See also diary page. Dates below are mainly additional or amendments.
Apr 21 CASTLECLIFF COMMUNITY
BIKE WORKSHOP Open day, 1-4pm. Volunteer workers, and donations of
bikes and parts especially welcome. Particularly
needed - a bench vice. More info: email ch.edinburgh@virgin.net
or tel 07887 500667. Also see www.spokes.org.uk/ccbws.
NOTE: Similar 'OPEN' days are now happening
on most Saturday afternoons at a similar time - wh not turn up and join
in?
Apr 26 Safe Routes to School FOE Edinburgh talk by Cathy Scott, 7.30, Friends Meeting House, Victoria Terrace. 552.4833.
May Government Scottish Travel Awareness Campaign begins
May 16 Rail Passenger Committee
for Scotland Public meeting at North Berwick. Time/place from RPCS
0141.221.7760. An excellent opportunity
to raise bike/rail issues - especially if you are concerned about the
forthcoming new North Berwick rolling
stock with its apparently lowered bike capacity.
May 19 Spokes Mailout - provisional. Volunteers will be notified
May 20 Glasgow/Loch Lomond sponsored towpath ride for British Heart Foundation. 01436 674996.
May 26 Forth & Clyde Canal opening celebration Note: this is the Grangemouth/Falkirk to Glasgow/Bowling canal. The Union Canal (Edinburgh to Falkirk) reopens fully later this year; and a complete Glasgow-Edinburgh opening, including the connecting wheel, wheel be in 2002. For the May 26 event a large flotilla of boats will travel Grangemouth-Falkirk-Bowling. Details: www.scottishcanals.co.uk or 0141.332.6936.
June 2 Transform Scotland AGM Aberdeen, including speakers on current transport issues. Any Spokes member [preferably one involved in spokes activities] wishing to be a delegate, please phone Dave 01506.670165.
June 10 Bike to the Future Annual FOE fund-raising bike ride (14 or 39 miles) in Glasgow (also Edinburgh? & Inverness? on other dates??). 0131.554.9977 or www.foe-scotland.org.uk.
June 16-24 National Festival of Cycling, incorporates...
June 17 Edinburgh 2001 Meadows
BikeFest Help/ideas for stalls, events, etc to Mark 0131.623.7600
www.cyclefest.org.uk..
June 17-18 North Sea Cycle Route ride stops in Dalkeith 17th and Edinburgh 18th. Brian Curtis 0131.669.5918
June 19 SPOKES BIKE BREAKFAST For details, or to help, contact Jackie 664.0526. Now includes send-off for riders on North Sea Route opening ride. Also GYLE BIKE BREAKFAST on the same day. If you work at Gyle, or are involved in any companies there, please get in touch as we would like to get them involved. Details: Mark.Symonds@telesenskscl.com
June 20 Links Sports Fair promoting active lifestyles to school pupils/parents. Spokes stall. Jackie 664.0526.
?June 23 St.Andrews LEPRA ride Harry 229.6274.
Aug 15 Rail Passenger Committee for Scotland Public meeting at Dunblane. Time/place from RPCS 0141.221.7760.
Sep 16 Pedal for Scotland Glasgow-Edinburgh annual sponsored ride. 0131.657.4393. www.pedalforscotland.co.uk.
Sep 17-21 VELO-CITY International Cycle Conference Edinburgh & Glasgow. Details: www.velo-city2001.org or 0141.434.1500. All types of volunteers/skills needed - if you can help contact imaxwell@gn.apc.org or 0131.669.6542.
Sep 22 European Car-Free Day
www.eta.co.uk 020.8946.0912. Also proposed
earth car-free day:
www.carfreeday.com.
(date?)
Sep 29 CAR-FREE DAY IN EDINBURGH (provisional). The Council is planning to take part in Car-Free Day - but a week later, due to various clashes and opportunities. They propose to close Cockburn St, Victoria St, and the Grassmarket north side, to motor traffic. The Council is very keen for organisations to commit themselves to events/actions well in advance - if this happens, the council is likely to be much more wholehearted. Spokes needs one or more members/volunteers to take this on. Please get in touch now if you can help. There are many ideas - stalls, bike doctor, commuter challenge, cycle seminars/ open-air soapbox (bike maintenance, bike politics, bike holidays, etc) cycle training, unusual bikes; and many non-bike possibilities - music, market, face-paint, health demos/tests, air-quality measurement....
In Spokes 78 (back page) we gave various indicators on party transport attitudes and policies. Here are some recent items...
The government (in Scotland) has allocated/ring-fenced more cash for council cycling [see Spokesworker 25.3.01], walking, slow-speed initiatives; and far more is now going to public transport than under previous governments. However, both at Scottish and UK level very substantial funding is being directed at new roads.
The government, shocked by the ‘motorists
revolt’, brought in Lord Gus MacDonald to re-jig transport policies, and
is now giving a new emphasis to road-building,
with much new money allocated in that direction (as well as to sustainable
modes). As a result, 14 national environmental
organisations have formed the Roads to Ruin Alliance [c/o Transport 2000,
tel 0207.613.0743, www.transport2000.org.uk].
In
Scotland, Prof David Begg [government
adviser] has attacked the government for its new roads emphasis, and particularly
the £250m M74 road project. More
Scottish info at www.transformscotland.org.uk.
Several publications are now also appearing on these issues...
What of the Other Parties??? As already stated in Spokes 78, SNP and Conservatives are even more roads-obsessed, and recent developments continue to emphasise this.
Overall, there is plenty scope for lobbying/letter-writing in the run up to the general election, to emphasise to politicians the demand for sustainable transport policies!!
Heavy investment in public transport, especially the railways, is counterproductive. Instead the public must be encouraged to travel "far less, and more slowly", argues Dr Mayer Hillman, Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute in London.
This article is reprinted by kind permission from Dr Hillman and from New Ground [Winter 2000], the magazine of SERA, the Labour Environment Campaign [email: SERAoffice@aol.com]. The article formed part of a debate Should the Train take the Strain, with another article, by Jonathan Bray of Transport 2000 arguing that we should welcome the government’s 10-year plan and use it to gain further advances for all greener transport. We hope to reprint that article too in a future issue.
"The government would have us believe that
'decades of under-investment', especially in the public transport
sector, is at the root of the problems
of congestion, environmental damage and traffic danger. For this reason
it has allocated 180 billion over the next ten years - much of it
for high quality rail services and urban tramways.
And it does not propose to introduce significant curbs on car use until
these matching 'alternatives' are in
place. This strategy is broadly supported by the main political parties,
the business community, nearly all influential
transport lobbies and by the public at
large. That does not prove it correct. Sadly, the future role for public
transport is being carelessly exaggerated.
Only a very small proportion of growth
in car use has come from people transferring from public transport. In
the last 25 years, for every passenger
mile lost to public transport, about 25 car user miles have been added
to the roads. That has resulted from the adoption of geographically
scattered patterns of activity generated by rising car ownership. These
patterns do not lend themselves to being served by a mode
of transport which is dependent on high population densities and mainly
linear in form. Even services heavily dependent on subsidy
cannot begin to match the convenience,
let alone door-to-door travel time, of car journeys for about 18 hours
of the day. In any case, there is little justification lor subsidising
travel by rail or other costly forms of public transport because they are
socially regressive.
The hard-won lesson has been forgotten that increasing capacity to accommodate growth makes matters worse: road building has stimulated more growth. A policy of pouring public funds into improving services on the railways to relieve over-crowding will fail for the same reason. If government forecasts for 2010 are realised, rail travel will still account for only 1.5% of all journeys. And in the absence of draconian measures to limit car use, the policy on local public transport will also fail.
However, the clinching argument in favour of less spending on transport is the imperative of meeting Kyoto targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. The ecological depredations of excessive fuel use for transport purposes require an end, not a boost, to the further, faster, culture. A modest transfer from car to public transport at high cost is a totally inadequate response. On current vehicle occupancy levels, carbon dioxide emissions per public passenger mile are only about 20% lower than those per car passenger mile. We must be encouraged to travel far less, and more slowly and therefore more fuel efficiently.
The solution is to encourage local patterns of activity, with priority to creating safe, convenient networks for cycling, walking and buses. It is salutary to note that in European countries with higher levels of spending both on public transport and cycling facilities, far more journeys are made by cycle than by public transport. Not only would the small investment needed release the considerable pent-up demand for cycling, it would also improve public health, thereby minimising the burden on the NHS, and enhance quality of life. Land use planning through scale, location and density should be deployed to further this objective.
The government seems intent on learning the hard way. It will inevitably come to regret its high investment approach. Less rather than more money needs to be allocated to transport. Education, health, housing and ecologically based activities and lifestyles are far more deserving recipients of public funds.
The outstanding problem with such a switch
is the difficulty that politicians and practitioners face in changing course
once they have nailed their colours
to the mast - whatever the strength of contradictory evidence. Shame on
them!"
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