YOUR VIEWS: Support for Academy Street changes – and views on English education about Scotland
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Two readers speak up for change in Inverness city centre while another responds to a recent columnist's experience.
Driving positive change
Academy Street is currently not working. Tourists find it unattractive, and locals find it difficult to navigate with small children or in a wheelchair or by bike. It is polluted and full of stationary traffic.
On Saturday about 60 people including many children attended Kiddical Mass, a family cycle event showing how much demand there is for better infrastructure in Inverness.
Current proposals for the street have been modified as a result of feedback, to allow car access to all businesses, yet Inverness Business Improvement District’s report mentioned in Friday’s Courier seems to still be referring to the original proposal (Option B).
The aim is to cut traffic by 75 per cent, which makes the scheme eligible for Scottish Government money and the modifications allow buses and taxis to drive through but not cars.
It has been demonstrated many times elsewhere that when you make low carbon transport the most convenient option people will use it. I find cycling around the city so much more convenient than driving and usually only drive when I’m having to carry something big. Most shopping fits on my electric bike but if I do drive I would not drive to Academy Street, I would park and walk to it, as would most people.
Some things which might help the Academy Street proposal to work: There could be more through buses, so people don’t have to change. Young and older people already have free buses, so if more could get straight through to their destination quickly on a car-free road then they would be more inclined to use them. Park and ride schemes could be installed as soon as possible. We could have bike racks on buses as we had on the Black Isle for a few years.
We have recently had a further very clear warning from the International Panel on Climate Change that the future looks ever more bleak.
I have two lovely grandchildren who could be around to see that future unfold for the next 100 years. For their sakes and the sakes of their peers and those who follow, let’s all pull together to tackle the Climate and Ecological Emergency, using whatever weapons we can.
Making Academy Street less car dependent is one thing which would help tackle climate change and improve our city.
Anne Thomas
Secretary
Highland Cycle Campaign
Real benefits to proposals
Anyone visiting Glasgow in the 1960s will remember the smell and pollution which hung in the likes of Buchanan and Sauchiehall Streets.
These memories are now in the distant past as the pollution and the cars have gone to be replaced by a vibrant community feel.
However, these memories still exist in Inverness.
Wander down town and on to Academy Street on a crisp winter morning or sunny summer day and the pollution haze over the north end of the street is obvious.
Indeed, Academy Street, along with Telford Street, are classed as being some of the most polluted in Scotland.
Are these records Inverness really still wants to hold?
The proposals regarding banning traffic from Academy Street have rightly caused a lot of controversy and the council is to be congratulated on recognising the pollution levels have to be addressed.
However what is missing from the plans is how to address the very valid concerns of the likes of Mr McManus, Mrs MacRae and businesses in the area.
For example, would there be any viability in developing a frequent, rapid electric bus service for the city centre area similar to the experimental one which is running up at the UHI Campus?
This could be supplemented with car drop off points around the periphery of the city centre which would allow drop off and transit into the area.
As an asthmatic I very much appreciated the cleaner air during the pandemic. Like the Glasgow streets alluded to above the town centre also had a more vibrant community feel to it. I can see though that there are real fears that the pollution will just get shifted to other parts of the town.
The real benefits of the scheme will come from the council keeping to their plans whilst accepting that the Academy Street changes are the beginning of something bigger – a town where the bus and rail stations are still easily accessible from the west of town, where the travel/shopping needs of older residents are catered for, where businesses don’t feel trade will be compromised, and visitors are not met with a street filled with noxious fumes.
History shows what was once thought harmless, can now have expensive after effects.
An example – cleaning up and the litigation/compensation relating to the use of asbestos.
With a London coroner recently ruling air pollution contributed to the death of a child, do we really want to accept this pollution risk?
Name and address supplied
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It was interesting to read about Nicky Marr’s encounter with educated English people on the London to Edinburgh train.
I think the reason for their, to us, astonishing ignorance of Scotland and Wales is quite easy to understand. Scottish schoolchildren and the Scottish public are provided with full information about English history, geography, sport and current affairs. After all, we are all part of the same United Kingdom.
We can therefore share, for example, lots of programmes about the Tudors (an English, not a British, dynasty), and very regularly enjoy (English) Match of the Day.
But the reverse is not the case, and it seems the case that English schools and media provide little info about other, smaller, parts of the United Kingdom. It may even be the case there are features of purely English law, religion and politics which are believed, by some people in Scotland, to apply here also, because we are told about them so often.
It seems to me that Scotland is to a considerable extent invisible and irrelevant to many in England. As indeed Wales is also.
Ronald MacLean
Kiltarlity
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