By Becki Cox
Earlier this week Women in Transport Scotland held our “Fascinating World of Street Design” event, which was both our first in-person gathering since our launch and also our first active travel focussed event. The event was coordinated by our Active Travel Lead, Becki Cox of Glasgow University, and we were privileged to be joined by WiT Scotland member Isla Jackson, structural engineer and Director at Civic Engineers, who led the walking tour along Sauchiehall Street.
We were a fairly small group but with attendees from Glasgow, Stirling and Edinburgh, all with an interest in understanding from Isla how a major public realm project like the Avenues can meet and manage the complex, often competing demands made of a city centre street. Conversation ranged from the niche details of tree pits and paving slab consistency through to the challenges of designing physically inclusive bus infrastructure through to securing political buy-in from elected Members for active travel projects (and everything in between!) The fact we only managed to walk about 300m in an hour indicates the level of animated discussion and the breadth of topics on offer.
One of the unexpected silver linings of the Covid-19 pandemic is that simply being able to meet together in person again and hold face to face conversation feels like such a joy. Indeed, having assembled at our meeting point at the western end of Sauchiehall Street and introduced ourselves, it was a good half an hour before we actually started walking. “Virtual” communication and video calls have undoubtedly played a key part in enabling connection to continue these past 18 months but talking face to face is qualitatively different and I was really struck by how powerful it felt to sit side by side and engage with each other professionally.
As well as learning from Isla, I think we were all able to learn from each other as we all brought our own interest and experience to the discussions. Certainly, new relationships were formed and professional networks expanded as we learned how we could support each other with our own future projects. We all agreed that it was just a shame we hadn’t had time to hear more from Isla about her own professional experience but we’re hoping she may be willing to join us for a future “in conversation with” event. Watch this space!
With thanks to our sponsors Transport Scotland, Network Rail and Momentum Transport Consultancy and also Isla Jackson of Civic Engineers for your time and enthusiasm.
If you weren’t able to join us on the day, we hope this blog gave you a glimpse of what our events are about. We have a Scotland hub LinkedIn group where you can engage with other members, in addition to our dedicated webpage.
We are always delighted to welcome new Women in Transport members, volunteers and partners. If you’d like to become a member, you can sign up to the network via the website here or contact us at scotland@womenintransport.com.
