If you missed the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland protest, seeking to double Scottish Government cycling/walking investment in the 2014/15 budget, you missed a great event! See the video …
… by Spokes member Bryce Morrison …
Spokes was one of the many groups supporting the event – with a flyer and emails sent to all members, encouraging them to publicise it and to come along.
The video ends with three great supporters of higher cycling investment in the Scottish Parliament – Jim Eadie MSP [SNP, Edinburgh Southern], Alison Johnstone MSP [Green, Lothians] and Claudia Beamish MSP [Lab, South Scotland] – all of whom are heavily involved in the Parliament’s Cross Party Cycling Group.
The Scottish Government has allocated a new £10m for 14/15 (up from £20m to £30m) and £10m for 15/16, but this is nothing like adequate to achieve the government’s own highly publicised target that 10% of all trips should be by bike in 2020.
The protest seeks a further rebalancing of the transport budget, to make a total of £40m for cycling/walking investment in 14/15 (up from £20m this year), then rising to 10% of the £2000m total transport budget by 2020. At present, despite the new money above, total government cycling investment will start to fall back again in 15/16 as some other budget lines come to an end.
As a result of the protest and associated ongoing negotiations, government ministers Paul Wheelhouse MSP [Minister for Environment and Climate Change] and Keith Brown MSP [Minister for Transport and Veterans] have agreed to meet Stop Climate Chaos Scotland later in November to discuss the budget and how cycle use can be increased.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
- If you support the proposals – please contact your own MSPs and ask them to speak to Finance Secretary John Swinney MSP about this. He is the man with the purse strings, and the man that Paul Wheelhouse and Keith Brown [above] will have to convince.
- Come to our November 19 public meeting on cycling investment – but please contact your MSPs before that!