Attendees: Gavin Clark (GC) Chair, Rachel Martin (RM), Fiona McDonald (FM), Torc Torrance (TT), Martin Sharman (MS), Laurie Rominger (LR)
Consultations
Local Transport Strategy
This was a huge document and took a long time. Luckily Gavin had found the time to go through it. FM says it was a massive document but all the strategies sound good and like they’re going in the right direction but whether they actually get implemented is another question. GC agrees we’re going in the right direction and it’s the pace of delivery that’s the problem. GC made some points about illegal ebikes and the increasing size of cars. Also the draft had some strange wording about discouraging travel in all forms which is hard to reconcile with a vibrant city centre. Active travel has multiple benefits and should not be discouraged. RM says it’s tricky with the illegal ebikes because on one hand these are people who earn very little and it’s still better they’re on the bike than in a car. GC agrees and says the problem is when we get cycling infrastructure and people push back because of these bikes saying bikes in general are dangerous for pedestrians. TT pointed out that we shouldn’t refer to these as cycles but ‘unregistered motorbikes’ which is what they are in the eyes of the law, currently.
College Street second phase
RM shares her screen with the four designs: two have modified roundabouts and two have signalised junctions. GC says he doesn’t really like any of the options. The no right turn junction creates more space for cyclists but he can’t see that working for motorists who can’t turn right because Victoria bridge is also no right turn. It severs connections for Torry which is already a disconnected area. MS had a look at these options and felt option 3 worked the best to keep the connection going for locals. The roundabout doesn’t really matter here except that people might slow down where if they have a green light they’ll go quickly. Alternatively put cyclists on the road using the Manchester cyclops junction (https://cities-today.com/uks-first-cyclops-junction-opens-in-manchester-to-boost-bike-safety/). Allowing the right turn will also create more traffic as light changes will take longer but this could be a good thing and discourage motorists from using the route. MS says the roundabout on the south side of the river at this bridge is also very dangerous – we’re not sure when anything will happen here. They should improve the connection to the pedestrian bridge and then make improvements to the roundabout on the south side for cycling. GC says Wellington Road doesn’t currently have a shared-use path either. MS suggests we see how this compares to Cycling by Design. RM will have a look. RM doesn’t like that in the current designs cyclists have to go down the bridge quite a lot to cross the road. The Cyclops design is much better.
GC says they’ve also suggested making traffic under the pedestrian bridge one-way with traffic lights to give cyclists more space. TT wonders whether there could be an elevated path that goes over the bridge. MS suggests again it would be best if Riverside Drive were open only for local access rather than a through road. RM likes the idea to close Riverside Drive to through traffic while still providing access to the Duthie Park carpark. GC asks whether his idea for a ‘push to change’ signal under the bridge is viable? Torc says yes but better would be a radar that detects the cyclist and avoids forcing the cyclist to press a button. MS says he thinks it’s worth supporting what the council has suggested with a signalised junction for cars.
GC says we did get an invitation from the Council to do a walkover of College Street and GC went with LR and John Tuckwood along with two engineers from the council.
Union Street
We are expecting the designs to go back to council on the 7th February but we haven’t heard anything about it yet. We did see a presentation from Fiona Robertson but there wasn’t any additional detail from what we’ve seen before.
Liaison with Aberdeen City Council
- ACTUP meetings – haven’t gone to as many of these historically but they recently changed the Chair so GC has been making more of an effort to attend. They’re not a fantastic use of time as the remit is so large – buses, taxes, accessibility etc. and consequently not a lot of time to discuss cycling issues in any detail.
- Liaison meeting with Councillors – next one is Friday this week. They’ve taken the effort to put all the issues we’ve raised into a spreadsheet and have commented on all of them. RM says she can’t go this week if someone else wants to go but they’re really good. MS may be able to go. GC says if anyone has any issues – even small things like needing a dropped kerb – let us know and we’ll add to the spreadsheet. RM mentions the roundabout on the south side of the river at the end of College Street and also pavement parking as two issues to raise.
- Participation Request (Community Empowerment Act) – We put in a participation request in December 2022 when the new design for Union Street at that time didn’t contain any cycling provision. Since then the designs have changed but their way of dealing with the participation request seems lacking and certainly not in line with the guidance published by ScotGov. Responsibility is on the provider to come up with an improvement plan. Possibly they would like us to withdraw the request. RM thinks that’s ok as we don’t want to fill up their time with busy work when instead we want them to work on cycling infrastructure. FM suggests we keep it going just until we see the final designs, and/or delivery is guaranteed.
- College St (Phase 1) walkover review – already mentioned this. LR says it was very difficult to talk to people from the Council about things that are inconvenient to cyclists as we seem to have different goals – their goal is to maximise traffic flow, even if that means stopping cyclists e.g. at junctions, while our goal is to cycle. GC says it was worthwhile and we had followed up by email, as neither of the officers had taken any notes. MS says he’s cycled it a bit – took his 66-year-old mother on it. The one thing is the kerb on those cycle paths will tip you over even if you click it a little bit. They should have made it a 30 degree kerb or even 45 rather than 90 degree.
Deeside Way – audit
GC has been working on another audit report. Would like some input before finalising – shared via Google docs.
Public liability insurance – renewal
Due to renew on 1st March. It cost £277 last year. We did at least 2 small events in 2023 that we wouldn’t have done had this not been in place. MS suggests we should organise something. Everyone agrees to go ahead with the renewal.
Social meets & rides
We met up on Saturday recently to say goodbye to Clemens. We don’t do it very often but people are always asking to do it. GC asks whether people would like to have a regular meet/cycle. MS says he’s interested in that from the perspective that if you pick a location and go and explore it then everyone can learn the shortcuts and back routes from others. There’s also a suggestion to have a planned route and time on a Sunday with a couple of coffee shop stops then people can join at any time and any point along the route. RL suggests a small route with a café to help people make connections and also get involved with the forum.
Any other business
GC says the no idling banner has come back after being in Newton Hill. There has been a bit of interest from a couple of people so far.
We also haven’t done another Spotlight on a Cyclist for a while. We should fish around for some people who want to be featured.
TT says for ages he’s been campaigning to get a southerly route from Aberdeen city down to Stonehaven. He has been working on an underpass for Newtonhill to connect Newtonhill primary school and Cammies. Cammies has been rejuvenated and wants to get a link back so people can walk to Newtonhill. In the meantime there was a disaster – the Elsick Bridge was demolished by Aberdeenshire Council and has left us without an active travel route north of the village. TT shares his screen and shows photos of the bridge that was removed by the council before a storm as they were worried it might collapse and cause flooding. However they have no plans to reinstate the bridge despite how widely it is used for active travel. GC suggests he write a guest post for our website about it and we can publish it and share with our networks.
RM mentions the climate week event about activism and are looking for someone from ACF. Gavin says he’s interested and will go.
LR says she got in touch with Tim from iBike about cycle classes for adults – they can do road confidence, learn to cycle. If people ask for adult bike lessons we can get in touch with Tim. It’s free and they do classes in Westburn Park. Adventure Aberdeen have also got some funding from British Cycling and are doing outreach work at the moment. They are possibly going to be working from a disused Council building near the beach (Raymond Kelly Pavillion at Seaton).
MS asks whether we have a strategic vision as ACF? GC says no but it has been on his mind. MS says he has drafted something that we could incorporate into the forum and can share with us. GC says sure – that sounds good.
MS asks whether we know what happened to the Peterculter cargo bikes? Daniel believed to be looking for somewhere to store the bikes. RM asks whether he’s actually bought the bikes? MS said not yet but he’s secured funding which is great.
Aberdeen Cycle Forum 