Attendees: Gavin Clark (Chair), Rachel Martin, Patrick Bennett, Clemens Von Scheffer, Francesco Sani, Fiona McDonald
Liaison with City Council (inc Union St)
Gavin and Rachel met with Ian Yuill and Miranda Radley a couple of weeks ago. Claire McArthur from Transport Strategy was also there. They’ve agreed to meet us quarterly – this was the second meeting and we have dates set for the rest of the year. If Rachel or Gavin can’t go to one of these meetings or if anyone else is interested then others are welcome to take our place. It might be good to share a different perspective with Councillors.
The meeting started with them sharing feedback from issues we’d shared last time. One was signage on Beach Esplanade, Make Aberdeen Accessible, Festival of Cycling or Kiddical Mass, Tillydrone/Diamond Bridge.
Tillydrone – nothing they can do about that other than learn from it and do it better next time.
Beach Esplanad signage – what signage? We explained the issue is there are no signs at all and people don’t know where they’re supposed to be.
Make Aberdeen Accessible – they hadn’t done anything about this but asked us to send the list of issues to them again.
Festival of Cycling – no plan for this event this year. Rachel asked why they can’t have a car-free day on a regular basis like other cities do? Some places have car-free Sundays every month. Fiona asks whether it’s worth partnering up with other organisations like Living Streets. We think this is a great idea.
Gavin introduced them to the cycling audit we had done for Duthie Park. Then we discussed the Deeside Way and lack of cycle parking. Gavin plans to do an audit of Deeside Way. Rachel asks whether anyone has requests for spaces for parking on Deeside Way.
Gavin suggests the possibility of doing audits for lots of places like Seeton Park, Hazlehead Park, Union Square, Garthdee. We could send the reports to businesses in these locations and to the Council.
Francesco says the LEZ comes into force in June 2024 and he was wondering whether there’s any event planned around that. There might be a change in the amount of traffic – hopefully less?? Could we have a car-free day around that day and make an event of it. A low-emission, car-free, clean air day.
We raised the issue with the new Schoolhill cycle lane and how there are always cars parked in. They acknowledged the enforcement here and around Belmont St is a big problem. No solutions yet.
We also raised the problem with Countesswells Road and how it’s turning into a rat run with traffic from the new development and other traffic avoiding the congestion on the A944. Ian Yuill said the buses are no longer using it which is good. They’ve agreed to go and look at that to see whether a speed limit could be extended out that way.
We also brought up the topic of drive-through restaurants. Claire told us the new national planning framework that has just been introduced (NPF4) has a presumption against drive-throughs. Therefore there shouldn’t be any new ones unless they already have planning consent.
The last thing Gavin raised in the meeting was on-street parking shelters. They asked us to suggest locations for them. We’ll include it in an email out to membership and on Facebook.
Gavin will keep a record of the things we’ve raised in the meeting.
Consultations
No live consultations at the moment.
Annual cycle count
We haven’t done the cycle count since 2019. Volunteers used to stand outside in various places and count cyclists. We didn’t do it from 2020 – 2022 because of covid and lockdown plus also the council has an array of cycle counters.
Spokes also do it but only in two locations and they count passenger vehicles and other motorised vehicles so they can assess the change in modal share. When we used to do it we did it in May. We’re going to see what data the Council collects first so we don’t double-up. Gavin thinks they only collect data from off-road cycle routes such as the Deeside Way and Shell path, but don’t have any way of counting on-road cycle usage.
Events or activities for year ahead
Ideas:
- Bike jumble sale
- Litter pick
- Stall on Deeside Way, handing out tea/coffee and leaflets to encourage people to join the forum
- Join PoP – tee the critical mass cycling group up with PoP? Will talk to Martin.
Noted that as of 1 March we have a new public liability insurance policy which removes some of the risk we were exposed to when arranging events or activities previously.
Francesco is going to look for a date to arrange another weekend social ride / cafe gathering.
Any other business
Fiona got in touch with Sustrans iBike people to invite them to a future meeting. Someone got back to her but only just started the job and works one day per week. He’s very new to it but would be happy to come along and explain what the project is about. Another person got back to her and also said she’d be happy to come along to a meeting.
Rachel asked what people thought about a request to add a link to a page on Compare the Market on the Highway Code. They had approached us. It was agreed we’d rather link to something on a cycling website like Cycling UK so Rachel will see if Cycling UK has anything similar.
Clemens asked about the lack of cycling parking at various shopping centers and wants to contact these businesses to request cycle parking. Queens Links and Morrisons were examples where cycle parking was poor or absent altogether. Gavin also cited the example of Garthdee especially B&Q. We had tried in the past with B&Q and got nowhere and their cycle parking was still sub-standard. Many of these centers (especially Queens Links) suffer from traffic gridlock which must harm sales because some people will avoid going there. So it would be in their own interest to provide some decent cycle parking. Part of the issue previously was that the stores are tenants and the sites as a whole are managed by a company on behalf of the landlord, and they may be less interested in helping. But definitely something worth pursuing again.
Date of next meeting (provisionally 28 March)
On 28 March Gavin will be taking part in the Climate Cafe meeting so Rachel will run the ACF meeting. There is also a Sustrans event on the 27th which we’ve been asked to participate and Gavin and Fiona will cover.
Aberdeen Cycle Forum 