CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
Not green belt, but;
They have been lovingly tended by generations of green-fingered families since the 1920s.
But now angry residents are battling plans to build new homes on the site of 90-year-old allotments at Telferton, between Craigentinny and Portobello.
Not council allotments, but long-established "informal" allotments on privately owned land.
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MSP Gordon MacDonald, of the SNP, is also opposed to the new development plans because he believes there is a lack of infrastructure in the area.
At peak times in particular, he believes there is not enough space on the roads for more traffic, and believes that local primary schools in the area are reaching their maximum capacity of pupils.
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http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/balerno-anger-as-green-belt-homes-approved-1-3858564
"West Mill Road is a dead end and nobody could get out for about 30 minutes, which is frankly almost criminal in its lack of consideration."
While I have every sympathy for those who suffer as a result of works traffic, I think Jack Wishart of the West Mill Bank Proprietors’ Association wins the Hysterical Loon of the Week award with that line.
Colinton spelled "Collington" in the caption?
I assume this is what's being built on the old Globespan / Porage Mill site.
If that's so, it's off that it's being called "Colinton Heights" given it's at the bottom of the river valley. Perhaps "Porage Depths" or "Globespan Glen" would have been better.
"West Mill Road is a dead end and nobody could get out for about 30 minutes, which is frankly almost criminal in its lack of consideration."
Only for motorists. If you're walking, on horseback or cycling then there's lots of routes into and out of it.
eta; @kaputnik
In a similar vein, i saw a development going by the name of "something-or-other Mews". Not a terrible name for a development in the New Town, apart from the properties in question not being mewses (what *is* the plural from of mews, anyway?).
@The Boy there's a townhouse sub-division/conversion on Queen Street being touted as a "spectacular development of 9 mews flats" or something similar.
Mew's?
Mews'?
Mewses?
The term mews is plural in form but singular in construction
Globe span in colinton all finished. Quite nice. Probably very dear? About ten cars in car park. The Kinleith Mill site is going to be huge with the wee blinkbonny road shut again to be reinforced but traffic will be stuck getting out in the morning when this development is finished. (No construction yet but massive amount of ground clearanc. Given the valley I anticipate three storey buildings at least. Scot gov appear to have over ruled council on ravelrig hill, another site with poor access.. Two other sites out this way will also be big if agreed. Who is buying these houses?
The term mews is plural in form but singular in construction
It comes from mew, originally a hiding place or a place of confinement, and this came to be the name both for the cage you kept poultry in when fattening a bird, and the cages, and buildings thereof, used for keeping your hawks during their moult. You could quite reasonably have one mew, or several (as mews). That mews (and meuse) tended to become the name for the buildings isn't too surprising.
Mews as buildings with a stable block and yard layout (by purpose and later by fancy) came about because the royal stables, in Charing Cross in London, were built on the site of the royal hawk mews. Stable blocks became adapted for living accommodation, and later in imitation for motor car accommodation with living accommodation on top.
"Shabby little houses" was how mews in London were described not 30 years ago. Now they're not just chic, they're 'compact' and 'bijoux' and ruinously expensive when you find them in the middle of expensive cities, despite the less than salubrious origins of their name.
Perhaps there's a market for realistically priced mews with garages just a few inches too narrow to accommodate the horseless carriage.
It was a nice evening last night and I was given permission so I went out on the bike for a few hours. Ended out at Shawfair by sun-down and was greeted by a fully complete, brightly lit and eerily abandoned new station with a large car park and even larger access road. Infact it seems both the bridge into Shawfair from both Millerhill Road and at Old Craighall Road have been "futureproofed" to be future expanded to dual carriageway. Slightly ironic thought I that the roads into a railway which had lots of its double track removed at the point of design were all generously double track and clearly there's expectation of them being doubled in the not too distant future.
There's a lot of lovely new roads built into the site, with a further access bridge (not connected to anything) over the railway at Shawfair Farm, with optimistic junctions and road stubs for future development.
The colliery site has been largely scraped clear of debris, the surrounding site is beginning to be contoured and the Ferguson coal yard gone, but the settling ponds polluted with minewater are still there, as is the concrete foundation slab of the pithead, complete with the narrow guage rails for bringing subterranean rolling stock up for maintenance. It looks like it will be quite some time before anyone is living in Shawfair.
As far as I can establish in the dark, there's no nice new convenient footpath / cycleways from the nearby villages at Newton, Millerhill and Danderhall.
But they've built the station anyway and a very nice station it is too, so if you build it perhaps they will come. By car anyway.
I thought it was very nice that all these roads in had been built in such a spirit of optimism for the vehicle-borne future of Shawfair. Wouldn't it be nice, thought I, if we were one half as forward looking and generous when it came to walking and cycling infrastructure.
There's also a great big new recycling / composting / waste-to-energy site nearing completion in the northwest corner of the railway yards land.
I assume this is what's being built on the old Globespan / Porage Mill site.
I think that this development is further up West Mill Road, closer to the junction with Colinton Road (or Collington Road, if you're a Evening News sub-editor).
However, this assumption is based solely on a glimpse of some hoardings as I went past nearby.
Once built, the transformation of West Mill from the industrial/commercial area it was in the 70s to a residential area will be complete.
The Kinleith Mill site is going to be huge with the wee blinkbonny road shut again to be reinforced but traffic will be stuck getting out in the morning when this development is finished
I've looked in vain for plans of what the junction with Lanark road is going to look like once road works are complete. If there's no lights then it's not going to be easy to get out - particularly at the evening rush hour.
@Aken you could try planning application 14/03079/AMC, drawings 29-32.
The transport statement document is also fairly comprehensive. Although most ammusingly it states "National Cycle Network Route 75 follows the WLW and provides a traffic free connection from Leith to Tarbert, Argyll via the ferry connections at Gourock and Portavadie."
More realistically it states;
3.3.4 Improvements to existing cycling connectivity to be provided are identified as undernoted:
• Provision of cycle ramps alongside improved west path to Lanark Road West
3.3.5 Cycle ramps will be provided alongside the west path connection to LRW to allow cyclists to utilise this route towards LRW.
Thanks - found the plans!. Didn't realise I'd been missing out on a trip to Argyll all this time!
Phew, the exit from the existing green belt development that is nether Currie is not impacted by the lights. Could be that I'll shave a few seconds off my average commute?
I'd like to remark on the floorplans for the truly delightful cycle storage sheds, where you'll have to open two separate inward swinging doors and walk through the refuse area to access your bike.
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5.1.10 A final barrier that was identified was the issue that Green Belt and other planning policies had to be defined up to 20 years into the future when funding streams were not certain even up to five years in the future.
Social inclusion and regeneration
5.1.11 Strengths with respect to social inclusion and regeneration were highlighted to be areas which had started to undergo regeneration such as Craigmillar and Prestonpans which are also currently priority areas. Road access to these areas was also perceived to be a strength.
5.1.12 Weaknesses were highlighted as being non-car access modes such as public transport, walking and cycling, particularly from Craigmillar and areas within Midlothian to the BioQuarter site and direct orbital public transport services, for example between Dalkeith and Musselburgh rather than radial access that requires a change of bus in the city centre. These orbital routes may provide increased accessibility to employment opportunities for currently excluded areas.
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https://cyclingedinburgh.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/seet-eps_final_report1.pdf
Presume this isn't actually Green Belt and is a 'good thing'(?)
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HUNDREDS of homes are set to be built on the grounds of a former psychiatric hospital in West Lothian in a bid to turn the derelict land into a thriving new community.
Bangour Village, which was once home to the Bangour Village Hospital and used as part of the set for a Hollywood film ten years ago, is being lined up for 800 homes – as well as shops, leisure facilities, a new primary school and a medical surgery.
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http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/800-new-homes-plan-for-old-hospital-site-1-3864870
"The abandoned site, located west of Dechmont, was officially opened in 1906, and catered for psychiatric patients. It has also been a maternity hospital."
I'm fairly sure that I know someone who was born there!
Re Bangour Village, does anyone know if the roads through there are cyclable? Would make a useful avoid-the-A89 route when cycling between Cairnpapple and Dechmont.
Bangour Village Hospital was built in a chalet-style, instead of wards/blocks, much like Gogarburn and Astlie Ainslie, so there's a lot of green space. There was also a general hospital on site but that was been cleared. Most of the old psychiatric hospital is still there, think the nurses hostel and the church are listed. Worth looking through the Urbex photos of the site if you like that sort of thing.
Is this the place you can see from the M8?
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The brownfield site has been left empty and unused ever since, with previous attempts to sell the land thwarted by the recession.
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Green figures have slammed the Garden District submission, branding it an attempt to “raid” the under-pressure greenbelt. But the developers said the proposal would help Edinburgh meet a “significant proportion” of its housing need in order to achieve long-term economic growth.
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Murray Estates have the money and the time to simply keep on submitting ever tinkered-with plans for this land until the council inevitably gives up and approves it. They then use various "current economic climate" arguments to change what it is that they actually build.
"until the council inevitably gives up and approves"
Or refuses.
Followed by an appeal to SG.
Resulting in...
Of course in some sort of 'different land use/value/taxation universe' (which the SNP is supposed to be keen on), CEC (or some other 'community interest') could buy at current (without planning permission) value and develop differently.
A GROUP of senior politicians has attacked the city’s housing masterplan amid claims crucial information on the hazardous presence of coal mines was not supplied to councillors before they approved it.
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