Claim plan for cycle-route network on back-burner
A network of “active freeways” to encourage people to cycle between Scotland’s town and city centres and outlying areas is “on the back-burner” despite ministers’ ambitious target of cutting car use, a new book has claimed.
Cycling journalist Laura Laker wrote in Potholes and Pavements – a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network (NCN), which is published on May 9: “Things are moving very slowly, if they’re moving at all.
“A network of ‘active freeways‘, rural cycle routes akin to a national cycle network, was announced and then not acted upon.”
Ms Laker also said the NCN across Scotland, which also includes segregated lanes and quieter roads, “is a national piece of infrastructure, only it isn’t prioritised in the same way as the roads”.
“Scottish plans for active freeways, inter-urban, highquality routes, seem to have been placed on the back-burner, however, and things are moving very slowly, if they’re moving at all,” she wrote.
The £50 million freeways scheme was announced two years ago as part of the Scottish Government’s latest strategic transport projects review blueprint, to “focus on high-demand travel corridors and on improving connections to communities for which transport exclusion is currently prevalent”.
The strategy said: “They will deliver high-quality, direct and segregated routes for people walking, wheeling and cycling.” Ministers have pledged to cut road traffic by 20 per cent by 2030.
A Transport Scotland spokesperson said: “We increased investment in extending and improving the NCN to £18.4 million in 2023/24 and are engaging with Sustrans on their proposals for the 2024/25 programme.”