Step up for active travel

Boosting walking, cycling and other forms of active travel in Dundee could have considerable health and economic benefits for the city according to a new report.

Commissioned by Dundee City Council the “Walking & Cycling: The Benefits for Dundee” report highlights 11 different ways that people, business and the environment would profit from increased active travel.

The report, compiled by consultants Jacobs late last year, is also backed by Transport Scotland and walking and cycling charity, Sustrans.

Mark Flynn convener of Dundee City Council’s city development committee said: “There is plenty of evidence from other places about the benefits of active travel, but we wanted to bring that home and focus on how more walking and cycling could improve every aspect of life in Dundee.

“It doesn’t shy away from the challenges that we will all need to overcome, not just in changing the way we think about walking and cycling, but also the need for investment and changes in city infrastructure.

“And as well as indicating how places, people and business could prosper with more active travel, it also offers us a route map towards how this could be done.”

The 24-page report details how more active travel would boost every aspect of the city including:

• Increased retail spend;
• reduced congestion;
• less pollution and carbon emissions;
• improved access to goods and services;
• more leisure/tourism; and
• reduced business costs.

It breaks down the ways in which these would be felt across four different areas of the city – outer industrial/retail, neighbourhood centres, residential areas and the city centre.

To be able to realise these gains the report identifies the need for a strategic active travel network in Dundee linking neighbourhood centres and other key attractions via high quality, direct, convenient and safe routes on which people walking, wheeling and cycling are segregated from general traffic, and which provide dedicated space to both pedestrians and cyclists.

It adds that the city should aspire to complement the strategy with minor improvements including:

• Wide, well-surfaced, drained, lit footways and footpaths and cycle paths, segregated from traffic and pedestrians where possible and appropriate;
• good facilities for cyclists at destinations, including cycle parking appropriate for all types of cycles;
• low traffic volumes and speeds, with effective, safe crossing points where active travel routes cross roads; and
• the support mechanisms to enable and encourage more Dundonians to walk, wheel and cycle more often.

Cllr Kevin Cordell, the council’s cycling spokesperson said: “The thoroughly researched evidence in this report not only busts a few myths about how suitable Dundee’s terrain is for cycling, it also heads off many of the ‘yes, but’ arguments that some opponents use against the economic advantages.

“The cycling and walking benefits for Dundee report gives us a reliable and valuable resource to take into account when making transformational decisions about the future shape of the city and how we get around it.”