Petrol prices! I dinnae want to sound like your auld reactionary Da but they are genuinely mental.
I pootle aboot in an absolute banger, because I value thrift above all things.
Yet when I go to fill the tank, it costs me near the worth of the entire car to do so.
I have two ideas. One, we get a mob of us thegither and storm thae big oil rigs that are getting repaired in the harbour by Craigie. We sail them oot a wee bit, sink the drills and sook oot our ain oil supply.
Because that’s probably the only way we can get our hands on affordable fuel.
Second idea, admittedly the more boring, is that we get heavy into cycling in Dundee.
Bikes are unreal cheap. I bought ane fae a cat charity in Angus a few months ago for £65, and have been battering about on it ever since.
It’s got suspension, so takes potholes in its stride, and flies me fae A to B pretty effortlessly thanks to its millions of gears.
Ok, so a downside is that I’m dating again and the machine is so ugly I cannae be seen on it by a potential partner lest it gie her the ick.
But so long as I lock it up round the corner and proceed on foot, then all’s well.
Cycling away from Dundee traffic wardens
The big saving for me hasnae even been the fuel, it’s been the fact I’ve now gone a good month without a parking ticket.
Absent-mindedness ensures that I run into at least one ticket every other week in Dundee.
I swear the hawk-eyed bandits with their little ticket machines and daft wee bunnets must have a tracker on my car.
I no sooner abandon my motor in the town and go off in search of change for the ticket machine than they are on me, fastening another £60 fine under my window wiper.
I’ve paid that much additional revenue to Dundee City Cooncil since buying a car that I feel I deserve a plaque on the new Braeview Academy building.
“Generously part-funded by Ally Heather, via his umpteen parking charges.”
Bikes get you away fae all that.
You cycle fae your door directly to the place you want to be, you lock your bike to the nearest immovable object, and off you pop.
Two-wheeled ticket to anywhere
It’s unbelievably relaxing compared to a car.
And bikes can plug public transport gaps in a responsive way.
Me and my brother growing up in Newbigging for example.
There were about four buses a day to Dundee. So if we wanted to head into town, we’d both climb onto the one Halfords bike we had between us, and one’d gie the other a backie at high speed down the brae to Monifieth.
We’d easy pick up a 73 heading citywards.
The bike would remain dumped in a hedge until one of us collected it later.
That flexibility is beyond the scope of anything a council or even a private car can offer.
Cycle-safe cities are needed
I’m not blind to the dangers of cycling.
I got smacked high into the air by a car once, cycling through Edinburgh. The injury to my hip as I thudded down to the tarmac bothers me still. The bike was scrap, too.
Dundee’s even worse than Edinburgh to cycle in. I find it unbelievably dangerous, with so few cycle lanes, and so many parked cars along every road.
I worry that I might not survive the next collision with my health intact.
A cyclist got smashed into the windae of a car in Dundee just the other day.
It’s #BikeWeek and Dundee remains as utterly unsafe a city to cycle in as it’s possible to imagine
Really hope the cyclist hit by a car this morning is ok https://t.co/5oNoZUU501
— Alistair Heather (@Historic_Ally) June 7, 2022
This doesnae deter me, as I can see that people in positions of influence are desperate to make Dundee cycle-safe.
And “cycle-safe” doesnae mean just passing rules to tell drivers not to crash into us.
It’s about building an infrastructure that makes it easy to choose cycling.
That separates bikes fae pedestrians, and bikes fae cars, so that we’re not getting in each other’s way, or under each other’s wheels.
Dundee should look to other cycling cities
I’ve lived for years as a happy pedaller in three of the world’s great cycle cities; Geneva, London and Amsterdam.
Each has overcome obstacles to become places vaunted internationally for the amount of cycling that goes on.
Geneva’s winters are far colder than ours.
Amsterdam is more than twice as rainy as sunny Dundee.
London was even more overrun by cars.
;
Now these places have successfully converted millions of journeys from cars to bikes.
And we can do it too.
Get thrifty, get active and get happy
It will need action fae those in charge of the city.
We need plenty of separate cycle lanes, physically barriered from traffic, to be able to head out on our journeys safely.
And it’ll also need an open mind from new cyclists.
But with bikes available on Gumtree across the city and Angus for well less than £100, it won’t even cost you a full tank of fuel to give it a go.
With the warmer summer weather in, get a hold of a bike, rent one fae the cycle hub, hire one of the electric bikes stationed around the town.
Get thrifty, get active and get happy.
Cycling is the revolution we need.
Conversation