Travelling by bike helps connect people to work, education, social activities, and opportunities. Across Scotland, inequality of access and costs related to public transport can isolate people from essential services and job opportunities. Over a third of households lack car access in cities like Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.
For young people, those with low incomes, insecure jobs or disabilities, cycling offers independent travel and a way of accessing essential services and leisure activities.
Cycling Scotland work with a number of Regional Transport Partnerships to support the delivery of the Scottish Government’s People & Place programme.
We can provide one-to-one advice to support affordable access to bikes for young people and schools. This may mean signposting to other organisations that we work with.
Making it easier and more affordable to access a bike is vital in supporting more people to cycle. One element of this is bike reuse: saving bikes from landfill, repairing and restoring them, and then redistributing them back to schools, community groups.
Data from just 12 months in 2023 to 2024 shows the potential impact of bike reuse in Scotland:
“Bike reuse reduces waste, provides opportunities in our communities and changes lives.”
Through a collaboration between Glasgow City Council, St Paul’s Youth Forum, HMP Barlinnie and Cycling Scotland, a pilot project is giving old bikes a new lease of life to support more people to travel by bike.
The pilot is funded by the Scottish Government’s People and Place Programme and delivered through Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), working with Glasgow City Council, St Paul’s Youth Forum, and Cycling Scotland.
With support from Cycling Scotland, and funded by Transport Scotland, local charity Employability Orkney initiated and delivered a project to save bikes from recycling centres, as well as provide supported employment opportunities.
To date, more than 100 bikes have been repaired and redistributed within island communities – providing health benefits and supporting transport independence.
Local authorities working to progress bike recycling can contact us for more information.
A bike reuse pilot project in Fife uncovered similar opportunities to improve lives across Scotland.
The Fife Affordable Access to Bikes pilot, funded by Cycling Scotland through grant funding from Transport Scotland, involved close collaboration between Fife Council, Circular Communities Scotland and local cycling organisations to repair unwanted bikes and deliver them to new users.
When you’re dealing with families who don’t have a lot of money, or people who’ve got no bike, or a school with no bikes, and being able to give them that bike for free and just see the happiness: it’s tremendous.
Ricky Baxter
Cycle Hub Coordinator, St Paul's Youth Forum
