracy than I have to say 13% bus and 2% taxi.
nope no car. mainly because we haven't found time to learn to drive standard transmissions and get licences over here (i've actually never had a licence, but I can drive an automatic; other half is a very good driver who grew up in Motor city). we'd love to join the car club, but would be very happy not owning.
Posted 14 years ago # -
The lifts from friends and colleagues category is an essentail one. I use bike for work 88.3% but the other 11.7% comprises of bus, lifts from colleagues and very occasional taxi, plus of course walking. We have an automatic and I would dearly like to sell it and be car free but living in the sticks with three kids would leave you totally reliant on other people for the ferrying to kids parties etc. I think that begins to annoy peole after a while? Guess you could reciprocate in other ways. I could bake people bread? My not quite teenage daughter, tho happy to cycle at appropriate times would object to getting on the tandem to get to her parties/sllepovers etc She still quite likes the bus, thno not as much as the younger two. I am certainly aware that I can only do my job and (mostly) live my life without a car because of the kindness of others.
Posted 14 years ago # -
I work in a big city school which has a cycling club, has bikes to loan to the kids and racks right outside the head teachers office. I cycle in every day as does the head of science and occasionally some other staff when the weather is nice. There is a "safer signed route" almost to the main gate and it's even posted as a route to the school.
I haven't seen any kids bikes for weeks but even when the weather is nice there would be fewer than a dozen locked up in the yard. That represents about 1% of pupils. Granted some of them have to come by bus from further afield but it's still about the same percentage as the school I went to in Ayr 25 years ago which had a 20 mile radius catchment area (OK that would include some sea to the west).
Pupils know how I get there, a Brompton sits under the desk and I used one yesterday to show them what an electrical generator does. They know I could use a car if I wanted to but choose not to. They have examples they can see and ask about and yet it is still very much a minority mode of travel.
There is a cycling club which I do not help with because the council insists on the H word.
Posted 14 years ago # -
Does the school have 'secure' bike storage?
What's the traffic like between main bits of catchment and school?
Posted 14 years ago # -
One of the schools I work in [that used to be the only school attached to a Premier League Football Stadium] has just been rebuilt across the road from the stadium and has 75 covered stances for pupil bikes and 25 for staff. Will keep you posted on how they are getting used.
Posted 14 years ago # -
chdot,
Well I don't leave mine there but it is inside a quadrangle with the HT office on one side and the main office full of admin staff on another so anybody up to no good would be spotted.
Posted 14 years ago # -
chdot,
Sorry, traffic on the safer signed route is minimal as it goes though a housing estate. I'm probably not the right person to ask about that sort of thing as I used to cycle to school along a mile or so of the A77 and it never seemed odd.
Posted 14 years ago # -
when I moved to Ayr (age 14) I had a dawes 5 speed, eventually nicked from Hillhead St because Nicola T left it unlocked in the close. Anyway I had the mad idea I'd cycle back to Lochwinnnoch every weekend to see my gran. Took the bike out on the Ayr bypass - man it was windy. That wee mile of the A77 - from Alloway to QM a bit more sheltered? Actually a bit more cycle network in Ayr and Lochwinnoch now. I think I am being roped into a charity cycle (to raise money for all weather pitch at out local high school) from Troon to Edinburgh in August, will post details if anyone interested, tho I can see that the charity side is somewhat niche.
Posted 14 years ago # -
From today's Guardian on-line: bike clubs
Posted 14 years ago # -
gembo,
I did cycle up to see my gran in Pollock now and again. I missed the first ever shuttle landing because I was somewhere between Ayr and Paisley. I was 14 at the time.
In the early 90s I cycled up and down the A77 between Ayr and Glasgow every week or two, some times more frequently. I stayed in Gt George St and it was cheaper than using the bus to go see my parents. If I got fed up with that I'd head out via Barrhead or Erskine and down through Irvine.
It was a long slow climb from the coast up to the Eaglesham turn off or a short sharp climb up from Eastwood toll depending which direction you were heading.
For Lochwinnoch you could use the A78. I used to to get to Saltcoats and my mum's parents. Most of it was empty in those days outwith the Volvo trucks using it as a test track. I used to see them drive up and down then fill in forms in the laybys.
Posted 14 years ago # -
Gembo you work at Tynie? Hehe i spent my high school education there.
Hows the new building?
As i remember most kids walked/got the bus to that school a few rode and a few were dropped off. Never did trust that bike rack though qr wheels on rubbish wheel locking rack that close to Gorgie never did fill me with confidence.
Posted 14 years ago # -
Foldster - the A77 you are a very brave man, I think the A71 is scary enough
Steveo - Tynie is looking good - bit of grousing about the bits that are open plan, but it is very spacious - I think spec'd on latest disability widths and light, NOt sure about walking straight into the dining hall. but the theatre/main hall is good. Staff have separate bike covered bike rack, a lot of the old school cyclists have retired. I am there about once a week but the janny has given me a pass for the backdoor. It was the nice janny, he once got me out of a toilet I'd managed to lock myself in (it was a never used gents toilet in a primary school and the lock broke as I put it on the snib) and it was just before a job interview (at another site).
Posted 14 years ago # -
BTW, for what it's worth, making most journeys by bike is _easy_ when you don't have a car. much more of a personal challenge/sacrifice if you do (I guess). we went from probably 50% walking 50% bus, to mostly bike last year, and that was easy too -- cheaper and faster. Real kudos go to those who reduce from car to bike or bus or foot, I think. on another note, there's one family I often see in Blacket ave area, with a father and at least 3 kids on bikes in reflective gear. Don't know what school they're heading towards, but darn impressive nonetheless, even if I did nearly plough into the middle of them the other day when they were somehow on the wrong side of the road as I turned a corner. luckily I was going v. slow as result of red light.
Posted 14 years ago # -
Headline from today's Herald Poor funding may puncture bike push. The national target of 10% of journeys by 2020 is under threat due to lack of political will.
Posted 14 years ago # -
"The 21 councils which took part in the consultation stressed that they could not meet funding demands on their own."
And Scottish Government still seems to be resisting pressure to find more investment in current budget process.
http://www.spokes.org.uk/wordpress/2010/01/scottish-budget-2010-11-nearing-the-end
Posted 14 years ago # -
Seems to be a good time to revive this thread.
Posted 4 years ago #
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