Category Archives: Transport

Car Free Day Bike & Boat Parade!

Posted on September 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here is the report we sent to www.350.org who want to use pho­tos of this and other events hap­pen­ing across the planet today to pro­ject onto the UN build­ing in New York and let the powers that be know that the people will carry on lead­ing until the lead­ers follow:

“Here in Portobello, Edinburgh, Scotland, the sun shone and 50 folk turned out on their bicycles to cel­eb­rate a world mov­ing bey­ond fossil fuels.

“Another dozen folk on row­ing skiffs from our local row­ing club joined in row­ing along the shore next to the cyc­lists as we pro­cessed to the site of what we hope will become the first com­munity owned urban tur­bine in the UK. The bicycles and boats were full of people of all ages, and the cyclists were led by a bike dec­or­ated as a great green dragon! With earth flags fly­ing and ban­ners read­ing “100% renew­able energy now” we enjoyed the sun­shine and renewed our hope that com­munity action — such as the com­munity orch­ard and other food grow­ing pro­jects we have begun, and insu­la­tion pro­jects and the pro­posed com­munity tur­bine — can help ensure our chil­dren look back with hap­pi­ness at what we have done to ensure their lives are blessed with renew­able energy and renewed communities.”

We were blessed with won­der­ful sun­shine for Car Free Day 2011 (poster here), and we had a good turnout of all ages, earth flags, bikes, scoot­ers and row­ing skiffs.

We met at 2pm at the Cake Stand at the bot­tom of Marlborough Street, waited for the two row­ing skiffs to get ready with their earth flags fly­ing, then set off cyc­ling along the Prom to the beach below the pro­posed com­munity tur­bine site at Seafield. This year Our Car Free Day was held on inter­na­tional ‘Moving Planet’ Day of action (September 24th.)

Some folk spent the morn­ing at the Orch­ard for the Equinox monthly work day and then cycled down to join every­one for the 2pm start. Others joined the ‘Moving Planet: mov­ing bey­ond fossil fuels’ March and Rally at Holyrood before cyc­ling down to join our bike and boat parade. Others man­aged to fin­ish the shop­ping, or even get out of bed, in time to join us!

We had thought of hold­ing a time trial (see­ing how well a car, a bike, a skate­board, a skiff do racing against each other if none of them are fossil fuelled!) but were informed by the police that all vehicles (except work vehicles) are banned from the Prom — which is a very good thing!

Ok, why not try to guess which of these four pho­tos www.350.org chose to run with, and then think what title they might have given it?

You can find out the photo and the unex­pec­ted title by click­ing HERE!

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Posted in carbon reduction, Energy, Transport

Exciting dates for your diary!

Posted on August 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Saturday Aug 27th 2−30−4.30 — Local Currency Event

Join us at Old Parish Church Hall, Belfield Street, to dis­cuss how to get an Edinburgh-wide local cur­rency in place by this time next year (for more inform­a­tion, scroll down to the earlier post on the subject).

Saturday Sept 3rd — Next Organic Market in Brighton Park

This will be the 1st anniversary of the mar­ket and — as well as the won­der­ful stalls — will include:

- a series of brief inspir­ing films from 10.30 and an organic pic­nic (bring your own food or buy at the mar­ket) from 12.30 as PEDAL becomes one of 12 com­munit­ies across Scotland host­ing a ‘Blasta’ event cel­eb­rat­ing Local Food. (Blasta is Gaelic for ‘tasty’).

- a Big Things On The Beach pub­lic art event from 10 called TOXME which you are invited to par­ti­cip­ate in, an event which high­lights the toxic chem­ic­als we are exposed to in our daily foods and lives.

Sunday Sept 4th — POD’s Portobello Village Fair (2−5)

As well as con­trib­ut­ing to the light-hearted home grown veget­ables com­pet­i­tion, PEDAL will have  two stalls: one for the Orchard and bee keep­ing group, and one to enable people to ask ques­tions about our pro­posed community-owned Turbine.

Saturday Sept 24th — Car Free Day (set off at 2)

- Meet at 2pm at the Cake Stand at the bot­tom of Marlborough Street to cycle along the Prom to the beach below the pro­posed Turbine site at Seafield, or join  us at the orch­ard any­time after 10 for the monthly work day and Equinox cel­eb­ra­tions and then cycle down to join every­one for the 2pm start.

- This year kids are going to need to per­suade their par­ents to help them dress up their bike before­hand, and we will be encour­aging row­ers, canoests and sail­ors to join us in demon­strat­ing fossil fuel free travel! We may even stretch to a time trial: see­ing how well a car, a bike, a skate­board, a skiff do racing against each other if none of them are fossil fueled!

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Posted in Community, Food, Local Economy, Market, Orchards, PEDAL, Transport, Wind Turbine

Bike Week launched at Bike Station

Posted on June 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 05:42 AM PDT

To launch Bike Week in Scotland, makeover TV celebrit­ies Colin and Justin vis­ited the Bike Station to help send the mes­sage of this year’s theme - Britain’s Biggest Bike Fix.

Britain’s Biggest Bike Fix is an ambi­tious attempt to fix as many bikes as pos­sible dur­ing one week.

The Bike Station will be doing its bit:

At Dr Bike’s they’ll be fix­ing bikes cycled to us on the day, with a mobile work­shop on loc­a­tion in Edinburgh*and Glasgow.

At Fix Your Own Bike ses­sions in the Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth Bike Stations.

And at each Bike Station, mech­an­ics will be repair­ing as many old, dis­carded bikes as possible.

There is a full list of all Bike Week events on the Bike Week events web­site.

* in Edinburgh, get your bike fixed at any Bike Station event, and enter a free prize draw to win a new bike.

 

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Posted in Transport

Traffic & Parking Consultation 25th May

Posted on May 15, 2011 | 3 Comments

In Porty Town Hall, Edinburgh Council is hold­ing a Traffic & Parking Consultation on Wednesday 25th May 7-9pm.

If you live on Marlborough St, Bellfield S, Regent St, Straiton Place or Bath St — you are invited to have your say about how the Council should deal with the park­ing con­ges­tion on these streets.

On a per­sonal note: We have a car and live on Marlborough Street. Here are some sug­ges­tions to help solve the traffic and park­ing problems:

PARKING ON ONE SIDE OF THE STREET ONLY:

This street (like Bath Street) have park­ing on only one side (instead of be­ing impass­able for ped­es­tri­ans by cars park­ing on the pave­ments). This would dis­cour­age us (and maybe oth­ers?) from own­ing cars since cars in a city like Edinburgh are (for most of us) all about con­veni­ence, and not being able to park here would be migh­tily inconvenient!

ON-STREET COVERED CYCLE RACKS:

Instead, some of the remain­ing park­ing spaces should be con­ver­ted into covered cycle racks so that using bicycles can be made more con­veni­ent (or simply made pos­sible!) for those of us in tene­ments (and those in houses). These need not be indi­vidual cubicles as used on many sta­tions (which take up too much room per bike) but a covered rack where bikes can be locked up and have the worst of the rain kept off them.

MAKING STREET USE FAIRER:

Those who con­tinue to park on the street could con­trib­ute to com­munity trans­port ini­ti­at­ives through com­munity per­mits that can help pay for such cycle park­ing shel­ters and help make the city car club cheaper for those who decide to relin­quish their cars, or for those who don’t have a car but need to use one. This could be a pop­u­lar and innov­at­ive approach and would be far more pop­u­lar, help­ful and tar­geted on help­ing solve our trans­port issues, than people pay­ing for Council park­ing permits.

Alongside the excel­lent bus ser­vice, per­haps this will help us to kick the car habit and make our streets safer and bet­ter places to be.

Any other thoughts out there? It could be use­ful to have a range of sug­ges­tions, rather than just com­plaints, to bring to the meeting!

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Posted in Transport

Free Family Cycle Commuting training and advice

Posted on April 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Bike Station is now offer­ing *free* train­ing and sup­port for Edinburgh par­ents inter­ested in giv­ing fam­ily cycle-commuting a go.

This is part of the new Spokes & Bike Station ‘Weans on Wheels’ (WOW!) pro­ject this year, which aims to encour­age more every-day fam­ily cycle-commuting by provid­ing inform­a­tion and sup­port to par­ents, par­tic­u­larly those with chil­dren too young to go on their own bike.   The aim is to build aware­ness, skills and con­fid­ence through hands-on advice and train­ing.  There are real­istic (and fun, healthy and edu­ca­tional) altern­at­ives to the dreary old car-based daily travel routine for play-group, nurs­ery, school etc. Continue read­ing →

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Posted in Transport

Bike route Ambassadors needed!

Posted on March 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Bike Station is look­ing to recruit ten volun­teer “bike route ambas­sad­ors” for a new social media pro­ject in Edinburgh. The ambas­sad­ors will help to pro­mote a new map of Edinburgh’s extens­ive off-road cycle routes and walk­ways, many of which are based on old train lines that once ran through the city.

The Innertube Map is based on the clas­sic London Tube Map, and aims to raise aware­ness of the city’s impress­ive net­work of routes. 30,000 cop­ies of the map have just been prin­ted, and the team behind the pro­ject recently received fund­ing from The People’s Postcode Lottery Dream Fund to take the pro­ject to a whole new level.

The role of the ambas­sad­ors will be to cover dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the route near to where they live for both a group blog and an inter­act­ive online ver­sion of the map.

They’ll be trained to use mul­ti­me­dia 3G phones so that they can blog, tweet, and take geo-tagged pho­tos, videos and audio record­ings of what’s hap­pen­ing on and around the routes, and draw atten­tion to prob­lems like fly-tipping and lit­ter where they occur.

You don’t have to be a cyc­list to become one of  the ambas­sad­ors — all sorts of people use the routes, for everything from walk­ing their dogs to horse rid­ing. But we are look­ing for people who are act­ive and engaged local cit­izens, inter­ested in the poten­tial of the routes, and ideally inter­ested in learn­ing about social media.

You’ll also receive bike safety and main­ten­ance train­ing, and will help pro­ject part­ners Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace Trust in import­ant con­ser­va­tion work on some of the routes around the city.

If you’re inter­ested in becom­ing an ambas­sador you can email innertubemap@gmail.com for more inform­a­tion about the role.

 

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Posted in Transport, Volunteering

Spokes factsheet on family cycle-commuting

Posted on February 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

Spokes has a new fact-sheet on fam­ily cycle-commuting, now avail­able online.  This provides par­ents, par­tic­u­larly of young chil­dren, with ideas on how to use bikes for whole-family every-day trans­port, with real-life case-studies to provide added inspir­a­tion.  A prac­tical, eco­nomic and enjoy­able solu­tion to every-day work/nursery/school travel!

You can view the fact-sheet here.

More inform­a­tion on Spokes’s cur­rent work around Family Cycle-Commuting, updates to the fact-sheet etc. available here.

Spokes and The Bike Station are launch­ing their ‘Weans on Wheels’ pro­ject this spring / sum­mer (grant-funded by Cycling Scotland).  The Bike Station will be deliv­er­ing prac­tical cyc­ling sup­port aimed spe­cific­ally at par­ents need­ing to trans­port young children, through equip­ment demon­stra­tions at nurs­er­ies and schools across Edinburgh, ‘drop-in’ training ses­sions and hands-on whole-family ‘have-go’ sessions.  If you have con­tacts at a nurs­ery or school (esp South Edinburgh) that might be inter­ested, do con­tact Katherine Ivory at Spokes (katherine@tusks.org.uk) or Ruairidh MacGlone at the Bike Station (info@thebikestation.org.uk).

Also, if you work for a com­pany registered with the Bike Station’s Better Way to Work pro­ject and you’d like to try out some of the dif­fer­ent family-cycling options, the Bike Station might be able to loan you some equip­ment (Burley child trail­ers, child seats and tag-alongs, as well as adult bikes).

Happy cyc­ling!

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Posted in Transport

City Council launches bargain bike storage offer

Posted on January 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Edinburgh res­id­ents have the oppor­tun­ity to buy bike racks and other stor­age equip­ment at reduced cost from the City Council if ordered by January 17th.

The equip­ment can be ordered for tene­ments or other res­id­en­tial loc­a­tions and will be installed by mid-February. The move is part of the Council’s Active Travel action plan to increase bike own­er­ship and use in the city.Delivery charges will be shared, sig­ni­fic­antly redu­cing costs.

Those inter­ested should make sure they select equip­ment which meets rel­ev­ant secur­ity and con­veni­ence needs. Residents are being encour­aged to talk to neigh­bours, land­lords and other rel­ev­ant per­sons, espe­cially if there is a com­mon stair­well, garden or back-green.

More inform­a­tion on the types of product avail­able and rough costs are avail­able on the Spokes web­site. This also gives inform­a­tion on what to do next if you are inter­ested in the offer. Some ideas that flat dwell­ers have already imple­men­ted to improve their bike stor­age can be found in this Spokes fact-sheet.

The offer only applies to Edinburgh City Council residents.

Contact mark.symonds@edinburgh.gov.uk for details.

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Posted in Transport

What would it take for you to reduce your car use?

Posted on October 7, 2009 | 1 Comment

The Revolution Will Not Be Motorized

For the last few months we have been try­ing to find people to take up the PEDAL chal­lenge but so far we’ve not found many people to take up the offer.

To remind you: We have Ridacards, valid for one month, which we are giv­ing away for free to help you exper­i­ment with mak­ing the trans­ition from car use to pub­lic trans­port use. In return, you will pledge to not use your car for the month and keep a diary about your car-free exper­i­ence. If you would like to take part, please e-mail info@pedal-porty.org.uk or phone 669 4981 for fur­ther details.

We think this is a fant­astic offer and would love to hear from you…

If you’re not temp­ted (at the moment) we’d be inter­ested to hear your com­ments about what you think it would take for you to sig­ni­fic­antly reduce your car use. Please use the com­ment form below to con­trib­ute your thoughts.

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Posted in Transport

Great Bike Parade, market and comedy on Car Free Day 09!

Posted on August 23, 2009 | Leave a comment

On Sunday 20th Sept we held our annual Bike Parade start­ing from the Prom at the bot­tom of Kings Rd at 1.30. We had double the num­ber of bikes as last year — it seemed like we had lit­er­ally hun­dreds of dressed up bikes — and this year we had with us the amaz­ing arm­chair bike!

Over 50 kids brought their bikes and their ima­gin­a­tions to the ‘dress up your bike’ work­shop at Towerbank Primary School Ashpit on the Friday before — and their handi­work was on dis­play on the Parade, along­side adults trees, dragons, flags, and much more!

The local mar­ket out­side the lib­rary, Rosefield Avenue, was well atten­ded (the local bak­ing went fast!) and the ‘Isle of Egg’ Kids Eco-Comedy in St James Church Hall, was a very funny eco­lo­gical fable which the kids loved, and the per­formers only just man­aged to stop the kids from tak­ing over!

On Monday Sept 28th we kick off the Bike to Work scheme — feel free to join us out­side the Town Hall at 8.55 to cycle into the City!

In case you missed all the fun — our 2009 Car Free Day Poster is avail­able  HERE!

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Posted in events, Transport