CivTech 7 - Challenge 7.4 - How can technology unlock the power of the bike, stimulating demand for cycling infrastructure and support South of Scotland communities?

Our challenge responds to Scotland's ambition to become a nation of active travel adopters. Our South of Scotland Cycle Partnership Strategy outlines our ambition for cycling to be the most popular choice for shorter everyday journeys and embedded into the daily fabric of the lives of our citizens and visitors. However, we cannot make good on this ambition if we don’t have a safe and connected network of cycle paths that connect our villages and hamlets to our feeder schools, places of work and onward travel hubs. By prioritising infrastructure investment in cycle paths we will see behavioural change to replace 10 minute car journeys and ‘final mile’ errands. Compared to many European neighbours, the cycling infrastructure in Scotland is significantly underdeveloped; and starting from such a position it is hard to explain the transformation that traffic free cycle paths can deliver. This makes getting stakeholder buy-in for the creation of this much needed infrastructure challenging; if you cannot understand and visualise them. New solutions could help enable ‘modal shift’ in rural areas, with associated environmental and health benefits. This challenge aims to identify a digital technology solution to ‘visualization’ to facilitate more meaningful stakeholder engagement; in turn, this will help accelerate planning approvals and increase cycle path infrastructure investments Challenge the cycle path design/construction status quo by identifying novel and innovative construction techniques and standards for rural areas which would reduce the cost implications and accelerate cycle path infrastructure investment in Rural Scotland. Please visit our website for information on CivTech and how to get involved Please visit our website for information on CivTech and how to get involved: https://www.civtech.scot/how-to-apply https://www.civtech.scot/selection-process