Seen it now. Hehe. Also saw the back of Recombodna's head right at the end.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Events, rides etc.
Active Transport Budget Protest
(285 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
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Posted 12 years ago #
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Aye the iPlayer has that Reporting Scotland now if anyone missed it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b019c0cd/Reporting_Scotland_11_01_2012/
Didn't notice when I saw it on the telly, but my daughter and I are visible behind the Minister as he flannels for the camera.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Bought the Hootsmon this morning in anticipation but saw no photos - need a closer check to see if there's actually a story on it - will have a gander at the site.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Hmmm, can only find a brief thing in the Evening News section.
And it's copyright associated press or something, so basically not written by one of their reporters, just bought and copied from a bog-standard release. And they use a pic of Boardman to illustrate it...
Posted 12 years ago # -
Didn't spot that when looking through the 'news' and 'transport' sections. I'll go and try again. Maybe they don't want to attract attention to it if they can't spin it (or be bothered to write their own account of it) in a way which creates page hits from frothing commentors.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Oh, and it's also a completely incorrect headline! We don't seek 'low carbon investment', we were seekgin a reversal of cuts to active travel budgets.
Pah.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Yeah, that is the bog standard PA release. Presumably neither the Hootsmon nor the chipwrapper bothered to send any journos to the demo. They're too busy with the threat to the Union and the tramtastrophy respectively.
Pretty poor show for Edinburgh papers but hardly surprising.
Nothing in the Herald either. At least the Beeb came through.
Posted 12 years ago # -
yeah back of my head woo!!!
Posted 12 years ago # -
@Uberuce brass (ish) plated brake caliper?
Posted 12 years ago # -
Ooooh, tramtastrophy. I like that word.
I didn't go yesterday, because I was working, and anyway, I can't cycle just now because my pelvic fracture is still healing. I'm glad you all went though.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Kap, you are a prince among men. As you've doubtless guessed it's for Anchorweight, so the gold actually matches better than the brass anyway. *forehead smootch*
Posted 12 years ago # -
Its funny that only the RS report mentions that road budget has gone up, all other beeb articals quote the overall budget cuts but neglect to mention this very important fact.
Posted 12 years ago # -
That's one of the heckles Keith Brown got, from a chap with long blond hair. No response, alas.
Posted 12 years ago # -
From the Beeb:
Posted 12 years ago # -
Posted 12 years ago #
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Scottish Budget Bill published today. No increase in "Sustainable and Active Travel" budget of £16m or Cycling, walking and safer routes budget of £6.1m.
Posted 12 years ago # -
GREENS CONDEMN "SPARE CHANGE" FROM SWINNEY
Green MSP Patrick Harvie responded to the publication of the Scottish budget today (1) saying:
"We have called on the Government to make serious commitments on further education, on sustainable transport, and on funding their own climate change policies. On all of these, we see warm words on paper but little of substance being done.
"On sustainable transport, the SNP are trying to pretend that the spare change from their multi-billion pound roadbuilding programme will make a difference. It just won't wash.
"I'm dismayed by the complete lack of progress on other priorities. There is still time for the SNP to address the urgent needs of FE students and colleges, and to fully fund the climate change programme instead of blowing billions of pounds on building 20th century infrastructure."
Notes
(1) The Scottish Government's budget for 2012/13 is available here:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2012/01/BudgetBill20012012Posted 12 years ago # -
If you went, and you gave your name to a person with a clipboard, and live in Edinburgh Southern, you've probably got a letter today -
"
Re: Scottish Spending Review - Active Travel BudgetThank you for taking the trouble to contact me on the subject of active travel budgets as part of the Transform Scotland campaign.
I have received a great deal of correspondence and emails on the same subject, many of which argue very cogently about the benefits of active travel - which I fully accept. It is also clear that the Scottish Government is persuaded of the benefits of active travel - and this has been reflected in a range of policies, including the Cycling Action Plan. Perhaps most significantly, it has been the driver behind the Smarter Choices Smarter Places project which saw a number of ideas for encouraging active travel trialled in various locations throughout Scotland, backed with £15 million of Scottish Government money. The Government is currently studying the lessons that can be learned from each of these projects.
Careful consideration of what spending is most effective is particularly important at this time when pressures on budgets are immense.
It should also be borne in mind that government funding for cycling and active travel comes not through one budget source, but a variety of different sources - including one off schemes such as the money that was allocated at the time of the Cycling Action Plan or the Smarter Choices scheme. I say this only to make the point that it is therefore too early to assess what proportion of the total transport budget will be spent on active travel during the next financial year - there remains scope to improve the position.
Nonetheless, I accept that many constituents have legitimate concerns about the amount of money set aside for active travel in the budget and spending. I have expressed such concerns in a letter to the Scottish Government and I raised the issue with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Nicola Sturgeon, at a meeting of the Health Committee. More recently, I was able to raise the issue with Transport Minister, Keith Brown, at Question Time. As a result of that question the Minister has agreed to meet me and my colleague Marco Biagi MSP, together with representatives of cycling groups Spokes and the Edinburgh Bike Station. This will provide a further useful platform to continue pressing the case for active travel.
I hope these comments are helpful, and please do not hesitate to get in touch again on this subject - or any other.
Jim Eadie
MSP for Edinburgh Southern
The Scottish Parliament
Edinburgh EH99 1SP
Telephone 0131 348 6283
Jim.Eadie.msp@scottish.parliament.uk"
It will be interesting to see how much letters from other MSPs say the same - or different - things.
There are a lot of interesting (and positive) things in the letter, which I'm sure others will comment on too.
It is important that there are other sources of money for walking and cycling - but it remains the case that the Active Travel Budget is with the Transport Minister who also is responsible for the (ambitious) cycling targets in the Cycle Action Plan.
It's sensible that "The Government is currently studying the lessons that can be learned from each of these projects" (Smarter Choices Smarter Places is a Transport Scotland project in partnership with COSLA.)
I think this ended last March, so presumably there are some preliminary results floating around Victoria Quay which ought to influence Budget/spending proposals...
Posted 12 years ago # -
I got one a few days ago, I cant find it at the moment but the general tone was 'fob off'.
Posted 12 years ago # -
They must be very slow readers at Transport Scotland then - as the initial report on Smarter Choices... was published on 7 January 2011:
http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/files/documents/roads/InterimReport_7_1_10_v1_2.pdf
Posted 12 years ago # -
"They must be very slow readers at Transport Scotland"
Perhaps they didn't like what they read(?)
6.0 Conclusions
6.1 The limited data available at the time of this interim review presents a complex picture. Although there is some evidence of SCSP interventions having made an impact, there are apparently contradictory findings and a time lag in the preparation of the local and national data that should, in time, help to validate effects being observed in telephone survey data.
6.11 The overall SCSP delivery programme is very short. In the English sustainable travel towns the investment was allowed five years to bed in. If the required culture, attitude and behaviour change is to be attained over a three year period to make the investment sustainable then there is much to do over the coming year.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Transport Scotland live in fear of ministerial ire, so I'd expect they'd like what they read if the Minister liked what he read...
Posted 12 years ago # -
Just noticed -
"
Strongly worded letter to the Herald by leading academics slams active travel budget cuts @sustrans http://t.co/k02ZoJsU via @hsnewsbreak
2 days ago from web@TransformScot retweeting @John_Lauder
"
Posted 12 years ago # -
Also
"Ministers present cuts for sustainable transport as new investment"
http://www.transformscotland.org.uk/future-transport-fund-announcement.aspx
Posted 12 years ago # -
Re. the above letter from Jim Eadie....
Having met Jim Eadie and Marco Biagi to discuss cycle funding, my impression is that they personally are pretty sympathetic to decent funding for active travel, and they (especially perhaps JE) genuinely have been putting effort into trying to achieve something within the SNP decision-makers.
Unfortunately (and I stress that this is purely speculation on my part, for other reasons, nothing said by JE or MB) they are up against SNP old-guard 'heavyweights' like Alex Neil MSP (the Cabinet Member for Infrastructure) who I suspect can't really see the point of anyone using a bike for anything; and certainly not a form of transport. John Swinney, Finance Secretary, is probably a tiny bit more understanding, but I suspect that he thinks cycling is really recreation rather than serious transport.
The fact of the matter, as shown by the annual spokes funding surveys, is that cycling investment in Scotland peaked in the last 2 years of the Lab/Lib administration, then gradually declined once SNP became the largest party, and now that they have an overall majority the decline is accelerating (oblivious of manifesto commitments to increase the proportion of transport spending on active travel).
The only exception to the above year-on-year decline was a temporary recovery in 2010/11 when CAPS (cycling plan for scotland) was published and a significant one-off boost was allocated for that.
Whilst CAPS was better than nothing, it always struck me as rather a con since it sets a hugely ambitious target but does not provide a costed and researched path which could conceivably lead to meeting the target - it is just an adhoc collection of worthy individual initiatives.
Finally, on the Smarter Choices (SCSP) scheme (which is highlighted in JE's letter) everyone forgets the background to this (and JE probably doesn't know it, being new). It was not funded with new money but largely with a massive cut to Sustrans funding. Had that not happened we might well by now have had the A90 route done up properly and/or Portobello-Leith complete and/or similar projects around Scotland. The SCSP project is worthy in itself, but basically represented a shift out of funding for walk/cycle and into walk/cycle/bus/car-share etc; in other words a significant CUT in funding for walk/cycle. Furthermore in the last year or two SCSP has been increasingly used as justification for the continued cutting of cycle funding - i.e. we can't invest any more money until we know the results of SCSP.
Finally, there's now not much hope of getting the 12/13 budget improved. Main remaining hope for this year is to get some of the one-off unpredictable money which the govt gets from UK govt under 'barnet consequentials'. This is actuallly a realistic hope, as from memory that is where much of the 10/11 one-off boost came from, and it was also mentioned by keith brown at the demo. So it's worth keeping up the lobbying and particularly embarrassing the SNP over their manifesto.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Very useful DdF!
(Well informed as usual.)
Similar discussion here -
"Investment in sustainable transport schemes creates jobs cost efficiently"
Posted 12 years ago # -
Posted 12 years ago #
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OPPOSITION politicians have hit out at cuts of one-third to "active" travel budgets which they claim will make it harder to increase the number of trips made by bike or foot.
In an open letter to Finance Secretary John Swinney, Labour's Claudia Beamish, Jim Hume for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens' Patrick Harvie accused the Finance Secretary of betraying a 2011 SNP manifesto commitment to raise transport spending on "low carbon, active and sustainable travel".
The Herald 26.01.2012Posted 12 years ago # -
Interesting - this is the sort of stuff that might make a (little) difference...
Posted 12 years ago #
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