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.
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The crossing over the A90 near Kirkliston took 11 months to construct following the demolition of the original 1964 span.
More than 200 engineers, designers and other staff from Edinburgh City Council and contractor Balfour Beatty have been involved in building the new crossing, which measures 33m wide and includes state-of-the-art stainless-steel reinforcement to maximise its lifespan, expected to be 120 years.
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HOW should it be fixed?
quickest fix is to move the give way lines on the rush hour shortcut motorway exit slip, back behind the dropped kerb. thus giving peds and cyclists priority crossing. fat chance, eh.
i presume they thought that there would not be many cyclists turning left as most are headed city-bound, and those that do want to turn left will just have to pirouette on a sixpence at the estate entrance round the corner to make an impossible left turn onto the cyclepath, or more likely just come to a confused stop at the side of the road and get off the bike and turn around manually.
any way you slice it, a knowing compromise was made to the advantage of motorists using the rush hour shortcut, and to the specific detriment of active travellers, wilfully ignoring the transport scotland sustainable transport hierarchy.
of course if you're not a cyclist, it all looks great.
@bax, It is a flater route and so will be used by some (and all options should be permitted) but where would you be going other that wouldn't be served by either climbing past Craigies or going up Standingstane road?
They have essentially, although not explicitly designed it with no right turn option for any vehicles.
“They have essentially, although not explicitly designed it with no right turn option for any vehicles.“
That sounds dubious/potentially dangerous(?)
where would you be going other that wouldn't be served by either climbing past Craigies or going up Standingstane road?
i do circuits here every day. along queen elizabeth yard, down standingstanes, along to cramond brig, then back up to dalmeny, then back down standingstanes.. rinse and repeat.
seems it will be safer overall to keep dropping down and using the underpass, then back up the hill pavement on the other side. but should i have to? the dutch wouldn't have to.
@bax, no you shouldn't. I was only considering destinations not circuits. No ideal option but the west end of the underpass is quite like pirouetting on a sixpence to.
@chdot, I haven't been to the bridge yet but expect the no right turn is explicit for motor vehicles.
the underpass loopback and additional minor pirouette is no problem but dropping down there a few times a day and back up the other side adds time that potentially denies me an extra full circuit, as overall time is limited and i must return to the kingdom by sundown lest i turn into a lothian pumpkin.
and we can't have that... the dutch wouldn't have that.
Cllr @kevin_lang has tweeted a video of the new bridge. It seems to have a cycle lane going eastbound, but which only starts halfway across the bridge, and nothing westbound. Does anyone know what the point of that is supposed to be? (I have asked him, but no reply yet.)
Also, looking at the map, it has occurred to me: does anyone from Kirkliston really need to use that road and junction at all?
It's the only road out of Kirkliston that is lower category than a B road (ie, unclassified) which ought to be a hint as to its intended minimal use, it really shouldn't be used as a rat run, and which could and probably should be entirely avoided by encouraging use of the junction of the A90 and A800 at the edge of Queensferry, which is negligibly longer and probably much quicker. A new eastbound on-ramp to the A90 there would probably help, however, rather than having to spiral into Queensferry and onto the A90 via the roundabout.
I assume that the main reason that the Burnshot junction and bridge exists is for access to the military base? If it wasn't for that, I suspect they might just have closed off this minor road when the dual carriageway was built?
As it is in theory not a main road, it is a popular quiet country road for cycling (apart from at commute times, I assume?). The logical thing for the council to do (as well as re-signpost from all around to encourage travel via the B800 as above) would be to reduce the road to single track pinch points (with cycle bypasses, of course) every few hundred metres to discourage unnecessary use west of the military base. That's what our Netherlands friends would do.
That and the Dalmeny chord being built so that trains can be re-routed and Kirkliston given a railway station, of course. I might even go so far as to suggest a joint "Winchburgh and Kirkliston" station midway between the two, with a high quality cycleway alongside the B9080 to link it and both villages.
There is a westbound route on the path, although annoyingly it curves back on itself so you have to give way to traffic on the sliproad, you then have to follow the path to re-enter the road, both of which I would've said are fairly hazardous.
Although it is mildly annoying for the eastbound/northbound route, you can still turn on the entrance to the estate in a pretty safe manner & given the lack of people likely to be using that route I can understand why they have done it in that way.
I would also say that the Burnshot Road has never really been a 'quiet country road'. It has always been pretty busy so I can see why they have had to reinstate the bridge.
Couldn't you just drive in via the perfectly named Newbridge? Feels like the Dutch would've made that road a "cars are guests" style cycle road linking up those towns.
@stiltskin, I didn't say that the bridge didn't need to be replaced, it is needed for access to the military base and for essential local access to the farms and houses along the road after all.
My point was that in no way should the most minor (and twisty, poor sightlines, etc) road coming out of Kirkliston be encouraged/tolerated as a commuter rat run. Going to/from the A90 via the B800 means the use of more appropriate (and just about as direct) roads, and both soft (revised destination signposting) and hard measures (pinch points) should be put in place to encourage such a change of habit.
Something that transport engineers sadly often seem to forget is that people will just continue to keep driving the routes they always have done, unless strong active steps are taken to guide/steer them towards the desired new route.
@Rob, I agree that via Newbridge "should" be the most direct route of all, but I suspect that it probably gets rather clogged up with motons getting in each others' way at rush hours.
The "cars are guests" concept is exactly what I was thinking of for Burnshot Road, yes!
Oooh, sorry, I didn't know the details on how they implemented them. It really would be the perfect way to extend the A90 cycle route out west through that series of towns.
I also suspected the queues through Newbridge would be the reason for the desire to get the bridge restored, but it must surely generate plenty of through traffic in Kirkliston, both from the west and avoiding the aforementioned queues from the south.
I guess if you're busy elsewhere being through traffic, the through traffic at home doesn't bother you so much.
I was looking at the B800 on street view and found this beauty of a queue into Kirkliston -
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xWd62Ld7ne26ypwR6
Not sure if it was before or after the closure.
The new Burnshot Bridge opened today
Ha! I by coincidence happened to go over it today and assumed it had been open for a while. Completely pointless bicycle lane on it, mind you.
"What would the Dutch have done" (Bax)
The Dutch wouldn't have a road like this at all - in broad terms. In an area like this with lots of bigger roads the Dutch would insist that through traffic sticks to the larger roads, and would make this a no through road other than for bikes - and an access road only for local traffic. Then they'd probably add wide cycle tracks along both sides and remove the centre line - a bit like Gogar Station Road, but without any through traffic.
At least that's what I think.
Completely pointless bicycle lane on it, mind you.
a mandatory one at that, substandard width, with a solid white line
the idea was to keep cyclists off the pedestrian pavement (usual shared use build, ironically) because the pavement ends behind the slip road give way markings
and obviously keep pesky cyclists off the main carriageway as well, so lets just have some paint on the road, job done
i reckon in their heads they have prioritised cycling here
a mandatory one at that, substandard width, with a solid white line
Goodness, I hadn't even realised it was a solid line. Seemed odd only being on one side of the road. Ah well...
you can still turn on the entrance to the estate in a pretty safe manner
decided to test this on lap one this morning
its do-able if you take the widest possible arc, but there's not much margin for error, and you need to be assured of a five second window where there's no-one coming either way on the cyclepath.. if you don't have that window then there's nowhere safe to slow down and wait.. you're risking being rear ended by dozy motorist exiting the motorway slip shortcut.. so for these reasons, i'm out.
on lap two i did the dodgy desire line cut-through and realised its more or less the same set up as the lothian road / shandwick place / queensferry street dropped kerb through the ped island routine
ie. its officially for disabled pedestrian access, but nudge nudge, wink wink, mind how you go, at your own risk
so going by our ever-generous jockland engineering standards that's the deal, take it or leave it, and i'll just have to accept it
I passed that way too yesterday on my evening ride. Saw a lady try to take the cyclepath from the Kirkliston side. The signage is misleading so she went down some kind of access track to the A90 first before realizing the mistake and coming back onto the bridge.
If I hadn't seen her do this I would have made the same mistake. It's really not clear.
The design is pants but for the moment at least it's fairly quiet as I don't think many drivers know it is open.
“fairly quiet as I don't think many drivers know it is open“
Time for some strategic cones??
Or “local access only” signs.
she went down some kind of access track
yeah that one's a cracker cos it starts with a dropped kerb over at the left hand side northbound motorway slip entrance, so could catch anyone out, as the other pave doesnt have a dropped kerb at all, to firmly encourage you instead onto the mandatory painted lane.
the access track ends at a steep flight of wooden stairs which i expect goes down to the A90 roadside under the bridge itself ? who knows
I've still not been since it opened but the access track sounds like it's the path down to the bus stop on the A90.
your theory confirmed this morning, @ac
and they'd have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those pesky kids
my day three final report:
* ill-considered signage and layout for eastbound cyclists
* cyclists continuing northbound disadvantaged contrary to the prevailing traffic flow by the advanced give way markings on motorway slip
4/10 - must try harder
*cue wobbly screen and misty haze*
Once in the 2 or 3 years when I regularly got the bus to fife the bus actually stopped at that stop and my eyes were opened to see the wooden staircase. I don't think I would have know it was there if it wasn't for the single passenger who alighted there that day.
Back at the start of the Burnshot saga, I was up there in the early evening just after the old bridge was fenced off. There was a forlorn looking individual
standing by the fence.
She had just got off the bus and was wanting to cross the road to get home to the lodge house.
Thankfully for her she had phoned her dad to pick her up.
I am intrigued by these secret wooden steps. Is it like the one you have to shoulder bikes down on the Dalmeny-Newbridge path down to Standingstane Road by the water treatment plant or more like the one down to Crewe Road North from the NEPN?
Is that a stylistic or functional question?
They are visible on streetview here:https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9715602,-3.3291776,3a,75y,206.54h,86.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCSOLXzmxl9an2jMueo7f3A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Unless you plan on taking you bike on the bus to Fife (or at least Dalmeny/Queensferry) then there is no reason to shoulder it down the stairs. Cycling is forbidden on the A90.
Overlap with previous post
Wasn't planning on cycling on the A90, though the presence of a link between the bus stop and the bridge might one day be useful if I ever have a folding bike and complicated commute involving a bus. The steps between Dalmeny and Newbridge stick in my mind from lugging bike+toddler down them as they're in between bits of a bike path. It's always seemed a damp and rotting sort of place at that bit of the A90 path so wondered how usable such steps were.
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