Cycling should be the heart of progressive planning

NYONE who has watched a new housing estate go up will know the story: in the last few decades, communities have been created on the assumption that everyone has a car and will drive to their work, or to the shops, or to the local school to drop their children off. The way we live has been designed around cars, making it harder to live without them.

But if Scotland is to tackle its health problems, particularly obesity, then communities will have to be designed in a different way so that walking or cycling becomes much easier – and the good news is there is already evidence such a strategy can work. Building segregated cycle routes is associated with steady increases in the numbers of people travelling by bike, the moral being: build it and they will come.

This is particularly important in more deprived communities, where not only are health problems likely to be more serious but many of the residents will not have a car – in Glasgow for instance, 50 per cent of households do not have access to one. Car ownership may be at record high levels across the country as a whole, but the danger is we assume everyone owns one and further marginalise those who do not.

Ideally, every community would have access to a good cycle lane linking easily to local services, but according to a report from the Glasgow Centre For Population Health, the opposite is happening: people in wealthier areas are more likely to live near cycle routes and, in Glasgow, they are also benefiting disproportionately from the location of the bike hire locations for Next Bike.

The answer is more intelligent, progressive urban planning informed by a serious desire to increase bike use. This will have to mean more Next Bike locations in deprived communities. But it should also mean a more even spreadofbikelanessoitisnot just the leafier parts of a city that see the effects.

The potential result is more people cycling with all the health benefits that go with it. Anything else risks making Scotland’s health inequalities even worse.