Working to cut fossil fuel use is not new. It’s 30 years since I became involved promoting policies and actions to reduce consumption. Working with the then popular catch phrase “Think globally act locally” in mind, I began to campaign for the creation of coherent cycling and walking routes.
I worked with other local activists and with local and central government. Here and there we have had successes. But honestly, the result for a huge amount of work is a few stretches of path and a few crossings in our own community.
I tell myself that our efforts have contributed to the shift towards acceptance of the necessity to provide good active travel routes. But in the meantime, car use has continued to rise.
The last 10 years have been spent trying to get a section of the Beauly to Inverness route built. The section is along the roadside where there are no obstructions, and land is used for farmland and forestry. It is possible to get 50% funding from central government via Sustrans. The other 50% must be raised by other means.
The first link in this section was built thanks to Highland Council stepping in with the required 50%. The last two links were held up due to the opposition and lack of interest from two landowners. We were surprised, given the relatively low value of the land involved. It has taken 10 years of negotiation and a change of ownership to reach an agreement, and the delays meant losing funding bids.
Last year we encouraged the Council to go for EU Leader funding. This was successful and the 50% was in place. Frustratingly, the other half of the funding didn’t come through, so the Leader funding was lost.
Few grants on the scale needed are available to us. Their criteria often only partially matched ours and one pot of £1million was eight times over subscribed. We needed £250,000. We got nothing. We are almost back to where we started on this one project. It’s by no means the only one.
Meanwhile, the Scottish government has earmarked £3000 million over ten years to complete the dual carriageway on the A9 between Perth and Inverness. Yet this section of road is not even busy by UK trunk road standards. Neither communities nor drivers along this corridor were required to contribute a penny for this. A similar project is being funded for the A96 Inverness to Aberdeen route.
So while at long last there is plenty of media attention about the need to reduce our fuel consumption and plenty of political promises about halting the climate crisis, the reality is that the government is still pouring money into road building at the expense of a real revolution in funding sustainable active travel.
Community volunteers are burnt out and frustrated. We need a guarantee of 100% funding through a switch from funding roads to funding cycling and walking – governments and obstructive landowners need to wake up to the fact that time for action is running out.