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.
By the New Town, I mean north of Queen St.
Loadsa cars at rush hour, all dog-legging and jinking about. All vying to get there a nanosecond faster. Making the back roads unpleasant for residents, cyclists & pedestrians alike.
Never realised how bad it is until now.
At the very least, Scotland St should be blocked to through motor traffic as it's NCN75. And the E-W routes crossing it at Abercromby Pl & Drummond Pl should also be blocked.
Always connected sat navs (google maps, waze) have significantly contributed to this by highlighting and directing people down unconventional rat-runs they'd never have discovered by themselves
Queen Street - a 6 lane motorway through the centre of the city.
20mph? Try double that
Aye it's bad, as I discovered on Monday en route to Belford Road. Some drivers pulling crazy manoeuvres to try and steal a march on their competitors. Has always been bad, but worse now due to Leith Street disruption, Leith Walk roadworks etc. I suspect it's mainly locals doing the rat-running.
Been tried, ripped out due to scofflaw drivers and a lack of cojones from the council & police to enforce (quelle surprise)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/2739206/How-drivers-reclaimed-the-streets.html
What's more, congestion has never really been a problem. The well-planned grid of straight and spacious streets has, so far, always managed to absorb the city's steadily increasing traffic.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Who are they kidding
However in 2004 camera control of bus gates wasn't possible. If you wanted to enforce you needed rising bollards.
The upbeat petrolhead fervour with which that article is written is actually quite upsetting.
"The upbeat petrolhead fervour with which that article is written is actually quite upsetting."
I know, but it was the best summary of events I could find.
That video is hilarious! I love the way the number plate popped off the first car. And the second wet itself! :-D
I feel sure that the closure of the top of Broughton Street a wee while ago has contributed as well as motorists were rerouted along Albany Street instead. Many of them just kept using it which makes it a very scary place to pass going downhill as there are now ALWAYS drivers there waiting to pull out.
From the article:-
Quite how Paramics worked baffled most onlookers, but it was apparently a well-respected system that was programmed to consider almost any form of driver behaviour other than illegal acts.
Well there's your problem.
Further past details here:
http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/10/12_edinburgh_today_-_central_edinburgh_traffic_management_scheme.htm
Actually, for something which is held up as some kind of victory for the motoring lobby, it's remarkable how much of it did stick (or was briefly removed then returned). Eg
- cars removed from Princes St
- traffic lights at Hanover/George St junction rather than a cyclist mincer roundabout
- Queensferry St car access removed from South
- Cornwallis St remained closed to through traffic - if, like the OP, you think Scotland St is bad now (personally I don't), imagine it without this
And having lived in the area in the past, my view is the London St closure definitively should have been retained. Still, the council got their revenge on the local NIMBYs by sending ALL the through traffic past their hooses during the tram construction...
if, like the OP, you think Scotland St is bad now (personally I don't)
It's not so much Scotland St that's bad, more the cross-traffic (E-W) at the junctions on it. Drivers trying to cross a wide road like Scotland St show no respect for cyclists. They just edge out and push past any cyclist that may be going uphill, or pull out without "seeing" a downhill cyclist, forcing the cyclist to brake or go around them.
The other roads like Cumberland St, Great King St, Northumberland St are also bad for rat-running.
On the outskirts of the city they've also inadvertently made a good old fashioned rat run around the Gogarburn area. For some reason I never put 2+2 together and realised so many cars cut down by Gogar Station Road and through the RBS campus to avoid the Gyle roundabout. Some of the driving on that road is properly scary, whether on the bike or even when walking along the pavement.
"It's not so much Scotland St that's bad, more the cross-traffic (E-W) at the junctions on it"
Ah, I see. So not really Scotland St per se, more Drummond Place/Dublin St and their junctions with London St/Albany St? I would be in agreement there.
Drummond Place is pretty bad, especially as a pedestrian. In terms of traffic engineering, it seems to be one of these corridors that is simultaneously considered a main route but also isn't: lots of traffic heading for Stockbridge is sent down it from the roundabout, but barely any attempt is made to make it pedestrian friendly, suggesting it's thought of as the quiet, residential road it should be.
Eyre Place and Albany Street have a similar problem.
The Telegraph article - was the writer really called Hamish Scot, or did the Telegraph need to make up a name that sounded "Scottish"
my view is the London St closure definitively should have been retained
I'd forgotten about this! Would definitely make a big difference, as would closing Albany Street to through traffic (residents would be supportive of that given the reported subsidence and damage to under-road cellars that the increased use due to tram works diversions caused).
My only concern in all of these nice to have closures is the amount of traffic that would get put onto Broughton Street. It's a local High Street and should be reduced to the width of two lanes, with widened pavements and a uphill segregrated cycle lane.
"closing Albany Street to through traffic (residents would be supportive of that ...)"
You'd think so, but you can never be sure in that part of the world - look at the decade-long rearguard action fought against communal bins; many people seemed happier tiptoeing through their gull-strewn stinking garbage than suffer a few car-sized bins...
My only concern in all of these nice to have closures is the amount of traffic that would get put onto Broughton Street.
People think that traffic is like water going down a sewer, that if you block the drain, the drain will flood. However, traffic is not a force of nature, instead it is product of human choices. So when the roads are blocked, the drain does not flood, instead some of the water (traffic) "goes away".
I think closure of both those streets would be more likely to displace traffic to Queen St/Dundas St/Howe St in the short term would it not? Or are you thinking more would end up heading all the way down to Brandon St or Ferry Road? Turning the roundabout into a signalised crossroads might discourage that (and free up acres of space.)
Incidentally, the mini roadabout by the Botanics ought to be turned into two adjacent bends so traffic can't go straight down Inverleith Place, westbound traffic being directed north and eastbound south. This enables access to the gardens for cars and (primarily) the bus, but prevents the Inverleith Terrace rat run.
The priorities of the junction at Dublin St and Abercrombie Pl seem to have been changed overnight to favour the Albany St / Abercrombie Pl rat-run.
Cyclists on National Cycle Route 75 now have to give way to speeding rat running cars!
Where was the consultation?! Where is the transport hierarchy?!
Dublin St has had the priority for most of the past 15 years and more. It was changed in 2012 to give Abercromby Place traffic the priority, but reverted the following year I think, and has been that way since.
According to Google streetview, Dublin St had priority from at least 2014 until October 2022.
My recollection is it was only changed a few weeks ago
Dublin St has been like that for a while. I think it's due to York Place being eastbound only at the moment while they put the cycle lane in. Presumably Priority will be restored once York Place is opened again.
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