NEWS FLASH! Introducing the Million Miles Project: June Members Meeting at North Kessock

22 May 2012

 NEWS FLASH! Introducing the Million Miles Project: June Members’ Meeting – North Kessock

Our June Members’ meeting will introduce the new Million Miles project, so come along, meet the people involved and find out all about it! A glass of wine or apple juice and some nibbles will be available to oil the social wheels!

When? Wed 6 June, 7.30pm till 9.30pm
Where? Mission Hall – North Kessock – opposite OLD pier

The event if free and everyone is welcome, whether you are a member of TBI or not.

Updates? Please keep an eye on our website and facebook page for any updates

Programme

• Introduction to the Transport Project
• Results on the Travel Survey
• A few words from our project Officers
• A short presentation from Hi-Trans on Lift Share
• Green Wheel Heroes – volunteering opportunities
• Community Cycle Trainers – paid positions
• Concluding remarks
• Social!

We look forward to meeting you and having a really interesting evening.

A million miles in the Black Isle? What’s it all about?

The Black Isle has a population of around 10,000. Given its rural nature, car use is understandably high. But some would argue current levels are too high to be sustainable, so we have hatched an ambitious plan to tackle the problem. Reducing car use by 1% over three years may not seem like shooting for the stars but if successful, it will have reduced car journeys by one million miles.
The main aim of the project is to encourage Black Isle residents to reduce their car mileage by 1% - or a total of 1 million miles per year. The project has been funded by the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund for a three year period.

Research shows that travel behaviour is particularly entrenched, hence the three year duration. Intense publicity will be generated by personal contact with residents, community events, press coverage and physical resources. We will focus on three sustainable transport options: lift sharing, cycling and public transport. In the first year of the project we will concentrate on three Black Isle villages, and from this experience we will develop a programme to be run across the whole Black Isle in the following two years.

The main aspects of the project are as follows:

Lift Share

We will work with Highlands and Islands Transport Partnership (HITRANS) to bring a tailored car-share web interface to Black Isle communities, to be developed from their existing website, ifyoucareshare.com, which is mainly geared towards employers. Uptake will be promoted by means of a high profile launch, publicity campaign, and personal contact with users and local organisations.

Cycling

Studies in Scotland show that the principal barrier to cycling is the perception that it is unsafe. Our main strategy will therefore be a range of community cycle events and training to provide the skills and confidence to cycle safely on the existing road and cycle network.
We will arrange training for a team of Community Cycling Trainers, who will then run events such as accompanied bike rides, training in safe cycling and bicycle maintenance as well as bike and accessory demos and sales. Some of these events will be organised in conjunction with local schools, others will be more widely available.

We will gather the views of cyclists and walkers to develop an Active Travel Map of the Black Isle, which will be made available both on-line and in a printed version. We will also lobby Highland Council to improve dangerous stretches of roads or tracks which we identify as constraining the active travel network.

Public Transport

We will undertake trials of improved bus timetable information tailored towards popular journeys in target communities. We will also promote the use of public transport in conjunction with other travel modes, e.g. through park-and-ride, and bike racks at bus stops.

Sustainable transport events

In addition to the specific work on lift-sharing, cycling, and public transport, we will also organise a number of events (film nights, debates, competitions etc) aimed at promoting sustainable travel more widely as a lifestyle choice.

Survey

We will quantify the impact of the project by conducting definitive surveys at the start and end of the project. We will also recruit a proportion of the survey respondents to give feedback about their changing travel habits at intervals during the project.

Project staffing and resources

The project will be co-ordinated by Marion McDonald, currently working for the Highland Real Nappy Project, and Peter Elbourne, who was running Friends of the Earth’s “Keep the Heat In” project until recently, and before that was Community Powerdown Officer for Alness Transition Town Group. Teen Ross, an experienced local journalist with a track record of support for Transition and related initiatives, will co-ordinate the PR side of the project, and Carolyn Gethin will be helping with bookkeeping and finances.

We are also on the look-out for more help:
• our Community Cycling Trainers will be paid an hourly rate for their services. They will be expected to work 80 hours/ year in addition to attending a “Training for trainers” event

• Our Green Wheel Heroes will be volunteers needed to assist with events and act as ambassadors to the local communities.
In addition to these resources, a number of TBI members are particularly interested in this project and are likely to be available to offer assistance and support.

Initially, the Million Miles project will focus on Muir of Ord, North Kessock and Fortrose, and we’ll monitor how things work out there before launching across the Black Isle next year.

John Wood
22 May 2012