Digital meetings to get Carstairs Junction and Coalburn moving

Taking place on Monday at 2pm for Coalburn and on Tuesday at 2pm for Carstairs Junction, participants will be able to view and comment on draft Make Your Way maps highlighting routes before they are finalised and distributed in the communities next year.

Meetings are expected to take around an hour, and will take place via Zoom via these links: Coalburn Zoom and Carstairs Junction Zoom

The meetings are taking place as part of the Make Your Way active travel consultations, seeking to gather local knowledge on every day, functional journeys for communities in Carstairs Junction, Coalburn and Coulter.

The consultations include paper surveys which were delivered to each household in the three communities, as well as the following digital consultations which are still open for participation: {https://myw-carstairsjunction.ushahidi.io/views/map}, {https://myw-coalburn.ushahidi.io/views/map}, {https://myw-coulter.ushahidi.io/views/map}

Make Your Way aims to increase active travel for everyday journeys through awareness raising of existing routes and confidence and skills based initiatives.

It is managed by Rural Development Trust’s Community Action Lanarkshire programme and supported by Paths for All Smarter Choices Smarter Places, South Lanarkshire Renewable Energy Fund and Rural Development Trust, and delivered by creative consultants icecream architecture.

The funding is allocated for maps, map boards and wayfinding along one route in each community, alongside a programme of community led walks and cycles and Primary School focussed active travel workshops and Bikeability (COVID-19 permitting) before April 2021.

Sarah O’Sullivan, Active Travel project officer for Community Action Lanarkshire, said: “We’re encouraging community members to sign up for the meetings so they have a chance to provide face-to-face feedback on the draft maps.

“Local knowledge and insight people are able to provide on their favourite places, everyday views, pieces of history and other points of interest, as well as nature spots will make the maps even more unique to each location, with a view to encouraging more trips made by walking, cycling and wheeling.

“Active travel is just one of the many issues that we have seen moving up the agenda since the onset of COVID, in terms of outdoor access and its associated impact on physical and mental health and wellbeing, reduced impact on roads and public transport, and reduction in carbon emissions.

Make Your Way links to both local and national priorities connected to active travel provision and targets towards a greener and more sustainable future.”

For more information email [email protected] or call 01555 880 551.