The debate over whether Union St should be pedestrianised or not has rumbled on for decades so it’s not surprising that it continues to be a bone of contention. The Covid-related ‘Spaces for People’ measures saw the central section, from Bridge St to Market St, closed to traffic and the Council seemed keen to keep that in place. We’d taken part in various discussions with designers working on behalf of the Council who were coming up with ‘streetscape’ designs for how it could look. We’d even got as far as discussing some of the finer details as to how, for example, cycle lanes could be routed around bus stops.
But then back in May we had a local government election resulting in a new Administration: out went the old Lab-Con alliance and in came a new SNP-LibDem one instead. Soon followed a decision to re-admit buses to the closed central section of Union St, and suddenly all the streetscape designs were back to square one, and astonishingly the new designs had no cycle lane infrastructure at all.
The Council ran a short consultation in October seeking public views on the new designs, and by far the greatest number of comments fed back were in relation to the lack of active travel provision. There were two worrying trends: firstly, a false narrative that because buses were back on Union St, there wasn’t room for a proper segregated cycle lane. Secondly, because they were designing-out a cycle lane for the central section, it seemed to follow that they thought they didn’t need one on the east and west sections of Union St either. Despite the consultation responses, the recommendations put before Councillors for a decision on 14 December were to approve these new designs which would effectively leave cyclists mixing with buses on the central section, and mixing with all traffic on the remainder.
Whatever had happened to the City Centre Masterplan, passed unanimously by Council in 2015, and which promised to deliver “a cycling city”. What about the Sustainable Travel Hierarchy, enshrined in national and local transport policy, which is very clear that designs should cater for pedestrians first, and then cyclists, before considering public transport and other vehicles?
In the run up to the Council meeting we’d run a campaign to bombard co-leader of the Council Ian Yuill with postcards highlighting the need for proper segregated cycle lanes on Union St. We’d also managed to meet with Cllrs Yuill and Miranda Radley, from the respective parties forming the administration, and also Cllr Kate Blake to make our point.
At the Council meeting itself, both Rachel Martin on behalf of ACF, and Jon Barron on behalf of Grampian Cycle Partnership had requested a ‘deputation’ in other words the opportunity to speak to the meeting. Both did an excellent job of putting the case for segregated cycle lanes and highlighting just how much at odds the recommendations before Councillors were with current policies and the desire to create an active travel network in the city.
In her presentation, Rachel described cycling amongst buses on Union St currently as being reminiscent of a scene from The Terminator. The press picked up on that and had great fun with the analogy in items which appeared in the P&J and Evening Express in the following days.
Segregated cycle lanes for Union Street to be considered (pressandjournal.co.uk)
The decisions taken at the meeting now mean that central Union St will remain much as it is at the moment in terms of traffic access and so bikes will still have to mix with buses and service vehicles. However speed limits for buses (similar to Broad St) will be looked at again. And in a critical change from what had been recommended, officers have now been instructed that designs being developed for east and west Union St, and some other city centre streets being redeveloped, should include options for segregated cycle lane infrastructure. It will be several months before we see those designs, so this isn’t the end of the discussion and no doubt there will be more battles along the way to ensure that cycling is properly provided for. We’ve also taken the novel step of submitting a formal “participation request” under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act, to try and improve the process and ensure that cyclists’ voices are listened to.
Our thanks to Rachel and Jon who put their arguments so eloquently, and to those Councillors who listened and voted to amend the plans.
Aberdeen Cycle Forum 