Attendees
Gavin Clark (Chair), Rachel Martin, Deema Aburizik, Alastair Cassels, Fraser Govan, Alistair Gilmore, Brian (Inverness) , Scott Murray, Alan Irving, Shona Park, Alie (John) Johnston, Daniel Verhamme
Apologies: Fiona McDonald, Francesco Sani
Welcome and introductions
We have some new and returning faces so we went round the room and the new people introduced themselves.
Guest speaker: Fraser Govan (Cycling UK Connecting Communities, Aberdeen)
- New to role for Cycling UK.
- Part of cycling hub at Aulton/Seaton.
- Role is to bring all organisations together and bring a collaborative approach to active travel across the city.
- 3rd week in the role and have been getting around to meet different groups to find gaps and support what they can.
- Want to support oil companies to support their staff as they have a fleet of cycles that can be used to support people who want to commute out to Westhill or Kingswell for example.
- Also working with Universities and CTC.
- Supporting Sustrans iBike with confidence to cycle and bikeability to see what gaps are there.
- Campaigning for better cycle networks, looking at paths across the city.
- Open to taking on board what ACF has to offer.
- Also see what bike shops have to offer.
- Working with inclusive cycle bothies as they don’t have the facility to give people a bike to try out.
- Also in discussion with ADP – alcohol and drug partnership and others to see how they can help disadvantaged groups.
Fraser is from Aberdeen and previously worked with Aberdeenshire Council. From there worked with Scottish Rugby and also worked at a private school as head of sport but ultimately wanted to work with the community in active travel.
The post is funded through to the end of March next year. The equivalent project in Aberdeenshire has now been funded for five years so hopeful this one will carry on for more than one year too.
Gavin asks what Fraser thinks of the Seaton hub? Fraser says it’s a great space but it needs wifi and investment. All the change rooms and lockers have been removed by the council so it’s a blank canvas. How do we work the space to make one for storage and another a workshop? For those wanting to start up on balance bikes there’s a great little rubberised area for practice. There’s also a carpark area for cycle training and a grassy area at the back we could put a portable track on. There’s potential for a lot of diversity in one space. We’ve mapped out about 20 routes that go from that hub to other parts of the city. Gavin says the building is a former sports pavilion that was used for football training so not an ideal floor plan. It’s developing but it’s not staffed. Fraser says the groups operating it all have their own key. Wants to put a galvanised steel rack outside and a tool station. We’re trying to encourage students and staff to come down but also want to work with council and Adventure Aberdeen.Fraser thinks satellite centres to reach a wider geographic area will also be needed.
Alastair asks about the support Fraser might be able to offer to get new infrastructure over the line. Fraser says the funding comes from Nestrans and feeds into council through transport and had first meeting today with council. There are developments at the beach and city centre – making headway in the right direction. Also had a meeting last week about access through country parks to be more wheelchair accessible. The council wouldn’t invest in these projects if they weren’t on board. Gavin says the council has lots of plans and policies that say they’re in favour of cycling. They have delivered some projects but we’d say they’re not necessarily the right ones in the right place. The A944 corridor was worked on for four years then last September got rejected by the NZET committee seemingly due to objections from members of the public most of which were about a loss of car parking. Shona says she has been working on a rider comfort and safety map to help report back to the council information for future infrastructure developments. Shona shares her screen which shows routes that people have rated – it shows the number of trips. Red lines show issues or bad infrastructure. Orange is not so comfortable while green routes are best. There are opportunities for people to comment in the app about what the issue actually is. It’s building a picture of what’s happening in the city but we need to spread the word to get more people reporting. Cycle routes in Aberdeenshire are included. Gavin says he’s someone who rides around a lot but never uses Stava just for riding around town. Shona says you can set your riding app to auto-log the information and get notifications about rating the route. Shona says it’s different from Strava because it’s trying to capture short journeys. Gavin says we’ll promote to our members in the next monthly bulletin and also invites Shona to write a guest post we can publish on our website.
Notes from previous meeting (April AGM) are on the website.
Liaison with Council
- Quarterly meeting was 10 days ago with Gavin and Rachel attending. First one for 6 months.
- Rachel says she finds the meetings very useful but progress is slow. For instance she’s been asking for bike racks for Deeside Way and they still haven’t delivered anything.
- Gavin gives a flavour of the topics discussed: Tall Ships event, Castlegate (we’re worried what they’re doing is different to what was originally planned), Berryden.
- For Castlegate, they released conceptual drawings of what looks like a shared space, despite the Council administration having previously said they didn’t want to create any new shared spaces.
- We’ve had some separate meetings with council about the Tall Ships event as there have been other events where they’ve made no provision for cycling at all. We offered a few times to help and get them to include cycling in plans and eventually they came back and agreed. We’re now trying to devise some traffic-free or low traffic routes to get people to the event. This will be aimed at people who don’t cycle regularly and who need extra help and safe routes. Shona says she asked about a route from Duthie Park to the harbour and Gavin says the route along Riverside Drive is one we’ve recommended. The beach is another one we can promote but there’s really nothing feasible from the north- west (most of the city centre) because the infrastructure is poor or just doesn’t join up.
- Hardgate contraflow is a scheme the council installed about 18 months ago between Willowbank and Fonthill Rds. The idea is good but the execution doesn’t comply with Cycling by Design standards. We’ve asked for a site meeting with staff which is happening next Monday. Deema and Francesco are both going to that. It’s on Monday at 12pm.
- Countesswells school bike bus has been in the news. Today cllr Kate Blake emailed us as she’s been volunteering to help set it up and is now trying to expand it to include maintenance classes for pupils. They’re looking for volunteers and donation of tools and/or spares. Fraser says he also saw the email and pushed Sport Aberdeen, Adventure Aberdeen and others to support it and expand to other schools. They’re looking at bikeability calendar and potentially expanding the program. Fraser says Adventure Aberdeen at Kingswells just spent £30k doing up a workshop, as a maintenance facility but also for training (such as Velotech).
- Gavin recapped a discussion from last time – we’d had a consultation about wide ranging traffic measures and we picked up on a few things including six locations where they’re proposing to exempt from pavement parking ban. These are mainly residential streets where they’re going to allow people to park on pavement contrary to legislation. The main motivation is excess demand for parking.
Active Travel manifesto Joint Active Travel Manifesto 2026
It’s an attempt to get a joint manifesto across all voluntary bodies across Scotland. We commented on drafts a couple of times and earlier this month it was launched. We will continue to promote over the coming 12 months ahead of the Holyrood elections.
Funding for active travel Over £26 million for active travel infrastructure projects | Transport Scotland
None of the funding is coming to Aberdeen or Aberdeenshire. It’s not the first time this has happened and we have gone and asked the council whether they applied and weren’t successful or just didn’t apply. We haven’t had a reply yet. Gavin had heard that Aberdeenshire had applied and thought their projects were good but were disappointed not to get funding. There’s likely to be a second round of funding for development funding. This funding was for delivery. Alastair wonders if the A944 being dropped so quickly has ramifications for future funding? Gavin says in the past they’ve said it’s because Aberdeen didn’t have an active travel strategy.
Deema asks regarding lack of funding – if we know it’s going to happen every year in May and we know they have to submit applications in September, can we put it on our calendar to talk in advance about submitting for funding. How can we mitigate it from happening next year? Gavin says he’s not sure if it’s a regular yearly cycle. Another scheme is the Blackdog to Mucaur scheme that was fully funded from AWPR mitigation money but they now say they no longer have enough money to build it. Shona says it’s normally annual funding and comes through Nestrans. Gavin asks who would be applying for these projects? Shona says Nestrans get given the money and then a committee has to decide what to find. Gavin asks if none of the £26 million has come to Nestrans, because Nestrans is Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire? Deema asks whether we can write an official letter to get an official response about how we can consult/support on applications for funding. Gavin says we have already asked so let’s wait for the answer first. A couple of years ago we tried using the process under the Community Empowerment legislation which obliges the Council to include us as part of the decision making process (in relation to the city centre) but it didn’t really help so far. Gavin says we can bring it up at the next council meeting which is in August. Gavin also invited Deema to join that meeting. It tends to be Gavin and Rachel who attend these but it doesn’t have to be and we can have a third person along, or a substitute.
Events & activities
Cycling Scotland Conference 2025. We have not attended before because it’s £80-100 per delegate. Gavin asks if it would be good for us to be there are represent Aberdeen? We can have a stand for £100 (including one delegate). Deema says we could ask for a discount. Gavin says that is already discounted amount for voluntary groups. It’s in Dundee, on Weds 10 September. Alastair and Rachel both think it’s worth it, and a good use of ACF funds, if Gavin wants to attend. Deema agrees. Gavin will double-check dates for availability.
We were approached by someone from Cycling UK about the Make Aberdeen Accessible campaign a few years ago asking Gavin to present at a seminar and this will be happening on 9th July.
On 18th June there’s a CAN meeting on influencing your MSPs and local councillors. The link is https://www.cyclinguk.org/event/influencing-your-msps-and-local-councillors-scotland
The last event is the She Pedals Scotland campaign on 14th June. Gavin clarifies with Shona that it’s not the same as the And She Cycles campaign from Sustrans a couple of years ago. This is a new initiative from Scottish Cycling to highlight females in cycling.
Any other business
Shona has an idea for an event. In Blackpool they do an amazing event in August called Ride the Lights where they dress their bikes up with lights and go for a ride at night. The council currently do a bright at night campaign in September and there’s also Winter Wheelers so Shona is hoping to get lots of groups together for a right the night cycle in January when it’s dark and people are not confident cycling in the dark. It will probably be at the beach – still trying to find a route – but want lots of people involved as we’ll need lots of volunteers. Gavin asks whether he’s seen the Critical Mass routes? Shona says yes. They’ve come up with several routes they do on rotation and there are maps of the routes. Alistair Gilmore says February is Spectra with a festival of light and a day either side of that could tie in well with that.
Date of next meeting: Tuesday 24 June
Aberdeen Cycle Forum 