Our March 21 public meeting gave the 100 people who came along a great chance to interact with politicians standing for the Holyrood Parliament, and many lessons emerged from the meeting …
Top conclusions from the meeting
Photo: Chris Paton
- For really large numbers of people to cycle, the roads need to feel safe, and on major roads this means segregated facilities
- To achieve the above, infrastructure investment needs to be much higher than its present 1.9% of total transport spending
- Bike spaces on trains – cutbacks on services with new and refurbished trains are very distressing – everyone needs to keep pressing MSPs (and candidates) on this
- Whilst party manifestos are very important, it is also vital to have individual MSPs who will be pro-active on cycling. Even if not in the ruling party, they can take individual initiatives and make a real difference on specific issues
Photo: Chris Hill
- Many MSPs [not those at the meeting!] do not really understand the potential of cycling as transport – how can they be educated?
Introduction
What the Candidates said [videos]
NB – order of speaking was decided by drawing lots
- Perhaps most interesting … the closing summary speeches of all 5 candidates
- Sandy Batho, Conservative – initial speech
- Jim Eadie, SNP – initial speech
- Alison Johnstone, Green – initial speech
- Emma Farthing-Sykes, LibDem – initial speech
- Sarah Boyack, Labour – initial speech
Group Discussions
The audience split into 5 groups, with candidates spending 10 minutes in each group. Each group had a note-taker, whose notes are below. The note-takers had complete freedom how to take and present their notes, so there is an interesting variety below!
Please remember: The notes below should not be used as direct quotes from the candidates. It is always possible that the note-taker mis-heard or misunderstood, or was giving a personal impression, in which case some points may not be a fair reflection of the candidate’s views or attitudes. For direct candidate quotes, use the videos above.
Meeting overview
You’ll get a nice mix of comments and pictures by checking out our #SpokesMtg hashtag … there are two ways to do this …
- All #SpokesMtg tweets
- Top #SpokesMtg tweets [chosen by twitter – based on RTs and likes?]
Pictures of the meeting
- You’ll find a good selection of pics in the tweets above. Also…
- Flickr album by Chris Hill
- Flickr album by Martin McDonnell
Blogs and newspaper reports
- The meeting was referred to in an Evening News report
- Please send us links to any blogs referring to the meeting
What you can do next
- Top issues to raise with election candidates [these are also summarised in the public meeting introduction video] …
- Investment in cycling – 1.9% of total transport spending needs to be raised substantially – to 10% by the end of the Parliament
- Council revenue budgets – hit badly in the recent Scottish budget – for cycling & transport this means reduced cycle team staffing and less cash for filling potholes
- Bike/Rail – worsening of bike storage on new and refurbished trains
- See our full article on the election – including details of other hustings in Edinburgh and Lothians, and lots of other useful info. This article will be updated as we get more info.
- For all-Scotland election info see the #WalkCycleVote website