GLASGOW LOCAL GROUP
We love Glasgow. It’s an amazing, friendly city with a colourful past and so much potential. Yet we can’t ignore the extent to which its streets are vehicle-dominated, polluted and hostile to people walking and wheeling.
We want walking to be visible and meaningfully prioritised in Glasgow through the creation of streets that are physically accessible, inclusive and properly funded. As a group, we aim to be inclusive, informed and influential by working in a positive, practical and professional way. We will connect and collaborate with other organisations, particularly those representing people with disabilities, to work in support of their needs. We will endeavour to be evidence based and to understand the real-life experience of walking in Glasgow, in order to promote the right to walk safely on footways and cross roads throughout the city.
WHAT WE'RE DOING
In collaboration with Living Streets and Living Streets Scotland, we aim to improve life on foot, so more people are enabled to make everyday walking journeys safely. We will aim to enable wider behaviour change by contributing to the creation of an inclusive environment for walking, whilst encouraging policy-makers to move beyond vehicle-centric thinking to meet the health, climate change and sustainability needs facing us all.
We will do this by:
- being a Glasgow specific representative body for pedestrian rights and issues across the whole of Glasgow
- raising awareness of utility walking in Glasgow
- being a consultative body and critical friend for the Council on technical and policy matters
- building connections with, and working with, disability organisations, to enable us to be an advocacy organisation in support of their work
- building bridges with cycling (and other) organisations to endeavour to ensure infrastructure works for everyone.
We will work to:
1. Ensure walking is meaningfully prioritised in local and national policy, including Glasgow City Council’s active travel strategy and liveable neighbourhood plans. We will do this via our presence on the Active Travel Forum and other critical friend work.
2. Continue to develop and communicate an understanding of best practice design for walking, in partnership with Living Streets. This will include walking-specific infrastructure and a broader reduction of stress and pollution from vehicles.
3. Raise awareness of issues to do with accessibility at specific locations by working with local disability groups and crowd-sourcing data from local people. We will find appropriate ways to capture this information in digital maps and reports.
4. Improve pedestrian crossings in Glasgow by working with Glasgow City Council to identify suitable locations for more crossings and ask for improved signal timings on existing crossings.
5. Support local and national campaigns for blanket 20mph limits on urban roads.
6. Develop and harness the skills of our Glasgow Living Streets network of supporters, via in-person events, email communications and social media.
7. Campaign for more local funding to be spent on walking and support campaigns for more national funding to be spent on active travel.
8. Support Living Streets’ (and other relevant organisations’) campaigns, including Cut the Clutter and National Walking Month.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
We are a relatively new group and we would love you to join us as we tackle our action plan for bringing about meaningful walking-related change in Glasgow.