A lot of good stuff is going on. The increase in funding is very welcome but, given where we are now, it is probably too little, too late to meet the target of 10 per cent modal shift by 2020; I would be very surprised if we did. That does not mean that we should not redouble our efforts to do so.
We would like to see more along the lines of what there is already in London: cross-city, segregated cycle ways in all Scotland’s cities. That would be a big and very bold step and a statement about the priority of cycling in cities. I believe that 20mph zones help to reduce the fear factor of cycling and so on.
There must be big engagement and public conversation around cycling because a lot of people, despite the fact that it is a low-cost and very healthy way of travelling, are resistant to it. There needs to be encouragement around that.
11:30
We propose a target of 10 per cent of transport spend on active travel. Scottish Government spending has moved up to £80 million, but it needs to go further than that. Local authorities—I think that Edinburgh is leading the way—need to go up to 10 per cent and think about cycling. In Edinburgh, where we have seen a bigger spend for longer, we have seen an increase in cycling that we are not seeing in other Scottish cities, which shows that it can be done.
Underpinning all that is a transformational vision. Look at comparable European cities, such as Copenhagen or Groningen. There is 30 per cent cycling in Copenhagen, which is as big as Glasgow, if not bigger. Twenty-five per cent of the city centre is pedestrianised, so there is a very big active travel contribution to the overall modal share in a very big developed city. That has been good for not just public health, transport and emissions, but quality of life in that city. It is a city that people want to invest in, send their kids to school in and live in. Businesses want to move there too.
We need to think about the vision, where the spending on cycling fits in with that, and the other things around place making and planning that we also need to do to deliver that transformation.