Cycling in Scotland - and why bikes are bucking the transport trends

In his role as active travel minister the politician -  with no helmet on his head - was celebrating that the £6.5m South City Way had now reached the city centre. 

As the cost-of-living crisis and budget cuts hit home, there are those who resent such schemes, even if they are vanishingly cheap compared with the soaring costs of our highways and motorways.

How can we tell if they are working? Well, one way is to look at how what cyclists on the safe routes are wearing. Are they in high-vis vests, lycra and helmets? Or, like Harvie and the other riders in photo op, in their regular clothes?

Successful mass utility cycling - to use the jargon - looks more like the Green leader and less like Sir Chris Hoy bombing around a velodrome. At least, as far as clothing goes.

Chris Boardman, the one-time Olympian who now advises the UK Government on active travel, likes to talk about cyclists who dress for their destination, not their journey. This matters. It tells us if people feel safe and comfortable on their bikes. 

It’s why the streets of cities like Amsterdam, Ferrara, Copenhagen and increasingly Paris - where cycling has just overtaken driving - are full of people saddled up in their work or school gear.

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Yet as The Herald reported earlier this month, surveys show lots of Scots still do not want to cycle. And more than half cite safety fears for their reluctance.

Nobody measures cycling fashion trends. But we do know something changed over the pandemic: more journeys are being made on bikes.

The very latest gold-standard figures, from the annual Scottish Transport Statistics bulletin quietly published last month, shows cycling traffic in 2022-23 was 16% higher than in 2019-20. Or, to be exact, 422m vehicle kilometres. That is far, far lower than the 34,375m veh/km clocked up by cars, a drop of 6% since Covid. 

In fact, cycling as a mode of transport has been bucking every trend. Passenger numbers are down for ferries, planes, trains and buses. 

However, rises in bike traffic are from a small base. And there was a slight “correction” back in the last year covered by the new statistics, of 3%, as more people returned to work.

There is a long debate in transport circles about where all these extra bike-kilometres are coming from. Are there more cyclists? Or are people who already pedal just doing it a bit more? Are more casual bike users turning in to regular commuters? Or is there a slowly but steadily moving conveyer belt with people taking up occasional cycling then gradually progressing to, say, regular commuting?

What do authorities need to do to push these trends - with all the climate, health and economic benefits they bring? Right now, the policy seems to be “built it and they will come”.

And new cycle ways do seem to be generated some of the new traffic. 

A spokesperson for Cycling Scotland explained:  “Where networks of high-quality cycle routes are being built across Scotland, the actual data indicates significant growth in the numbers of people choosing to cycle. 

“Traffic surveys have revealed huge growth in numbers of people using the recently completed South City Way cycle route in Glasgow, where bikes now account for 13% of all street traffic.”

This figure comes from a 48-hour study of all traffic on the route carried out for Cycling Scotland back in September of last year. It noted a clear pattern of commuting - with bikes going one way in the morning, towards the centre, and back in the evening.

The body carried out a control survey of a road that did not have the kind of segregated bike way, Cathedral Street close to the city centre. There fewer than 2% of journeys were by cycle.

Glasgow City Council has counters on its new cycling infrastructure. Take the South City Way - it had more than half a million clicks last year in 2023, up 18% from 2022. The final stage of this route - Glasgow’s busiest - will be finished in the next few weeks. 

Other “city ways” also experienced hefty uplifts in traffic. 

But this is not just happening in Glasgow, continued the Cycling Scotland spokesperson. 

“Automatic cycle counters on Leith Walk in Edinburgh are recording exceptionally high usage, reaching an all-time peak of over 1,800 daily cycle trips in March,” they said. “Over 100,000 cycling journeys have been recorded already this year.

“These are among the clearest evidence yet that when Scotland builds good, high quality cycle infrastructure that reflects everyday journeys, it gets more people cycling, benefiting people’s health and helping cut emissions. With cross-party support for cycling, the plans for infrastructure investment by many councils will enable cycling levels to increase in even more communities.”

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Pictured: Last summer Patrick Harvie did a photo-op for Scotland’s latest core cycling route (Image: newsquest)

Advocates like Harvie and Boardman - Britain’s active travel tsar - reckon segregated cycle lanes are the best way to make people feel safer on a saddle.

Harvie told The Herald:  “If we look at the European cities that are getting this right, who have reprioritised road space to make active travel easier – places like Amsterdam, Copenhagen and more recently, Paris – it requires sustained investment and political will at every level.

“With record investment here in Scotland and some good examples of local authority leadership, I’m pleased to see we’re making progress. 

“We have some fantastic examples of infrastructure which are dramatically increasing the number people choosing to cycle locally. 

“Building on this means building out the infrastructure, creating sustainable local networks of protected infrastructure that people feel comfortable to use every day.”

Transport expert Professor Iain Docherty, the dean for the Institute of Advanced Studies at Stirling University,  stressed there was still a lot of work to do to provide more people with a door-to-door safe cycling experience.

He said: ‘We know safe, segregated cycling infrastructure can make a big difference to people’s willingness to cycle, but this means we need to create whole networks off street. 

“Missing sections mean people don’t feel safe for the their whole journey, so won’t make the switch.”

Most politicians are on board with investment in safe cycling.  There is, however, some dissent. 

Last month a former SNP cabinet minister Alex Neil clashed with Mhairi Hunter, a former councillor close to Nicola Sturgeon. Neil, a vocal critic of Harvie and his Greens, bemoaned money spent on active travel and called for it to go to housing instead.  

“It’s about priorities,” he told Hunter on X, the former Twitter. “Using the money available to tackle poverty is much much more important than building cycle lanes. If you did that then Glasgow would be a much more prosperous city.”

A 2023 survey for Sustrans found opposition to spending more segregated cycle ways running at 25% in Scotland, with support at 59%. 

Local and national officials stress they are merely rebalancing roads - local authority roads and road infrastructure in Glasgow alone have a fixed asset value roughly 1000x higher than the new cycling ways.

But it is not just infrastructure that keeps cyclists safe - and encourages more people to pedal. So does improved training for those on bikes - and behind wheels. 

This was stressed by the Tories transport spokesman. "It is encouraging to see more segregated cycle lanes as this will make people feel safer on bikes,” said Graham Simpson MSP

"But we also need to see investment in training for people who are not confident about getting on a bike.

"Cycling needs to be seen as a normal way of getting around rather than something for an elite few.

"Unfortunately, this is yet another budget that has been cut by the SNP-Greens.”

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Accidents - such as the death of a 56-year-old in Bearsden last month - impact public confidence. But as cycling traffic rises, accidents as falling. There is good data on collisions involving pedal bikes in Scotland going back to the late 1970s. The number peaked, at 1,930, in 1984, according to the STS.  The lowest number on record was 2022, 492.

Back last summer cycling alongside Harvie photo op was SNP councillor, Angus Millar. The local authority’s transport convener was in blue shirt and chinos - but did wear a helmet. He does not think figures for cycling in his city need dressing up. 

“Where we have installed safer, segregated cycling infrastructure we have seen a substantial growth in cycling with a near 30% rise in the use of five major routes last year,” he told The Herald. “That amounts to almost 1.2million bike journeys along safer, segregated routes and I am confident we will see this number grow again in 2024 as we push ahead with work on new lanes around the city.”