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Some updates. Councillor Bobby Clelland, who was included in my first email to councillors just before the local elections, replied just after the election. He said:

Hi Steven

Thanks for the email, sorry for the delay in replying.

I share your desire to have safe cycle routes, and when the opportunity arises I will speak in favour of them.

Bobby Clelland

Short and sweet. I replied.

Hi Bobby

Thanks for taking the time to respond and congratulations personally for getting re-elected and to Labour for having enough seats to form an administration. Since my original email I have been in communication with Bill Walker and Gerry McMullan who have also been supportive. I have also been corresponding with a few Council officials. I have been collating all this on a little blog, which you can find here if you want to see what's been happening. 

http://stevenhope.typepad.co.uk/cycle/

Support for safer cycling initiatives would be great. Perhaps you could take the initiative by proposing a motion supporting the calls by Pedal on Parliament (www.pedalonparliament.org) that councils should follow Edinburgh's lead and commit 5% of the Council's transport budget on active travel.

Best wishes for your new term and I look forward to seeing you around Limekilns.

No reply on the idea of  proposing a dedicated cycling budget for Fife. Oh well.

I've also had a much more substantial reply from the transport folk in Fife Council.

Mr Hope,

Murray Hannah has passed me your email to give consideration to any specific safety issues you may have as part of a route between Limekilns and Woodmill High School. I shall try my best to address any such issues, or provide details on who is best placed to deal with it. It may be that there is an alternative route available for parts, some of which I will suggest, however these choices depend on the age, experience and confidence of the rider. Given this, I'm happy for you to let me know if there are any other specific safety issues on routes not mentioned below you would wish me to look at. I have gone through the points on your first response of 30th April below which relate to safety issues;

Primrose Road - in relation to any planned improvements for the Limekilns junction or any remedial measures as part of the reduced limit, as this road is operated by Bear Scotland on behalf of Transport Scotland, Fife Council are not able to investigate or suggest improvements here. Bear Scotland (North East unit) can be contacted on 0800 587 1107 and may be able to offer further information.

Shared path along the A985 - Again, as this is a trunk road, Fife Council have no powers to redetermine the use of the footway for shared use. You may wish to contact Bear Scotland, as above, or Transport Scotland on 0141 272 7100. Colin Broadwood is Transport Scotland's network manager and his area of responsibility covers the A985.

Kings Road Roundabout - Sorry, but this also comes under the remit of either Bear Scotland or Transport Scotland. Fife Council looked at improvements along this route as part of links through Rosyth including the work that we carried out down Kings Road. I think at the time it was recommended to widen the island at the roundabout, purchase a small corner of land at the allotments, and widen the footway. However this so far hasn't happened. Hopefully joined up working between Fife Council and Bear Scotland will see this completed in the future. I will see if I can find out what stage this is at and if anything can be done to move it along. Even if the island was widened, it is unlikely that it would accommodate a bicycle and trailer.

Rosyth Station Roundabout - The crossing at this location has been designed to national guidelines to accommodate a cycle, wheelchair or pram. There is no requirement to design for a bike and trailer as this would see every piece of infrastructure being over-designed to accommodate a very small minority of users. I can appreciate your frustrations with this as I too have travelled with my children in a bike trailer and these situations are always difficult with lots of manoeuvring required to get where your going. As this is an odd situation with the road levels, hopefully this doesn't present a challenge at most other crossings. The alternative is to cross from the Primrose Lane service road, which I appreciate is not ideal.

Pitreavie Roundabout - The issues here aren't really road safety related and are more an issue of convenience and improvement. There have been no injury accidents in the last 5 years with pedestrian/cycle conflicts to suggest that something needs to be done to improve safety. As Phil Clarke has your comments on this issue, he will be able to keep this in mind for any future improvement works.

Carnegie Avenue - A toucan crossing was installed on Carnegie Avenue to allow cyclists and pedestrians to cross safely at this location. This helps with access to the footway on the north side of the road. However, as you point out, this may not be suitable for all users. This is now part of the core path network and hopefully improvements to the surface will happen in the future. As there are no injury accidents or safety issues there is nothing proposed here for the immediate future from our Safety team.

I'm sorry that I haven't offered much help with your issues, and improvements to the network take time. Children within the 2 mile radius of schools are a priority for safe routes as they are more likely to walk or cycle. Out with this, buses are provided. However, where anyone wishes to walk or cycle it is certainly something we would wish to support. I have suggested some alternative paths for consideration. These will always be a personal choice, so I'm happy to receive any comments on this suggestion.

My suggested route, starting at Woodmill High, is as follows;

From Woodmill travel along Woodmill Road (or the residential roads) to Linburn Road. Linburn Road and Masterton Road have shared use footways along the east side to Carnegie Avenue. There is a toucan crossing being installed on Masterton Road to get you to Carnegie Avenue and an existing crossing on Carnegie Avenue to get you to the south side of Carnegie Avenue. On here, officially, the route is on road along a short section of Carnegie Avenue and then left into Castle Brae, then right into Castle Drive. This route is quite quiet on road with low traffic speeds. At the end of Castle Drive where you meet Queensferry Road there is a signalised crossing to take you to the west side of Queensferry Road then you are back onto your routes around Pitreavie and beyond.

As I say, you may not prefer this route but it's something to consider. I hope this has offered some help. For any improvements Phil Clarke is the best person to look into your requests and I have spoken to him today to discuss this. Some of the issues identified are being considered, but like everything, take time and have to compete for funding. Support from cyclists like yourself will help us keep pressing ahead with making improvements throughout Fife, maintaining Fife Council as a leading authority in providing cycle routes and facilities.

Essentially, this seems to be saying that it's all Transport Scotland's fault, which actually makes a lot of sense, although the idea that I would take this up with Transport Scotland, rather than my locla authority doing it seemed a little absurd. Once you get past the A985 (and bearing in mind that this response is in terms of road safety) cycling between the village and Dunfermline isn't too bad, although I've not tried that suggested route. I replied:

Thanks for your response. I appreciate you taking the time to look at each of the sections of the route and provide feedback. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to come back to you. I have only a couple of comments on those, which are in the context of qualified but general agreement with most of the points you make.

I wonder if you could provide me with some information about the Council’s relationship with Transport Scotland, specifically about how the relationship between the trunk road network and Fife’s local roads network is managed. I ask because it seems odd to me that Fife’s fairly  progressive approach towards pedestrians and cyclists can be undermined by, what appears to me at least, Transport Scotland’s indifference. It struck me last Friday as I was taking my daughter to nursery, crossing at the Shell roundabout, that on local roads, where there is a reasonable volume of traffic, a safe crossing and often a pedestrian refuge is provided. On the A985, where traffic volumes can be higher and speeds are much higher, apart from a few dropped kerbs, there is no specific provision for pedestrians or cyclists at all between Kings Road and the Kincardine Bridge.

Transport Scotland's attitude seems to be to make marginal (and questionable) improvements like reducing speed limits and then wait to see how long it is before someone dies. That may not be how it is but it's how it seems. Of course, what it actually does is establish the road as a barrier, encouraging people into cars (and to a lesser extent, buses) and discouraging walking and cycling. So, while pedestrian accidents might be low, pedestrian (and cyclist) traffic is also low. 

It seems to me that although there are a couple of major network improvements that would improve the link between Limekilns and Dunfermline, and I await Phil's comments on my response to his email, the A985 will be a significant impediment until there are paths along it and crossings over it that allow people to safely join the local roads towards Dunfermline. Hence my question about the relationship between the Council and Transport Scotland.

A few specific points (leaving all the trunk road stuff aside).

Kings Road Roundabout – I appreciate that a pedestrian refuge wide enough to accommodate a trailer might be difficult and expensive (although not impossible) but a combination of wider and longer would work. Personally, I think that whole roundabout would benefit from becoming a light-controlled junction given the uneven traffic flow. In the absence of that, a Toucan crossing seems to me to be perfectly reasonable at that point. In general, the A985 would benefit from more measures that allow traffic to be stopped.

Rosyth Station roundabout - I take your point about the design of the crossing although in the absence of the crossing, getting across from the service road does require a cyclist to be pretty bold and assertive in stopping cars that are coming off the roundabout and catching the eye of traffic joining the roundabout to create a gap where the kerb drops.

Pitreavie Roundabout - I'm sorry to have to disagree with the premise of your view that nothing needs done here. In the time I've been cycling around there I think I've seen three other cyclists and maybe 15-20 pedestrians. That might reflect my timing (probably 9.20-9.30am and 4.30pm and 5pm) although I expect its more likely that there haven't been any cyclist and pedestrian accidents because anyone with any sense would avoid that roundabout if they could. The absence of cyclist and pedestrian traffic is the evidence of a road with a safety problem. Of course, this applies generally: people do not cycle because there is a road safety problem. More fundamentally, unless I misunderstood Phil's original response, there should be no pedestrian / cyclist conflicts here because riding on the pavement around here is illegal. So I should either be on the road, acting legally, where there would certainly be a road safety issue, or the path should be redesigned and redesignated for shared use so that I can ride on it legally. 

Carnegie Avenue - The path on the north side of the road is quite good fun coming down although the surface is a little rutted and washed away from heavy rain. For the time being I'll continue to ride up on the pavement, accepting that it's illegal and relying on the good nature of pedestrians and my experience that the police just smile. Depending on the weather I'll come down on the road or the north path.

Apologies again for taking so long to reply

Best wishes