Walking in a winter wonderland

This is a Bristol path - which has been gritted

When we ran our We Love Leith travel survey, earlier this year, we encountered a huge number of people who said 'the weather' was a serious factor that put them off walking and cycling. And when it's as cold as it has been in the last week it's perhaps easier to understand why.

But if you have to get to work, a well maintained, gritted, traffic free path can be the most reliable and pleasant way to get to work if the roads are treacherous to drive on and the train and buses stop running on time. That's why switched on places as diverse as Bristol and Odense (in Denmark) attach a high priority to maintaining their path network - even in the winter. In Germany, if local authorities do not commit to maintaining cycle paths in the winter then they must declassify them.

Meanwhile in Edinburgh, the path network is not gritted at all unless it's specifically requested. However, in Novemeber the council Environment Committee has been quoted a top price of £100,000 by council officials in this report (pdf) to extend priority gritting treatment to about 25km of the path network.That works out as a cost of £4000 per Kilometer. Sounds pricey, and the council officials behind the report also, somewhat bizzarely, warn that gritting these paths as a priority could increase 'carbon emissions' too. 

So, intrigued, we did some maths. According to the council "key facts and figures,"  it maintains 1,378KM of public roads and spends, on average, £1.1 million on gritting them in the winter each year. That works out at a cost of, er, £798 per kilometer. If we applied that rate to the path network then it would only cost an extra £21,000 to treat those 'priority' paths.

OK, so perhaps we're being disingenious. Let's only compare the 'priority paths proposal' with the 312Km of 'classified' road network in Edinburgh, that would probably also get a priority gritting service. And lets be generous and assume that all the £1.1 million that the council spends on average is spent only on the classified roads. Well, even if we just use that network, then the figure is £3,525 per Kilometer - still £500 per kilometer cheaper.

So, to add in another 25 kilometers of priority path, even at this generous priority rate for roads would cost £88,125 per year. Where did that top figure of £100,000 figure come from? The one that council officers have now lodged into our elected members minds, as they deliberate where to put the beans in the next council budget?

You can put these figures another way. In Edinburgh 23% of people commute to work by walking and 4% cycle. In Leith ward, 51% of households have no access to a car. The proposed spend on the priority path network city wide, would seea maximum of 8.1% of the gritting budget spent on keeping these paths, for all those people who walk and cycle, snow and ice free. Currently, it's obvious that nothing like even the proposed 8% is spent on keeping these paths snow and ice free.

Indeed the report to council we linked to above, says that the path network is gritted "on request." It's interesting to note the experience of one cyclist on the Edinburgh City Cycling Edinburgh Forum who had this to say about the "request" service:

"Last year I asked Clarence if they could grit the Innocent Railway path and the person I spoke to hadn't heard of it and didn't believe there was such a place. Needless to say I never saw any grit go down on the path there all winter."

If the council is to fullfill it's own transport strategy, achieve it's own cycling targets of 15% of all journeys by bicycle by 2020, or the NHS targets for a 'more physically active population,' then we think identifying some of the cycle network for priority gritting in the winter has got to be a good use of money. If £88,000 seems like a lot of money, then even adding a shorter distance of city centre paths around the Meadows, Arthurs Seat and Leith would benefit a great many people. People who would travel by foot or by bike in the summer would be able to keep doing so - even in December. 

Our regular travel habits are exactly that - habits. If people have a good reason to get out of the habit of walking or cycling during the winter, then they're increasing the chances of losing people to the motorised transport habit: permanently. That's why we identified a lack of winter path maintenance as an issue in our submission to the Holyrood Active Travel enquiry.

These genius snow markings are on a path in Cambridge

This is the Water of Leith Path - taken by Gus Fraser on the 23rd of December

Update on January 4, 2010 by Ally

Here's a link to a photograph of a snowplough clearing the bike lanes in Copenhagen:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16nine/2345328582/

The City of Edinburgh Council has similar hardware in it's posession, however it seems it's reserved for clearing and gritting the pavements in the New Town.