How the council could make positive changes right now - if it wanted to...

The national mood is changing and governments are supportive of making areas safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Here's how East Dunbartonshire could trial some of these.

While we continue to be frustrated by the lack of action locally by East Dunbartonshire Council, we've seen positive news nationally , that seems to show a changing tone on the topic of active travel: Labour investment in cycling and walking will be unprecedented.

We can only hope that this translates into tangible changes locally in the not too distant future, despite the complexities of transport being a devolved topic in Scotland, combined with local council inertia.

After all, EDC could at least put forward trial projects to test out new active travel projects in the community. We know that councils have the power to enact something called Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO). 

These are part of the process by which local authorities introduce street space measures like 20mph zones (still ‘under review’ in East Dunbartonshire) and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). They allow the trialing and introduction of measures to improve road safety or balance the needs of different users, before deciding if they work or not. In other words, it's how local authorities can manage their streets - and move fast and fix things.

This approach is taken in the Netherlands, where the city of Haarlem trialled closing two of the city’s busiest traffic lanes, on an experimental basis, for bikes for two months. Here’s what happened.

As its road planning advisor said: “Policymakers shouldn’t be afraid to upset car drivers if it makes the city a better place to live. Another piece of advice is to communicate clearly that a trial is a test, that it’s temporary, and that it might fail. This way, people don’t feel that the government is imposing changes permanently”.

(We found these stats via an excellent blog post by Adam Tranter, which you can read in full here.)