Campaigners: SNP goal of 10 per cent cycling share by 2020 "impossible" to achieve

This is obviously anecdotal, but as someone who grew up and lived in Edinburgh until around 6 months ago, it isn't the council / gov funded infrastructure in Scotland that put me off cycling, but the lack of facilities at my end point (the office!). In my last job there was one shower in a 600 person building and no dedicated secure storage and in my last but one job two showers in a >2000 person building. If only a couple of percent of my colleagues cycle, when we were all expected to arrive around 9am, then you see the problem.

Already I have discovered in London, in admittedly larger offices, there is secure cycle storage, lockers and proper gym changing facilities with no charge.

But then I work in the private sector so not sure what the gov can do about this??

Thanks old strath (not short for strathpeffer by any chance). I'd agree def cyclable

The SNP having been spending less on roads and giving the money away like free prescriptions and uni places as a vote getter. We all no nothing in life is free. An expression the SNP clearly believe is true.

Its all Maggies fault.....Can we still blame her??

The Green Party tops the list, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats joint second. 

It's easy for these three parties  to make fantastic promises and be all things to all men when they know they are 100% guaranteed not going to be elected into power, so therefore never going to be held to account for their pie-in-the-sky policies.

Over the past five years there's been a lot of work going on near where I live. Miles and miles of cycle/pedestrian paths have been built. I can now use cycle lanes to Glasgow (27 miles), to Edinburgh (33 miles), and numerous other shorter distance journeys in all directions purely on cycle lanes.

Getting people off their backsides and out and about using them seems to be the problem. Having said that there does seem to be an increase in the number cyclists in our area over the past year or so as more and more people are made aware of the existence of the pathways. Perhaps an advertising campaign on TV could help make a huge difference. 

Against this statistic I'd like to see something which indicates average commute distance. In England the big cycle commuter hotspots seem to be the big cities and guess the distance to work may be lower then the comparison in Scotland. I knpw when I have visited Scotland we have driven a lot of miles to get to both the usual tourist things but also to essentials like a supermarket.

Im not defending or knocking the SNP just like to have some context to statistics.

Even London, with it's vastly greater spend on cycling infrastructure, bike share scheme and tiny (relatively speaking) area was only aiming for a 5% modal share by 2026 although it's more or less on course to meet that. Even then it's far from evenly distributed - certain parts of London see about 1/3rd traffic as bikes, other parts see less than 1% of journeys made by bike.

Quite how Scotland thought it could get 10% modal share across the entire country is beyond belief. The usual shite spouted by politicians keen to pander to whatever group think will vote for them that time round.

Only the greens would have really came close to the 10% target. How many of the SNP, (who factually, are from white-collar, drive-your-exec-class-car-to-work, backgrounds) actually cycle?

Scottish politics were on a high, full of hopey-changey stuff, just like the US. And just like the US, it will all turn out to be shallow and unfulfilled. 

You can't really expect society changing infrastructure or nu-socialism from a party who are in the majority composed of accountants and business execs. 

Same old people, same old tricks. 

None of it matters though, Scotland will rally behind these charlatans until the Independance issue has genuinely been seen to its conclusion, and that's a long way off yet. But after that, people will start looking at social progress and see that things aren't actually improving. I'll give the SNP 10 years, then it'll start to get ugly.

Was nice to see Labour getting a kicking though. 

Whatever you think of the SNP, I don't think anyone can claim their record on promoting cycling is in any way good. Spending on trunk roads and railways, yes, local sustainable transport - in any form - no. Not so much different from the hated Tories down South really.

Not that the Labour-LibDem predecessor coalition was any better.