Category Archives: Transport

Bike route Ambassadors needed!

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.

 

Spokes factsheet on family cycle-commuting

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!

City Council launches bargain bike storage offer

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.

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

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.

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

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!

By train to Greece

The hol­i­day sea­son is approach­ing! If you need some inspir­a­tion about low-impact travel, have a read of My Hovercraft is Full of Eels, a new blog by PEDAL mem­bers Jane, Chris and Callum, about the train jour­ney across Europe they are plan­ning this summer.

5 FREE Bus Passes for a month! How and Why??!!

Why not take up the PEDAL challenge?

On Car Free Day in September, we will draw names out of a hat to issue five lucky people with a free Ridacard each for one month 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.