Consultation: Regional Transport Strategy case for change (closes Sunday)

sallyhinchcliffe

Jun 4

Those of you who follow us on Twitter may have seen the thread we did last night about the consultation SWestrans are doing on the first stage of developing the Regional Transport strategy for the region.

OK, it might be a long weekend (and World Bicycle Day) but you can't fully relax because there's an important consultation on our Regional Transport Strategy, which closes on Monday https://t.co/DD01AzEp2N

— Cycling Dumfries (@CyclingDumfries) June 3, 2022

As we said on Twitter, we don't think this report is fit for purpose and we fear that it will be a missed opportunity to bring about real change in the region and help us move away from car dependency, which shouldn't just be accepted as inevitable for a rural area like Dumfries and Galloway.

As the report itself outlines, there are a number of key Scottish government policies which SWestrans and the council could use to transform the region, including lots more money for active travel connections between towns and between towns and villages. They could also use greater control over the buses to invest in public transport (and integrate it with cycling, as is happening in the Borders).

Unfortunately, the report - written by external consultants Stantec - doesn't seem to have picked up on some key local policy developments, including the council's declaration of a climate emergency, nor the fact that the council are developing a new Active Travel Strategy which should include some useful analysis on active travel in the region (instead, the only cover the old strategy, which expired two years ago with very few of its planned actions deliver).

Strava 'heat map' data - the sole analysis of active travel in the region.

Instead, the consultants have chosen to base their entire analysis of active travel in the region on Strava data which as many people have pointed out, is skewed towards particular types of cyclists and certainly doesn't capture the sort of everyday journeys that a transport strategy should be concentrating on (the heat map above shows this pretty clearly: Mabie and Ae stand out as if they were bigger towns than Castle Douglas or even Dumfries). There are plenty of other sources of data they could have used covering a wider range of active travel (such as walking) - for instance Sustrans have 'hands up' survey data on travel to school which could be made available even down to the school level. We'd also have gladly shared our 'Missing links' analysis of gaps in the cycling provision around Dumfries, if we'd been invited to take part as a key stakeholder in the initial consultation.

The report also contains no analysis of e-bikes, instead considering only electric cars, despite the transformative impact that a little assist can have on longer cycling trips which are pretty key to unlocking more journeys by bike in a region like Dumfries and Galloway.

Early on, the report states:

"Measures promoted through the strategy, and which will emerge from it, should prioritise active travel and accessible public transport connections, whilst at the same time discouraging short, single car occupant journeys"

SWestrans Regional Transport Strategy: Case for Change

We'd actually question why we're not discouraging all single occupant car journeys, but even so, the six final objectives the report comes up with will do nothing to discourage car use at all:

Note that, according to these objectives, reliable connectivity to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Carlisle and Cairnryan, can apparently only happen by road - public transport appears to be purely for local connections.

We welcome the inclusion of active travel links and improved public transport in the objectives as well, but on their own they won't move us away from reliance on the car as the default mode of transport. Induced demand means that building and widening roads inevitably creates more traffic. Instead, as a region, we should be doing everything we can to create alternatives to the private car - whether that is through lobbying the government for better rail links within and beyond the region (look at the success of opening the Borders Railway), making the buses a reliable and practical alternative to driving, cracking down on illegal parking, providing better access to e-bikes, and building a comprehensive cycling network connecting our towns and villages where there are no safe routes.

Lockerbie Road - one of the key barriers to active travel in the region

As the past few months have shown, with the invasion of Ukraine and the spikes in fuel prices, car dependency does more than just cause global warming and pollution. Many people in the region have no alternative but to drive, and that means expense, congestion, the domination of our town centre by traffic, ill health, and many other problems. A regional transport strategy should be the opportunity to tackle these issues, but not if we accept the status quo as inevitable.

The report is open to consultation until midnight tomorrow, so please act now and let SWestrans and the council know that they need to look again at the issue and come up with a real case for change.

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