Adventure Oban and Active Travel - where do we stand?
Isla McCulloch | Adventure Oban Trustee
There's been a fair bit of conversation locally recently about a new consultation on the future of George Street. Proposals to improve our town centre have been pulled together by a consultancy firm, working with Argyll and Bute Council.
If you can cast your mind back to late summer in 2022, Adventure Oban, along with Argyll and Bute Coast and Countryside Trust (ACT), another local charity, were lead community partners on developing an active travel plan for Oban. This was part of the national Sustaining Choices project, led by Planning Aid Scotland and supported by Argyll and Bute Council.
Adventure Oban Trustee Isla McCulloch during our Active Travel Community Consultation
As volunteers, we spent hours talking to folk in the community about what would make it easier to walk, wheel and cycle around town. We appreciate the physical and mental health benefits of building movement into our daily lives while ensuring there's sufficient provision of parking and public transport available for when required. Due to the nature of the town, most of us use multiple forms of transport to get around depending on what we're doing that day, what the weather is like, who we are travelling with etc.
These hundreds of hours of conversations were held where people are, at the entrance to Atlantis on a busy Saturday morning, at the high school, in our local green spaces and online on Zoom as well. Over the course of the project we spoke to about 100 people out and about with an additional big survey of around 700 Oban high school students.
The key priorities that emerged were:
Safer routes to schools. The survey of high school students found that ‘rates of cycling were too low to quantify with maintaining anonymity of students’, i.e. less than 4 kids cycle to school, citing safety concerns on Soroba Road as a critical factor. 41% of high school kids walk to school with further feedback on the quality of the pavements on these key arteries. Primary school parents also prioritised safer routes to our local primary schools as a key area for improvement with many being too nervous to cycle with their kids to primary school.
Sunny scenes during one of our Active Travel Community Consultation events
Many also generally mentioned how improving the condition of the existing pavement infrastructure and joining up existing off road paths and pavements would make a huge difference. This included better lighting for safety on darker routes; better signposting to existing off road paths and improved traffic calming signage on narrow shared use roads where new physical infrastructure was going to be a challenge. This included the road to Ganavan which is well used by pedestrians, cars and cycles and Glencruitten Road, with a priority of the stretch to Mossfield, which again has a lot of pedestrians sharing the road with cars. Smaller strategic interventions for a bigger impact!
Taking care of our existing greenspaces to encourage more walking and wheeling while connecting with nature was a key priority and of course, the long awaited Dunbeg to Connel link was mentioned many times.
Other priorities included better infrastructure in general for cycling, this included better bike parking, both in quality and options at key community hubs. For example, the bike parking at Atlantis Leisure Centre and the Rockfield Centre are not in keeping with modern standards and need an upgrade. There isn't any dedicated bike parking at Station Square, the closest being the ferry terminal which is well used already, especially in the summer.
Young people we spoke to talked of one of the only benefits of lockdown was that they felt safe cycling on the roads for the first time. Some even said they just hadn't been on their bikes since then.
George Street was not mentioned as a critical area. The existing pavements would benefit from the usual maintenance and improvements to increase accessibility and there was a clear call from our local blind and visually impaired community to cut back on street clutter on all central pavements including those in/around George Street. Breadalbane St was included as an option to investigate as a potential active travel route to/from Atlantis given the one way system limiting its use and the alternative involving pedalling uphill up the Bealach an Righ with a sketchy turn off to Atlantis if coming from the town centre.
All these findings, with suggestions for priority areas for improvement were compiled and published in this report which you can read here... heads up, it's a long read which is why we've tried to pull out the key points.
We used a variety of venues, locations and formats to make sure all the community were welcome during our Active Travel Community Consultation events
So what has happened with this report?
Well we know that influencing the council to invest in local infrastructure upgrades is not an easy task. We have sent over and presented the plan to various councillors and council meetings. They have been receptive and interested but with no firm commitments or invitation to contribute more formally to date.
The LDP3 is now out for consultation, we will be inputting these findings into the bigger community consultation.
So we have done what is within our grasp. This includes:
One Million Miles! Our ongoing campaign to get our community to get outside and get active. Every little mile counts towards our online totaliser and we are working with schools and across the community to support people to get out and about.
An amazing group of volunteers yarn bombed all the bike parking in town, no mean feat! This raised awareness of where there is suitable bike parking while also highlighting how little there is in some areas in a fun and beautiful way.
Cycle leader training. Through this course led by Cycling Scotland for Adventure Oban volunteers, the instructor was at pains to say that actually there are so few areas where we could confidently lead people on a cycle ride in town due to the level to qualification being offered and the nature of the roads around us (higher speed limits, roundabouts etc.)
Introductory workshops to build confidence to cycle on the roads led by ACT as part of the Big Bike Weekend
The Big Bike Weekend! On road and off road biking opportunities for all ages to build confidence and skills in our community. You can catch up on last year’s wonderful weekend in this lovely video..
Mechanic workshops to build confidence in fixing punctures and roadside repairs.
NATA. The North Argyll Trail Association is being led by Adventure Oban to create more opportunities for safe trails and paths for riders and walkers in our area. This has involved working with landowners and a team of keen volunteers to improve and build all purpose trails at Ganavan, Ben Lora and Glencruitten, vital greenspaces.
Behind the scenes, we have been supporting Oban Sailing Club with renegotiating a lease with the council for the site at Dungallan Park so that we can seek funding to improve the park and make it into a more multi-use hub for different water sports such as SUPing, kayaking, rowing and swimming.
So where does this leave us?
While we are happy to see the council continuing to be interested in supporting active travel, we have been keen to apply our own efforts where we can see tangible results. We still have so much on our list of things we would like to do and as a primarily volunteer led charity we need to use our time wisely.
We are surprised to see such a detailed consultation on an area of the town that was not a priority for infrastructure interventions. We would love to see further activity on the priority areas such as safer routes to schools, identified in the plan as above, and are happy to continue to be part of that conversation.
