Serious about active travel?

The difference between stated aims and delivery by government's fascinates me.   We have great statements about promoting Active Travel (walking and cycling to normal people but you need a new buzz phrase).  Now the benefits of this are huge - health from the activity itself and the increase in social interactions - economic from increased use of the local shops - environmental from the reduced CO2 emissions and reduced congestion on roads. 

But then we have the latest Scottish Government budget.  I'm going to focus on Chapter 9. 

There are three budget lines that relate to Active Travel:

• Sustainable and Active Travel (SAT)
• Cycling, Walking and Safer Routes (CWSR)
• Future Travel Fund (FTF)

But we can not be sure that these monies are all spent on cycling and walking. 

'The budget for Sustainable and Active Travel delivers support for the promotion of more sustainable travel choices, including support for the actions in the Cycling Action Plan for Scotland as well as work to promote sustainable transport to organisations and in communities, e.g. the development of a network of car clubs across Scotland. It includes funding for the core Fastlink scheme in Glasgow (£20 million in 2013-14 and £10 million in 2014-15).'


Cycling Walking and Safer Routes is money given to local authorities.  They choose how much to spend on such and how much goes directly into cycling and walking and how much is used, under the guise of safer routes for e.g. 20mph limit in urban areas.  Some local authorities all money to this fund - but for many this is the only walking and cycling budget. 


'The Future Transport Fund will reduce the impact of transport on our environment, reducing congestion and supporting better public transport, active travel and low carbon vehicles. This investment provides a platform for increasing support thereafter for a range of sustainable transport initiatives, including cycling infrastructure and freight modal shift.'

So it takes a bit of effort working outwhat is the real figure for walking and cycling.

 (figure in £ millions)                             2013-14  2014-15 Draft   2015-16 Plan
Sustrainable and Active Travel              35           29                      15
Cycling Walking and Safer Routes         5.6           8.2                    8
Future Travel Fund                                 7.7          18.7                 20.2
                                      Total                 48.3         55.9                43.2
but there are some things in this mix that have nothing do do with walking and cycling
Fastlink Bus route, Glasgow                  20           10                      0
Electric car charging points                      5             5                     5
Car clubs                                                  2              2                     2
                                     Total                 27             17                    7
so available might be:
Real figure for walking and cycling   21.3        38.9               36.2



For a country of 5.3m people and with a £2 billion (£2,000,000,000) transport budget, this is paltry - especially with an aspiration for 10% journeys to be by bike by 2020.

A Challenge - EUR 44 per head for cycling?

With some amount of fanfare, the Scottish Government has published their Cycle Action Plan for Scotland 2013 which reviews and updates their 2010 plan.

They describe their target of 10% journeys by cycle as ambitious.  It is ambitious given the paucity of the plan.  But it's not ambitious by international standards. 

So what are the Scottish Government actually proposing?
One measure you can't escape from is cash.

Netherlands EUR 487m/ year - so EUR 30 per head of population each year


London is spending £104m/year - some EUR 21 per head of population each year.

The Peterhead Cycle Demostration project has a total budget of £185,000 - a one off-spend of EUR 13 per head over the three year life of the project.

So what is the Scottish Government proposing in their nice new shiny CyclingAction Plan?  Well it looks like there will be less than £47m over three years (part of the monies are for walking and safer streets) so that EUR 55m.  Sound greats - until you remember that between a population of 5.3m and over 3 years so that comes down to a miserly EUR 3.4 per head of population each year.

If the Government are serious about cycling, perhaps a good place to start would be allocating the 10% modal share aim in terms of the transport budget to cycling.    Transport Scotland has £2,000m a year.  So £200m a year for cycling from that budget.  Ok that's then  EUR 44 per head - but have a lot of catching up to do to get the type of infrastucture that people enjoy in the Netherlands and Denmark.

Winter cycling in Copenhagen

Democracy fails in Aberdeenshire: Unnecessary cuts forced through

LibDem Council Leader Anne Robertson and
"opposition" SNP leader Joanna Strathdee
discussing the days business in the Council
Chamber as the meeting starts.

Aberdeenshire SNP, Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors have again behaved undemocratically and dictatorially after voting to prevent debate on a proposal by my group on the Council not to make planned cuts in the budget for primary school classroom assistants and visiting specialist teachers.  

The stifling of debate prompted the entire Democratic Independent Group of councillors to walk out of today's Aberdeenshire Council full council meeting.

Rather than debate the DIGs fully costed proposals, the ConDemNats seemed to be determined to squash even discussing alternatives to cutting school assistants. Proposals to make cuts deeper were accepted with no problem. Discussion on avoiding cuts was not allowed, even through it could easily have been done.

The Council was debating setting its revenue budget for 2011/12. Cuts totalling £27 million had been voted through at the full council meeting on 25 November 2010. The Council's Liberal Democrat, Conservative and SNP councillors moved motions to increase the cut to the primary classroom assistant budget.

When Cllr Martin Ford, on behalf of the Democratic Independent Group, rose to propose that the classroom assistant budget be spared from cuts, it was ruled he could not make the proposal unless two-thirds of councillors agreed to suspend Standing Orders.

Democratic Independent Group councillors Mark Cullen, Martin Ford,
Paul Johnston, Debra Storr and Sam Coull were disgusted that the Council
refused to  even listen to their proposals to reduce damaging education cuts

Cllr Ford moved the suspension of Standing Orders, appealing to the council to allow an open and democratic debate on this important issue. Only six councillors voted to allow the issue to even be discussed.

At that point the Democratic Independent Group expressed their disgust at the councils undemocratic behaviour and walked out.

The Democratic Independent Group wanted to substitute a cut in the unadopted roads budget, which is little used, for the cut in the primary school budgets.

Commenting Cllr Martin Ford said “I am appalled at the council's refusal to allow open debate. Apparently it is perfectly acceptable to propose further cuts in classroom assistants – but seeking to stop the cuts is now allowed.  This is completely one-sided.  These school staff cuts could and should have been stopped today.

Cllr Paul Johnston said “Aberdeenshire Council sank to a new low today. They made a cut in primary education that they did not need to make. They had the money and will now not reverse their decision.”

Cllr Sam Coull added “Teaching and education in the primary schools just got a whole lot more difficult today.”

Budget decisions - the very bad news

Today the LibDem/Tory administration of Aberdeenshire Council, with the support of the SNP supposed opposition decided to go ahead with some £27m of cuts.

Now we know that we shall have to make cuts that are of that extent. But looking at the proposed package of cuts the Democratic Independent Group had some serious reservations. While recognising the necessity of officers continuing to work on cuts (you can't make large scale redundancies in a matter of weeks - the council needs to start seeking volunteers and identifying and notifying "at risk posts"), we did not want to make some of the cuts at this stage.

For a sample of cuts agreed to today see the P&J;

One oddity was that many councillors went into the Council Chamber believing that we were being asked to let the process start rather than finally decide. The DIGs have checked and we were careful to say that we only agreed to the process starting. The SNP had some detailed comments but clearly were not expecting final decisions to be made today. However, most of them voted with the LibDem/Tory administration (a few abstained) - so in my book they bear equal responsibility for the cuts.

To be fair the LibDem/Tory administration said they took on board some of the SNP comments. But as there was no formal amendment from the SNP, and no formal amendment of the administration motion, it is a mystery to me what has been agreed. I am pretty certain however that the DIGs comments will not be "taken on board".

Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Aberdeenshire Council today decided to meekly accept John Swinney's 2.6% cut in grant - and promised not to raise Council Tax.

They were forced into this position by the threat that if they raised council tax by even the smallest amount, the grant would be cut by 6.4% - leaving an even greater shortfall in resources.

The choice was not a real choice. The devil of a cut ... or the deep blue sea.

I worry about a government who argues for greater powers for Scotland but imposes straight-jackets on local government. Can't they see the inconsistency?

This continuing freeze is populist short term nonsense. Professor David Bell is right - there is no sense in an effective cut in property taxes which mainly benefit middle incomes when the poorest suffer most from council cuts.

Pacts with the devil

Ok .. So councils that smile at a 2.6% cut in grant, and promise not to raise council tax, get one sum of money.

But if any council wants to protect services by raising council tax, regardless of what their constituents may say, get punished by a 6.4% cut in grant.

Someone (except NF) please explain the logic of a SNP government arguing for greater powers for Scotland and refusing to let Councils make their own decisions?

Scale and management of cuts

the Accounts Commission has called on councils to take urgent and radical action to deal with the financial challenges ahead in their annual report, An overview of local government in Scotland 2009. The reports points to a likely real term drop in the Scottish budget of between seven and 13 per cent between 2009/10 and 2013/14.

Things could be worse - the Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne now saying the Conservatives will be "tougher than Margaret Thatcher" when it comes to tackling Britain's budget deficit. This will inevitably put more pressure of local government.

The Democratic Independent Group called for an inclusive all-group approach to making the hard decisions that will be needed in the recent budget. The LibDem/Tory administration may regret refusing this approach.

If the LibDem/Conservative administration on Aberdeenshire want all the power, then they can take all the resoponsibility.