A Wishaw social enterprise are swapping bicycles for skateboards after receiving funding from a Scottish Government scheme.
Socialtrack will be running the first boarding active travel project in Scotland through funding from their Paths for All initiative.
Neil Morrison, from Socialtrack, said: “This project was born through our work in schools. We were always aware that there is a plateau to getting people on bikes. The cost, parental apathy, or just parents who don’t feel our streets are safe enough to let kids on the road.
“Skateboards or longboards answer two of those issues. You’ll use it on the pavement and the cost is significantly reduced.
“We saw straight away the difference in cost could make a difference. In a school we were working in for years, kids who never made the shift to come on a bike, made the shift to coming by board in a week.
“We also realised that we work in rural and semi-rural locations. These areas are not going to be affected by active travel plans designed for cities.
“We have had schools who were in our programme to receive free bikes tell us that they could not give the bikes to children in certain locations as the local roads would be a death trap.
“We have found that teenage girls, a demographic missed out in many biking studies, embrace skateboarding.
"This cohort doesn’t gel with most of the current efforts at getting people to actively travel, but by using boards we can start to turn that tide.
“We feel that organisations working within active travel need to broaden their views on what is and isn’t active travel. We should not allow our preconceived notions stop or hinder a change that is already starting to happen.”
Socialtrack launched its new scheme at Strathclyde Park where dozens of kids as well as North Lanarkshire Council leader Jordan Linden got on their boards for the fun-filled event.
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