Our challenge responds to Scotland's ambition to become a nation of active travel adopters.

Our South of Scotland Cycle Partnership Strategy outlines our ambition for cycling to be the most popular choice for shorter everyday journeys and embedded into the daily fabric of the lives of our citizens and visitors.  However, we cannot make good on this ambition if we don’t have a safe and connected network of cycle paths that connect our villages and hamlets to our feeder schools, places of work and onward travel hubs. By prioritising infrastructure investment in cycle paths we will see behavioural change to replace 10 minute car journeys and ‘final mile’ errands.

Compared to many European neighbours, the cycling infrastructure in Scotland is significantly underdeveloped; and starting from such a position it is hard to explain the transformation that traffic free cycle paths can deliver.  This makes getting stakeholder buy-in for the creation of this much needed infrastructure challenging; if you can't understand and visualise them.  New solutions could help enable ‘modal shift’ in rural areas, with associated environmental and health benefits.

So, how can technology unlock the power of the bike, stimulating demand for cycling infrastructure and support South of Scotland communities?

The Solution

Sweco’s solution to rural active travel delivery, is an online resource comprising, knowledge in active travel design, application funding support, 3D visuals, online digital mapping tools and an innovative GIS based scoring tool. This scoring tool will evaluate routes against mapping data to help support route design and evaluation.

The Opportunity

The rise in active travel funding across Scotland, and beyond, is a huge opportunity and challenge for the delivery of rural active travel routes. The solution aims at not just empowering local community groups to seek government funding but to also develop a more data driven method of route building.

Next Steps

To further develop and refine the tool for commercial release, and to continue to engage with community groups, local authorities, and government to develop the tool so it can benefit all.

The Team

Sweco’s multi-disciplinary ‘team of teams’ approach has allowed them to develop a highly knowledgeable and motivated team to deliver this innovative solution. The Edinburgh based team comprises members from their dedicated Active Travel Team, GIS Team and Pavement Edinburgh Team.