East End on the move
Active Travel

 

Read about the convenience of active travel. 

Active Travel

Put simply, active travel is using your own power to travel. Active travel doesn’t have to take up the whole journey, you could walk to a bus stop, use the bus, then walk to your destination. Alternatively you could use ‘park and stride’ to drive to a convenient carpark near your destination then walk the rest of the way, rather than trying to park outside. Walking and cycling are the most common forms of active travel, but there’s nothing to stop you rowing along the Clyde or skateboarding into town as well.

Convenience of active travel

It’s often quicker to walk or cycle than drive or use public transport, once you include the time it takes to park, wait for the bus, walk to the station and all the other delays that happen. With walking & cycling you travel from door to door and have much more control over the time it will take for your journey.

It’s much easier to see your neighbours and local area if you don’t have to work out what bus route to take or where to park the car. On foot you can stop and chat in the street and bikes can be locked to cycle stands and other objects anywhere they won’t get in peoples way.

Active travel keeps your body and mind healthier, so you’ll be ill less often and feel more capable of dealing with life. With every journey you’re getting a light workout for free, meaning you can do more with your time.

The East End of Glasgow has lots of journeys where you can take much shorter routes than the car or bus if you are on foot or a bike. Think about your route rather than following how you’d go in a car and you could be surprised at the difference. East End on the move will be working to improve these short cuts, make them easier to find and make walking and cycling much more convenient.

In Scotland, over 75% of journeys are under 5km, or 3 miles, and about 13% of all car journeys are less than 1000 metres. Wouldn’t it be easier just to walk or cycle? 1000 metres takes less than 10 minutes for most people to walk, and 5km can easily be cycled in about 15 minutes.

The AA gives the:

running cost* per mile for a new car worth £12-14,000 as 20.02 pence per mile

cost per mile*1 for a new car worth £12-14,000 covering 10,000 miles a year as 49.34pence per mile

so if you travel 3 miles to work and back, that’s £1.21 - £2.96 a day. Not too much perhaps, but that’s £302.50 - £740.10 a year. Thinks what else you could spend that money on if you took the 15 minutes to cycle instead

* www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/advice/advice_rcosts_petrol_table.jsp cost for petrol, tyres, labour, parts, road tolls and parking fees

*1 www.theaa.com/allaboutcars/advice/advice_rcosts_petrol_table.jsp cost for petrol, tyres, labour, parts, road tolls, parking fees, tax, insurance, breakdown cover, capital cost and depreciation.

Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.  ~Albert Einstein