Scotland has a major opportunity to harness adapted behaviours seen in response to Covid to help achieve its commitments on climate change, the country’s new Minister for Transport Graeme Day told an active travel conference last week.
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“It is evident that behavioural change and demand management will be needed to meet our stretching targets,” he said, with Scotland having pledged to reduce car kilometres travelled by 20% by 2030.
He welcomed increased uptake of cycling and walking seen during the pandemic and said: “We now have more children travelling to school in an active way than at any other time in the last 10 years. This is fantastic and I see a real opportunity here to make active travel a habit and a mainstay of our daily lives.”
He added that local transport measures including road space reallocation, parking restrictions and increased focus on the implications for transport when making spatial planning and land use decisions are set to play a key role. “The predominance of private car use, particularly single occupancy journeys cannot be overlooked,” he said.
A roadmap setting out detail on how the Scottish Government plans to work towards meeting its car travel reduction pledge is expected to publish “hopefully in 2021”, the Minister said, “once the pandemic has moved to a phase to allow more certainty on future travel demand”.
The conference also saw the minister announce £900,000 of new grant funding to help local authorities and other public institutions – as well as active travel hubs and community groups – adopt electric bicycles as an alternative to car journeys.
He also welcomed a new report from shared mobility champion CoMoUK, which shows that an initiative which gave travellers free time on shared bicycles in Glasgow and Edinburgh during lockdown last year contributed to a 38% increase in cycling trips.
This rise was recorded across the two cities between June and September, and accounted for more than 18,000 new bike share users. Participants were offered the first 30 minutes of use for free, and a range of subsequent discounts.
Almost three quarters experienced an improvement in their physical wellbeing, while 47% said their mental health improved, the report says.
CoMoUK’s Scotland director Lorna Finlayson said: “This report shows that when bike sharing is made available and attractive, people want to take part.
“The benefits that await governments and councils from promoting shared transport options like this are huge – and go well beyond simply hitting environmental targets.”
(Photograph: City of Edinburgh Council)
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