From Spokes:
There’s a short window of opportunity to gain a modest one-off boost to Scottish cycling investment. We’ve also got a great idea how the money could be used. Please send a quick email to your MSPs now…
The Scottish Government is to receive £279m* for capital investment projects as a result of the UK Chancellor’s Spring Budget. The government will decide very soon – possibly even in the next few days – how to use this money.
[*Note - some reports refer to £279m, others to £176m. As we understand it there will be £279m for capital projects, not just transport, but which could (and should!) include cycling investment. The difference is because the amount for day-to-day current spending is being cut by £103m. Here is the BBC report and here the government news release - the relevant info is half way down].
Please email your MSPs right now!
Ask them to contact Finance Secretary John Swinney MSP and Transport Minister Keith Brown MSP to urge that some of the funding goes to cycling investment, and to let you know how they get on. Find your MSPs at http://www.writetothem.com.
Spokes as an organisation will write to the Transport Minister but our message will carry far more weight if Ministers are also getting lobbied via local MSPs. Other groups such as Pedal on Parliament are also urging concerned members of the public to write.
It’s really worth emailing – we have already won additional funding on a previous similar occasion! [see second section of that news item]
Don’t send a long email. Use your own ideas, but if you want suggestions you might like to use some of the following…
Ask your MSPs to push for our ‘big idea’ below.
Or, mention a local project that would cost money but could be implemented fairly rapidly in your own area and would make a big difference to conditions for getting about by bike.
Sustrans has cycle projects across Scotland ‘ready to go’ as soon as funding becomes available.
The Transport Minister Keith Brown MSP has promised publicly more than once to ‘fight his corner’ to get money for cycling investment should this type of one-off funding opportunity arise.
A BIG IDEA
Spokes would like to see a significant chunk of this money, say £10m, put into a special award fund to which councils could bid for a large sum, so that Scotland could implement 2 or 3 ‘exemplary projects’ providing high quality European-style cycling infrastructure in an area of a city or town, and including at least one main-road corridor. This idea was suggested recently by a speaker from the Danish Cycling Embassy at the Scottish Parliament and we understand that Alison Johnstone MSP, Jim Eadie MSP and Claudia Beamish MSP from the Scottish Parliament Cross-Party Cycle Group are urging Transport Minister Keith Brown to follow it up. The new money granted to Scotland above, as a result of the UK budget, provides the perfect opportunity to set up this award!!
Continues at: http://www.spokes.org.uk/wordpress/2013/03/quick-chance-for-cycling-investment/
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