Edinburgh to invest in becoming more cycling friendly

The City of Edinburgh Council is expected to approve plans to invest £1.4m in making the Scottish capital city more cycling friendly.

A number of initiatives to make Edinburgh a better city for 'active travel' will be considered by councillors this week, with an outline of how the council's transport budget is to be spent on cycling.

An extra dedicated cycling officer will also be appointed to take forward the design and construction of schemes that are already in the pipeline.

A further £460,000 will be spent on routine maintenance of cycle routes and on marketing and promotion.

This year the Council has also attracted £425,000 of matching funding for cycle projects from the Scottish Government via Sustrans.

Councillor Jim Orr, vice-convener of the Transport committee, said: "This programme represents a record investment by the Council with 5 per cent of our total transport budget going on cycling, and we believe this is more than any other Scottish authority in both total and per head spend.

"Encouraging active travel makes sense for environmental, health and traffic reasons, but Edinburgh is also a fantastic city to explore on foot or two wheels. Our investment will make the most of that."

There will be further spending on promoting walking, with a new post focussed on improving design for pedestrians and upgrading popular routes.

For more information on the cycling project, click here.