Attendees: Gavin Clark (Chair), Rachel Martin, Matthew Stroemer, Laurie Rominger, Clemens von Schiffer, Fiona Macdonald, Daniel Verhamme, Francesco Sani, Callum Grant.
Introduction
Matthew and Callum joined us for the first time so we did introductions.
Minutes of last meeting & matters arising
The minutes are on the website.
Laurie did the Spotlight on a cyclist post last month which is a monthly campaign of ours to remind people that cyclists are normal people. Thanks, Laurie!
Gavin has been in touch with a specialist insurance broker – Butterworth Spengler – about getting some insurance but after an initial discussion they have’t got back to him so he’ll keep chasing it.
The other thing was to organise another social ride but the weather’s a bit unpredictable right now.
Union St – current proposals and what happens next
We’ve all seen the proposals for Union Street. They were on display in Bon Accord centre for a week and it was staffed by people from the design team. There was also an online meeting. There’s a complete absence of any cycling infrastructure in the plan and they’re quite dishonest because they show happy people cycling about but they’re in the same space as pedestrians and buses with no segregation. It’s not good for pedestrians, not good for buses, and not good for cyclists. Next they’ll be collating feedback which will then go to committee in December. The other thing to note is we did manage to arrange a meeting with people from the city centre master plan board – it was Gavin, Colin Allanach, Jon Barron along with Fiona Robertson who works for Streets UK and is part of team helping to deliver the city centre and masterplan. Gavin, Colin, and Jon challenged them on the same points but were told it hinges on the fact Council took the decision to reopen Union Street to buses and this was done partly in response to lobbying on behalf of the Disability Equity Partnership. The officers suggested the decisions taken had left little scope for inclusion of cycle infrastructure, even if it appeared to be contrary to previous Council decisions – the CCMP itself.
The next thing is we’ve asked for a meeting with Councillor Ian Yuill. Before the election he had agreed with us that an active travel champion should be appointed in the Council. He has agreed to meet us and we are currently waiting them to suggest dates for a meeting. Gavin has already had to chase twice.
Fiona has sent an email to Ian Yuill pointing out all the things that had been promised and pointing out these new designs were not consistent with any previous plans. In reply he had said compromises were going to be needed.
Rachel has printed 250 postcards, addressed to Ian Yuill, requesting a cycle path on Union Street. She’ll take them to Critical Mass on Friday to disseminate. Rachel has also been waiting for more than a month to have a petition approved by the Aberdeen City Council. She has followed up several times. If she doesn’t get a response she’ll email again and say she’ll go to the press.
Deeside Way art project
This was a very positive story that was very well received. Liam Kerr MSP put down a motion in parliament congratulating us on the mural.
https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/votes-and-motions/S6M-06144
We asked his office if they’d like to discuss cycling-related issues and have a meeting with him now on 4th November.
We need someone to fix two plaques to the wall for the art work and are looking for someone with the skills and tools to do it – it is quite challenging because it means drilling into granite.
Forthcoming meetings with Councillors and MSP
We’re meeting Cllr Kate Black who is Labour councillor and is quite interested in active travel. She approached us asking for a meeting as she’s considering tabling a motion or an amendment for Union Street plans and wants our input. We’re also meeting with Liam Kerr MSP next month.
Critical Mass
Critical Mass is 6pm this Friday. The first ride took place just after our last meeting and got a good turnout of about 35 people including Laurie, Daniel, and Gavin. They cycled two laps of a city centre circuit and it worked really well. It was quite a good sociable ride and everyone was well-behaved. There was no aggro or horn-honking.
Rachel asked how they managed traffic lights – Gavin said they got broken up a couple of times with lights and the people in front stopped and waited. It worked ok. Daniel felt the breaking up should be worked on a bit. The group feeling got a bit lost. Laurie said the second time around was really different because Martin was not at the front and there was no leader of the group insisting they stop and wait.
It took about 30 minutes to cycle one loop.
Other consultations
We’re not aware of anything else that is open or awaiting a response from us at the moment.
Gavin flagged a Transport Scotland framework for cycling document but it’s not clear if it’s open for consultation or a finished document – https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/draft-for-consultation-august-2022-cycling-framework-and-delivery-plan-for-active-travel-in-scotland-2022-2030/?fbclid=IwAR3tz_jExAp_8fdjj_V2uC4iPvGH4TO_q2n0sEVfAuojULJUPkPi8R8n3cw
Any other business
We were contacted by someone at Sustrans who was organising a webinar event in the New Year (we think March but the date is still to be announced) and they were asking if we’d like to put up a speaker. The topic is active travel and climate change so they want someone who cycles for environmental reasons.
As a result of this month’s newsletter email going out we got nine new members and a couple of people rejoining (i.e with updated email addresses).
Dundee City Council contacted us about wanting to organise an event and wanted to hear about our experience with the In Town without my Car day. They were also asking about Reclaim the Streets which we were planning but that got abandoned because of the pandemic.
Martin Sharman sent us an email wanting to apply for funding through the Community Cycling Fund https://www.visitscotland.org/news/2022/community-cycling-fund-launches and it could include a road closure and ride and Kiddicle Mass which is all great but very difficult and would need a lot of resource to organise. We all agree it’s a great idea but it needs a full time person to organise it and we are volunteers with full-time jobs doing this on our weekends and evenings. Instead we’ll suggest it to the Council in our meeting with Ian Yuill as in other cities it’s the local authority that organises events like these.
Callum raised the issue of poor public transport here – how inefficient they are in terms of people getting on and off and how unclean they are in terms of emissions. Gavin said Union Street is a huge corridor. Nearly every bus in the city comes in the bottom end of Union Street and out the other end. They could change this to make it less of a bus thoroughfare, but what First Bus do isn’t necessarily controlled by the Council
Franceso mentioned the ride in September was really great and wants to do it again. Francesco is going to organise a day, time, and place and we’ll share it with our social media network.
Francesco says ScotRail has additional places for bikes but they double as seats so there could be people sitting there.
Date of next meeting
Tuesday 29th November 2022
Aberdeen Cycle Forum 