@Stickman, were any of those vehicles actually loading or are they all parking?
@newtoit, Odd that the petition seems to be set to only be active for 24 hours. I wonder if there's a reason.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Roseburn to Leith consultation begins (and the debate continues!) CCWEL
(5559 posts)-
Posted 8 years ago #
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As far as I could tell most weren't loading. There was a DPD van that stopped briefly with a parcel, but that was it. I was there for about 5 minutes on my way into town and for about 15 minutes coming back.
Posted 8 years ago # -
acsimpson - The KNS guy chose to lodge his petition on the day Parliament is dissolved, meaning it can only be open for one day. Probably the worst day to lodge a petition.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Interestingly, Mr P G of KNS fame has created a petition for congestion charging in all Scottish cities.
Actually his petition is limited to "every major Scottish city (population over 300,000)" - so Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Posted 8 years ago # -
When schools break up the traffic flow halves.
Actually not true. I read an article some time in the last year, probaly written or linked by Ranty Highwayman, that explained while the drop in volume is low (15% if I recall) vehicle queues ('delays') drop exponentially explaining the holiday effect.
The same applies to any other transport mode. If one in ten car journeys are switched to bikes or buses, the whole city all of a sudden will 'flow' much better.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@ Klaxon - that's interesting. Because it looks like half the traffic has vapourised.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I imagine some of the journeys during term time are two part routes, the first to the school of the child then the next to the work of the driver. This leads to congestion near schools and then heavy volume on all arterial roads.
I think it is higher than a fifteen per cent drop when you add all of the teachers not going to work and all the parents enjoying a break from work to spend quality time with their children.
I found the streets very quiet in Edinburgh in the run up to Xmas when the bridge was closed. A chunk of Edinburgh traffic is the Fife commute for sure.
Taxing single occupant cars would reduce congestion by a big factor? Assuming it led to car sharing. I think car sharing has become less popular. people used to share to lower costs and reduce days you had to drive?
Posted 8 years ago # -
I know where all the traffic has gone: it's all been backed up on Easter Road for most of this week, then accelerating like Nelson Piquet to get through the green light when it gets the chance. 90% single occupant cars, of course. To think fewer than 40 people at a time can use so much space and cause so much pollution. Absolutely crazy.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@Rosie: Found it! Sadly a news article so less well cited than a more academic article.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Interesting the huge contrast in tone between the Cambridge News and the Edinburgh Evening News. I suppose that's the difference a critical mass of cyclists makes.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I wonder if traffic levels tend to reach a kind of equilibrium in which the congestion for all vehicle users is *just* tolerable, but no worse? Perhaps if a road is seen to be flowing freely, it encourages more drivers to use it, to the point at which it's still possible to proceed at a (just) acceptable speed, but no more.
Conversely, a road choked to the extent that delays are intolerable perhaps encourages some of its users to get out of their cars and walk/cycle/take the bus (if bus lane present), to the point at which the congestion is once again tolerable.
If this equilibrium point is very sensitive to smallish changes in traffic volume, then the small reduction in school holiday periods is sufficient to result in free flowing traffic.
I wonder if there have been any studies that confirm this effect?
Posted 8 years ago # -
From Klaxon's link above -
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One hundred and thirty seven vehicles is not a lot, yet removing those 8 per cent of cars significantly increases the speed of the remaining traffic.
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Posted 8 years ago # -
@panyagua Good point. I don't know much about traffic modelling, but from a general feeling about dynamic systems and equilibria this sounds quite reasonable.
I'm not sure if the reduction of queues during holidays tells us what would happen if we remove school traffic permanently. If it happens for only a few days, most other drivers won't adjust their behaviour, so you get less traffic on those days.
But if the roads are less busy for longer periods, you probably get other traffic moving in (e.g. people who would otherwise have taken the bus or walked to beat the congestion).
Posted 8 years ago # -
panyagua - That's the basis of "user equilibrium" trip assignment - used in some transport models to assign trips to specific routes. In effect, people will always try to use the quickest route between A and B. They will switch to a "quicker" route if their current route is slowed too much by congestion. Ultimately, this could lead to all routes between A and B having the same journey time, with people choosing routes for reasons other than time.
Posted 8 years ago # -
"
Then in London, a few years ago, something did change. Triggered in part by the early painted Superhighways, the first real attempts to cater for cycling, the sheer numbers of cyclists rose so high that it became absurd not to cater for them. Cyclist safety became a major political issue. Not just cyclists but major London businesses, emergency service workers, council leaders and London Assembly members came together to give us the space to do more. One of the most exciting moments in the fight over the East-West Superhighway was when dozens of household-name London employers joined together to demand that the route be built. It was their staff who were dying on the way to the office.
...
Our first zone 1 Superhighway scheme to be completed, at Vauxhall, has already shown huge increases in cycling, and - now the builders are out - none of the traffic disaster effects predicted by so many. In Walthamstow, opponents forecast gridlock on the main roads around the Village, and annihilation for the shops inside it. That hasn’t happened either. Bus journey times along Hoe Street are the same as they were. New shops have sprung up. One of the main opponents of the Walthamstow scheme has applied to open a pavement café.
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https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/human_streets_0.pdf
Posted 8 years ago # -
Related thought: I wonder if any programmes for encouraging behaviour change actually can have any effect on environmental impacts at all.
Assume you can encourage people to leave the car and cycle instead - as soon as this reduces traffic significantly, some other people will look out of the bus window and say: "Oh look, the roads are less busy now, so I'm going to take the car as it's so much more convenient than the bus".
Unless you reduce road capacity, I can't see how you can reduce motor traffic (and its environmental impacts).
Posted 8 years ago # -
There are other ways of discouraging private traffic, for example making parking spaces at workplaces taxable benefits and congestion charging zones.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Not so well versed with Edinburgh, but use of road capacity is almost as poor as use of the private cars that clog it up (average private car sitting idle/still 96 % of time - RACF Annual Motoring Survey).
In Glasgow the big problem is the presence and location of massive parking capacity right in the city centre, and the fact that perhaps 90% of the parked vehicles all try to arrive and leave at the same time via the routes impacted by congestion. At these times of day a cyclist will typically be overtaking cars at the rate of 2500-3000 vehicles per hour (counts taken from camera-using cyclists' commuting (c.2 miles/c.10 minutes/c.500 cars passed)
This is because there is a limit to the processing time for getting into/out of a car park and cleanly underway on the street. Earlier this year we saw massive issues at Bluewater when the 13,000 space car park emptied at the end of a shopping day. Drivers were having a 2-3 hour wait to get out. This seems about right, using an optimistic 10 cars/minute (6 second) time to clear the exit 'gate' cordon. With just one exit that amounts to around 22 hours to empty the car park, if all try to leave at the same time. Thus the 2-3 hours seems about right for 2 lanes of traffic heading to 4 points of the compass (8 'exits')
Glasgow has at least 20,000 off street parking spaces in the central core and most are emptying at the same time. The main M8 accesses are gridlocked for barely a hour, each evening with the roads deserted - seriously empty by 7 pm on most evenings. Any other resource so under-used would be closed and ripped up...
Posted 8 years ago # -
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Herne Hill, south London, the closure of a road to motorists (it was still open for pedestrians and cyclists) caused fury. Businesses complained it would slash their trade. The Herne Hill Society now says it has been "crucial to the continuing regeneration of Herne Hill” and is “such a success that it now seems strange that it attracted so much controversy”.
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http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/the-utterly-amazing-growth-of-cycling-in-london/019317
Posted 8 years ago # -
@Stephan and/or the population spreads due to reduced commute times.
I've had the same discussion with myself and concluded that cycling infrastructure cannot reduce the number of cars on the road in the long term. To do that, you have to make driving more difficult (reduce capacity, reduce parking, increase costs).
Adding cycling infrastructure (as with bus lanes) allows people to bypass the increased difficulty while still getting to where they need to.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@Klaxon Yes, of course. I guess it's about the total "cost" (money as well as time).
The point I'm trying to make is that just encouraging people to cycle won't reduce traffic unless you also actively discourage people to drive, because everybody who switches from car to bike makes it a bit easier for other drivers and this will encourage somebody else to drive.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@Erob Yes, that's what I thought too.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Posted 8 years ago #
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So P Gregson got three times as much space in the minutes to talk about the cycle 'track' (goodness that word annoys me) as H Whaley (to whom kudos for speaking out). Does anyone who was there have a view on whether the meeting was as partisan as the minutes make it feel?
Posted 8 years ago # -
There's something about the turn of phrase "keen cyclist" and the way it gets used by community councils: almost like it's a term of disparagement.
Still useful to know what PG is up to: he's a one-man wave of reactionary fervour on this matter, is he not?
Posted 8 years ago # -
Yes, "keen cyclist" annoys me much more than "track". I'm sure H Whalley (respect) didn't introduce himself as such. Three times the opportunity for PG to continue making a fool of himself. The police are being "tricky"! Probably not agreeing with him. Does anyone else get the impression from the minutes that Cllr Balfour's maybe feeling he's backed the wrong horse?
Posted 8 years ago # -
Cllr Balfour's maybe feeling he's backed the wrong horse?
I doubt it. I wrote to him to say how disappointed I was that he was giving backing to such a hostile, aggressive and divisive campaign; that I accepted he had a different view on the plans but that name-calling and anger towards cyclists can end up in dangerous incidents on the road.
His response didn't suggest he was likely to reconsider.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@greenroofer 3:1 is about right (and better than last time). You also had PG heckling me when I did start to talk which got him a telling off from the Chair.
I also talked about choosing to cycle rather than impacting others by creating pollution and congestion by driving. And that locally we have a vicious circle of driving kids to school because parents don't feel safe with Active Travel options, so they sit strapped into the back of cars instead.
I also pointed out that we all wanted the conclusions of the consultation to be published soon so that a decision can be made. It was unlikely to be forgotten so the 2nd petition was unnecessary.
Same as last time, I chose not to pick apart PG'S arguments but put forward the positive position.
A few people cam up to me during and after the meeting and said we'll done. I'm not sure if they agreed with my position or just for being brave (but hey you have to brave just to commute by bike).
The one disappointment was that only Cllr Balfour was present. Cllr Ross was at the SNP meeting where he got made leader but I don't know about Cllr Edie, which was shame as I would have liked to know if he had rethought his objections in light of us showing his compromise wouldn't have worked.
I also heard later from someone not at the meeting that they had heard I'd done a good job and they wondered if I was from the council!
I'll keep at it, this is a something too important to lose.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Well done for going HankChief, seems like you made your points well.
Saw in the minutes that Allan Hutcheon is to leave the project. Any idea what he's doing?
I thought he was very impressive at the consultation, actually listening to people rather than just saying "okay well write it down on the comments form", and really taking ideas on board.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I re-read my response from Cllr Balfour. Bizarrely, he signed the petition without agreeing with it:
As you will be aware I do have major concerns with the present proposals and will not rehears those again. I signed the petition along with Cllr Ross and Edie because I think it shows the over whelming concern many local people have and the local business in Roseburn Terrace. I seek to represent all views of local people and I will continue to do this even if I have come to a different position.
I do not agree with everything in the petition as I want to the scheme continue but with a revised route which takes out the main road
Posted 8 years ago #
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