Tag: cycling
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King Street cycle path competition
Last week, on behalf of the Aberdeen Cycle Forum, I launched a design competition for a cycle path on King Street in Aberdeen. Out of all the cities in Scotland, Aberdeen was the only one not to apply for Sustrans Community Links Plus funding this year which is specifically for infrastructure projects like this. The…
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Strong, fit, and healthy
I love Saturdays. I feel so strong and energetic right now and the weekend is my time to get outside for some physical activity. Today I have been particularly active having spent my morning hefting huge bags of grit salt up the hill to the church. Several months ago the city council invited people to…
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It’s 4C and I’m hot
I love our Saturday bike rides to Highland Dance for Elizabeth followed by lunch at Newton Dee. My bike told me it was 4C: But I got hot from the exercise. I feel so happy after a bike ride. We’re so lucky to live somewhere we can cycle all year round. I love feeling the…
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In praise of my electric cargo trike
Elizabeth has been off school sick this week and not wanting to make her walk to school each day when we go with Daniel, I’ve been taking them in Hoss instead. It has been over a year since I stopped cycling the kids to and from school in Busby – now we walk. It’s good…
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Air pollution event recap
I helped organise an air pollution event in Aberdeen yesterday. This was a joint initiative of the Aberdeen Cycle Forum and Friends of the Earth Scotland. Air quality has been in the news recently because we’re only just starting to understand the harmful effect air pollution has on our health. It’s particularly harmful to young…
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Cycling on the AWPR and a weekend of protests
The AWPR still hasn’t opened. It has been beset by delays and no-one knows when it will open or even if it will open this year. Members of the Aberdeen Cycle Forum organised a protest about the new motorway and the failure to include provision for cyclists in a demo in September this year. We…
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My kids are amazing and I was on TV!
It was parent-teacher interviews at school last night and I’m so proud of the kids. They’re just amazing in every way. Elizabeth, according to her teacher, finishes her maths work in class then goes around from table to table helping other pupils with theirs. Her writing is also exemplary and she is spelling to the…
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Cycling advocacy and cross-country skiing
We had a fantastic day today. I’m on holiday and this morning I handed over one of the copies of Designing for Cycle Traffic to the Aberdeenshire Council. Two copies were crowd-funded by the Aberdeen Cycle Forum – one for Aberdeenshire Council and the other for Aberdeen City Council. The Evening Express asked for an…
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Killing machines
I want to demonstrate a similarity I’ve noticed between racism and bias against cyclists. Have you ever noticed our unconscious bias towards minority groups like Black British people or African Americans means that if one member of the group does something wrong, the entire group is tarnished? If one African American commits a crime then…
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ET phone home
They say you can’t cycle in the rain. Well poop to them because that’s exactly what we did today. Every Saturday I take Elizabeth to Highland Dancing by bike and we cycle on Deeside Way. It is particularly gorgeous right now with autumn colours. The kids watched Netflix in the bike on the way. My…
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Cyclists are better drivers than motorists, says insurance firm
This week as I walking home from school I saw a mother crossing the road with her young daughter. The mother was on a bike and the little girl, who was only about 5, was on a scooter. The mother did what every parent would do: she sat in the middle of the road on…
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Designing for Cycle Traffic
I’ve just run my very first campaign as the new Campaigns and Communications Secretary of the Aberdeen Cycle Forum. The campaign was to raise money for the purchase of two books on Designing for Cycle Traffic for the Aberdeen City Council and the Aberdeenshire Council. If you check our Go Fund Me page we raised…
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The road to hell is paved with chocolate and cars
I can’t resist temptation. Buy me a block of chocolate and I’ll eat the whole thing in one day. Replace my bike with a car and I’ll drive everywhere becoming fat and lazy. This is why I don’t have chocolate in the house and don’t own a car. I have no willpower and I don’t…
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The People’s Front of Judea
So much of life is like a Monty Python sketch. They were so cleverly able to turn life into the absurd and make it funny. Last night I attended an evening of talks for the launch of a new cycling group in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. I gave a talk too and this time there were…
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AWPR demo recap
The demonstration organised by Aberdeen Cycle Forum and members last Sunday was a huge success. It’s the third such demo I’ve helped to organise and it was by far the best in terms of turnout. Aberdonians are conservative engineers who don’t protest. We go to go work, keep to ourselves, and don’t complain. However people…
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Building new roads leads to more new roads
Last month I stumbled across an article from 2006 called Induced traffic. Again. And again. And again. It was first observed early last century that building new roads generates new traffic. So 1925, 1937, 1958, 1963, 1968, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1994, 1996, now 2006: for 80 years, every eight years on average, there has been…
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Bike paths for all demonstration on 9th September in Aberdeen
The new bypass for motor vehicles – the AWPR – is set to open soon and I posted recently about the attempts to make up for the absence of cycling provision in the new road by organising a cycling event where you cannot take a bike. After a lot of bad publicity the event was…
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I think our transport planners are stuck in a 1970s time warp
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry about this article – Is this the worst cycling event EVER? They’ve built a new ring road exclusively for motor vehicles around Aberdeen which is about to open but somehow they were allowed, in the 21st century, to build it without any provision for cyclists. Indeed cyclists…
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Broad Street is open to buses
Broad Street is open to buses again after several months of closure while construction work was carried out. I was there yesterday and took some photos of the new design: Can you see what’s wrong with the new design? It’s not clear where the road ends and the pavement begins. There’s no kerb. It’s all…
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Inside Hoss
Ben fell off his bike a couple of weeks ago and broke his arm in two places. He’s recovering well and fortunately no cars were involved in the accident or it could have been much worse. He’s unable ride his bike until his arm is better and so when we all went for a cycle…
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