Strategic Active Travel Route - Ellon, Newburgh and Foveran

We asked

Aberdeenshire Council is committed to fulfilling its duties relating to reducing carbon emissions from transport, creating opportunities for health improvement, and supporting measures to improve access between our settlements. Strategic or longer distance active travel routes provide an alternative option to the car when considering journeys to the shops, visiting friends or travelling to school. Rural routes create more opportunities to access the countryside and can help stimulate local economic growth. Providing high quality routes such as a link between Ellon and Newburgh in particular will be an attractive option for a day trip for locals and visitors alike.

In this public engagement exercise, we provided the feasibility design drawings for the new cycleway, and included street side visualisations of what the scheme may look like if implemented. We have asked the community about their traveling habits, their view about this scheme and finally their opinion about the proposed design.

You said

We have received a total of 502 responses to this survey, with 1,066 recorded visits to the consultation website.

Of those who responded, there is a clear desire for the route to be provided, with 93.6% of respondents indicating that they agree in principle that the route should be built, and 83.5% indicating that the proposed route would encourage them to undertake active travel more regularly. The results also provide insights into the current barriers to active travel which the respondents perceive, and that the proposed route would aid in overcoming those. The majority of respondents indicated that they would most likely use the route for leisure purposes (71.2%), and for cycling (50.3%). With regards to the specifics of the proposed design, 80.4% of respondents felt that the design would be attractive to use, and 96.7% felt that that the proposed path width would be sufficient. A clear preference for a fully-bound tarmacked path was demonstrated, with 59.6% of respondents selecting this option whilst 59.3% of respondents indicated that the surface type was a more important design consideration than the path width.

We will

Develop a final design for the project taking into account the feedback received and comments made from the public engagement and direct stakeholder consultation. We will commission impact assessments to support the design development and will continue to engage positively with affected stakeholders as the project develops.