WITH reference to your story about the Active Travel Taskforce report and the AA and Institute of Advanced Motoring concerns about proposals to ban cars from parts of towns and cities, we would like to take issue with a number of the points made (“Green drive to ban cars in cities ‘will cost jobs’ warning”, June 18).
Aside from the many health-related reasons for reducing private cars out of town and city centres, there has yet to be found convincing evidence that links increased car access to improved retail vitality in town centres.
Projects to improve access to town centres on foot or a bike have frequently been shown to deliver increases in retail vitality of 30% or more. There is also evidence that more jobs are created and sustained per pound by building walking and cycling infrastructure than for spending on road, rail or aviation infrastructure.
Recent discussions on revitalising high streets have centred around improving the overall experience for people coming into towns and cities to shop, socialise and work.
However, when our cities are congested and noisy, our air is polluted with exhaust fumes and when parents feel uncomfortable allowing children to walk along pavements, the battle for jobs, shops and vitality is already lost.
The claim, lacking evidence, that “walking or cycling does not work if you live in the suburbs” is, if anything, all the more reason to invest in better infrastructure for walking and cycling as our research last year on transport poverty helped to illustrate. Encouraging the placement of more essential services and amenities in local communities would help to avoid being forced to drive into large urban centres.
There are numerous examples to show that creating places for people, supported by public realm improvements and development of infrastructure for walking and cycling revitalise town centres, improves local economies and makes places more pleasant, vibrant and welcoming.
Change is happening, from retail patterns and the way people shop, to the way people socialise and travel to work. We need to move with the times and it will take more than multi-storey car parks to bring people back to our towns and cities.
John Lauder, National Director,
Sustrans Scotland, Rosebery House,
9 Haymarket Terrace, Edinburgh.
THANK you Catriona Stewart for a brilliant article about car drivers and their obsessive attachment to motoring (“Pavement car ban is a start but doesn’t go far enough”, The Herald, June 16).
As a non driver “doing my little bit for the environment”, I cannot understand the appeal of a stressful drive into Glasgow, for example, when a very good public transport system is in place. The congestion your columnist complains about has surely been brought about by drivers themselves, many of whom are teaching their children that life without a car is not an option.
The health benefits of walking are indisputable. In response to the recent correspondent who complained about not being able to park directly outside department stores in city centres, exactly how would you organise parking for the masses if Buchanan Street, for example, was no longer pedestrianised?
Elizabeth Mueller,
Bank Street,
Hillhead, Glasgow.
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