News on Inverness Active Travel

Developing the Inverness City Active Travel Network is not just about changing the layout of the roads based on modelling and traffic engineering. To create and develop environments and streets that are safer, more attractive and more enjoyable to use for a wide variety of people, we also look at the spaces directly around the actual roads and how we can improve them.

Erz is an award-winning landscape and urban design studio who will assist us in developing those spaces around the streets. They will explore and find out what places are important to you and propose how we can improve them, for example by using eye-catching materials and making sure facilities such as benches and lighting are in the right places. Erz will also help us with signs and wayfinding materials, which we will put in place to assist people who are not familiar in the area to find their way around.

To do this, we would like to better understand how you use the space when you are on foot, wheeling, or scooting. Therefore, Erz will be organising events to engage with local communities . It is an opportunity for everyone to learn more about how we can transform places, and for Erz and the project team to find out how you want to make your place more attractive, more enjoyable and safer.

Felicity Steers, director of Erz: “Murray, Emily, Jenna and I are really looking forward to working with the people of Inverness to explore the added value that community knowledge can bring to Active Travel. Places have communal history and shared meaning, and this can be used to enrich the design of footpaths and cycle routes, ensuring these new ways are fully connected and useful to the neighbourhoods they pass through”.

Erz work with communities throughout Scotland, to develop ideas and create designs for convivial and delightful landscapes. They are not new to Inverness, having provided plans and designs for New Craigs Hospital including enhancements of walking routes, the design and implementation of waymarking features and structural planting, Recent work has included the new Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow, visitor routes around the Callanais Standing Stones and designs for the Active Travel Boardwalk at Balgray Reservoir in East Renfrewshire. Their team includes landscape architects, architects, artists and urban designers, and all their work is based on community and client dialogue and collaborative processes.

Website: Erz Studio