Diary of a Shopkeeper, 4th July

A couple of weeks ago, this diary recounted three recent occasions when your friendly local shopkeeper was just about run off the road by dangerous driving. 

I suggested it was time to try and make our roads safer, by “looking again at speed limits in certain areas…by creating safe lanes along busy roads for cyclists and walkers…by exploiting the expertise and access to funding of organisations like Sustrans Scotland.”

Last week’s Orcadian had an article about a Finstown petition calling for reduced speed limits, widening of narrow pavements, and better enforcement of existing regulations in the village.

They have a strong case for such measures, but it’s not only Finstown residents who are feeling there’s been an unsafe increase in vehicle size, volume and speed in recent years.

As I mentioned in my earlier column, there’s also a new Facebook group, “Making Orkney’s Roads Safer for Everyone” calling for similar measures across the county.

All of this has to be more than a coincidence: concern about road safety is genuine and growing.

Roads are expensive and time consuming to construct.   And once they exist, it’s expensive and time consuming to change them – by widening them, for instance, or adding cycle lanes.

By contrast, vehicle design changes yearly and generally the trend is towards bigger and more powerful vehicles.  A recent study of ten popular cars in the UK showed significant increases in size.

Ford Fiestas and Range Rovers have increased in width by 23% since their first generation.  Have road widths in Orkney increased by a quarter in recent years so two super-wide vehicles to pass each other with plenty of breathing space?  I don’t think so.

Have parking spaces been made 23% bigger in recent years?  Doesn’t look like it.

How about weight?  The same study found that on average, popular long-running brands increased their weight by over 35% between their launch and the present.  Again, the Range Rover was a stand-out monster, with an extra 658kg per vehicle.  But the worst offender is the so called Mini.  The current Mini Cooper is 64% heavier than the original 1960s Mini!

The extra wear and tear on our roads caused by these bigger cars is obvious.  And it’s exacerbated by the current fashion for SUVs and other similar utility vehicles.  Handy for farmers and trades, sure, but now adopted by many – especially in rural areas like Orkney – as their everyday, family transport.

And then there are tourist-related vehicles.  It’s been widely observed that there are more campervans and motorhomes in the county than ever before.  They’re not exactly compact, and can cause issues in car parks, campsites and even passing places on single track roads.

2021 and 2020 have been remarkable for the almost total absence of tour buses.  None at all showing the sights to cruise liner passengers, and only a handful coming across the Firth for day trips.  But normally – the normal that had evolved by 2018 and 2019 – several dozen coaches criss-cross the Mainland most summer days.

Of course, many folk dislike the sight of tour buses, especially when they venture onto narrow roads off the main routes.  Some folk also have mixed feelings about campervans.  Others still have concerns about the continual growth of size, weight and power of our own vehicles. 

I write not to record a litany of woes, but to argue that the die is cast, whether we like it or not.  We are a small community learning to adjust to global trends in tourism, and to deal with fashion trends pushed by multinational vehicle manufacturers.  Tourism is not going to stop, and vehicles are not going to shrink.  As Edwin Muir wrote in “The Way”, the road we’re travelling only goes one way: never back, only into the future:

Friend, I have lost the way.
The way leads on.
Is there another way?
The way is one.
I must retrace the track.
It’s lost and gone.
Back, I must travel back!
None goes there, none.
. . .
Oh places I have passed!
That journey’s done.
And what will come at last?
The road leads on.

We can’t go back in time, and we can’t stop time.  What we in Orkney can influence – via our elected representatives – is the roads infrastructure, including parking.  And also safety measures acknowledging the changes to vehicle type and usage – reduced speed limits in and around built-up areas, better cycle paths, and wider pavements for pedestrians.

Fashion and commercial innovation change quickly – it’s almost impossible for the slow, expensive, painstaking process of infrastructure upgrading to keep pace.  But the sooner we start, and the clearer our sense of direction, the better.

There are council elections in May 2022.  Let’s make sure candidates know our thoughts on the way ahead.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 7th July. Other diaries continue to appear weekly. I am posting them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.