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.
Wot a good idea!
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Emergency crews work to get Scotland moving after a night of weather chaos, but still warn not to take to the roads on Tuesday evening.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11924238
Only Tuesday evening?!
"We would strongly urge people not to drive in the morning unless absolutely essential, and to take extra care if you have to travel."
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/Weather-update-Ice-tightens-its.6653383.jp
Well, all I can say is there must be an awful lot of folk out there with "essential business" this morning...
1 person, 1 car = essential business
So it would seem!
Not many trains (they don't work below -10) = more car journeys
Yes I was surprised that rail units can't handle low temperatures. When you add wind chill etc I can now 'understand' why they are so predictably unreliable.
From Twitter
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@EDI_Airport
We're open. All routes to the airport are extremely busy, please allow extra time for your journey to the airport.
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To get anywhere from here we need to rail or road, rail (first choice) is unreliable/non-existent, country roads out here are not cycle safe (even if Memsahib cycled) sooooo qed we have to take a car :-(
In our defence we have arranged a good condition 4x4 and have the appropriate training/experience not to get stuck and ruin the traffic flow, but it is still one more car being used directly as a result of the rail companies inability to provide reliable public transport in adverse conditions. I note, incidentally, that they're not blaming the exceptional snow for their problems, but rather the entirely predictable low temperatures >:-< doesn't bode well for the rest of the winter does it!
Edited to add: "essential" journey = I don't want to lose my job therefore I will attempt to get to work! I'm sure very many of those being insulted for getting stuck on the motorways hold a similar view. I wasn't there, however one cannot blame the majority of stuck drivers as it doesn't matter how prepared you are if cars in front have blocked the road :-/
Flawed transport systems/rules, but that's what we have.
IMHO we should forget the whole gritting circus, stop spending millions polluting our roadsides with salt and instead make it law that in adverse (ie lying snow/ice) conditions cars must be fitted with winter spiked tyres or chains and face large on the spot fines for non-compliance. It might end the "I crashed because the road wasn't gritted" lies at least and it would dramatically reduce the number of roads closed because of one muppet spinning themselves to a standstill on inappropriate tyres, a "winter" driving test would be nice as well, though I don't see it :-/
I'm not sure that spiked tyres would be a good idea as we rarely get complete snow coverage. Winter tyres would be a better idea, but I think it will take a few more conistently bad winters before people start looking at doing that.
The weather is too unpredictable in this country to make the necessary investments.
I think what needs investigated in any report into this debacle is "why" trains don't seem to work when it gets cold (rather than when it's thick with snow on the line, which is more obvious).
To my undeducated mind, it could be;
* extreme cold makes the unit itself fail, e.g. lubricants sieze up, supply air pipes freeze up
* extreme cold makes the points sieze (they have heaters in them that don't always work) or other parts of the signalling infrastructure fail
* frozen rail lines reduce adhesion and the train struggles to accellerate or brake
* general appalling weather means that train drivers can't get to work, so there's no-one to drive the trains
* ScotRail makes a corporate-level "H&S"-influenced decision to take trains off, "just in case".
It's odd how a train can get through to Glasgow on the E&G line, but can't get through to Bathgate on a line a few miles away (and infact, a shared line all the way to Ratho) using the same rolling stock from the same point of origin, making me think that 1,2 and 3 above aren't to blame in this case and 4 would require a decision to be made when/where to allocate drivers.
People just need to live close enough to work that they don't have this drama. When I read about commuters taking 12 hours to get to work due to the snow, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. In 12 hours you could *walk* over 30 miles, for goodness sake!
I'm sure there are some people who genuinely *can't* live closer to work, but suspect the M8 gridlock, for example, is 99.99% full of people who choose to commute long distance because they can (until, ahem, they find they can't).
Flawed transport systems/rules, but that's what we have.
Well, yes, but...to go back to an old argument, there is also a presumption that one can live miles from work and it is 'okay'. I will concede that not everyone can make this choice freely, especially given two income families, job changes etc, but it still strikes me as problematic when people 'choose' to live miles out of town, but work in city centre. We did look at some _nice_ out of town places that would have made us all very happy, but decided on somewhere where we could walk/cycle to work, shops etc, with trade-off that we have not enough space!
Just to re-iterate, I do understand that not everyone's location is a 'choice' but for some it is a 'lifestyle' thing, and I find myself rather less sympathetic when they 'can't get to work'.
"for some it is a 'lifestyle' thing, and I find myself rather less sympathetic when they 'can't get to work'"
A lot is always said about Edinburgh being too expensive to live in - mostly to do with the price of houses.
A remarkable number of people seem to be unwilling to bring up children in tenements - they 'must' have their own garden. So they 'have' to move to places where semis are cheaper.
They pay more for travel and clearly don't 'value' their extra commuting time.
One small problem here is mortgages (thinking 'pre-crisis' rather than now, which is worse). It's almost impossible to say 'this is my income - if I move to E/W/M/Lothian/Fife i would spend £x on travel, can I stay in Edinburgh and put the 'travel' money into a bigger mortgage please...'
That is a difficult one. We have every intention of, at some point in the next few years, moving out of the city because we both know it's where we want to be. But we've got to know that, in situations such as this, we can work from home if needs be.
Definitely a 'lifestyle choice', which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing. What IS bad is still expecting to be able to get to and from work easily when the weather does this, then complaining about the councils, other drivers, anyone else you can think of, when it takes you 12 hours to get home.
A lot of people lose a sense of realism and proportion at times like this.
p.s. living outside the city I'll still make sure I'm around 20-30 miles away and still intend to commute by bike! Unless, by that point, I'm a fabulously wealthy author - can but dream!
Or the many two income families who have one worker in one location (West) and the other at the other side of the country?
I have to say I'd quite like to live in the Eastern outskirts of Edinburgh where I grew up, but the house prices are unrealistic to put it mildly.
Like many others we choose not to take out a dangerously (recklessly?) high mortgage to live in the "ideal" area.
Therefore I choose to live 20 miles away on the main rail route in Scotland. I really don't think it's that selfish to plan to use public transport to get to work or to expect that for around £1.5K a year Scotrail might manage to maintain a reliable service on their "flagship route" through entirely predictable temperatures.
Or am I being selfish? Or maybe is choosing to live in town also a "lifestyle choice"? If we all chose to do that we could have overcrowding in town 24/7 and not just at rush hour of course... and even sillier house prices :-o
(No offence meant to anyone feeling pointed at at this point!)
If we all chose to do that we could have overcrowding in town 24/7 and not just at rush hour of course...
On the pavements and cyclepaths!
@SRD and don't forget the school run, after all, we wouldn't want to risk our little darlings without the protection of a car with all those reckless cyclist around would we? ;-)) ;-p
Not to mention that about 80% of tenement flats are rented out these days, which presumably is contributes to shortage and inflates prices?
"maybe is choosing to live in town also a "lifestyle choice""
That's true for some and just 'reality' for others. Over the last 50 years increased mobility has become possible/expected. The M8 made it easier to live in West Lothian. The bypass made it easier to live in East Lothian.
In a previous generation (some) people went home to Morningside or Corstorphine (by train) for lunch!
"No offence meant to anyone feeling pointed at at this point!"
I think everyone has reasons (conscious or otherwise) for their choices/compromises and will, to some extent, justify them. I remember years ago hearing on the radio about a man who took the train every day from Bournemouth to London because he wanted his children to be brought up somewhere nice.
Thought that was a bit extreme.
It's all about expectations/aspirations - and individual choices. I'm glad I wasn't brought up in 5 (or more) people in a single-end days. Reasonable sized flat suits me fine. I'm not sure how far I would be willing to have as a regular commute. I once had to go to Glasgow about twice a week for six months which was a bit much - even though travel time/cost was part of the job!
Edinburgh of course is relatively unusual for a UK city where a lot of people still want to live close to the city centre and, unlike many 'inner cities', it's not cheap.
There are good reasons for living in cities and others for 'more rural'. Some people like the live/work combination of this. Others might prefer to work closer to home.
What chance of more employment in Fife rather than a new bridge??
"about 80% of tenement flats are rented out these days"
Really??
Based purely on my own personal sample of where I live, and people I know living in Marchmont :)
"Based purely on my own personal sample of where I live, and people I know living in Marchmont :)"
Ah, you mean student( area)s.
Yup, although mostly young professional types in my building (flats not big enough for HMOs!)
"although mostly young professional types in my building"
Another sign of changing times.
There was a time when most flats would have been "for rent"
Then (probably 60s onwards) a significant increase in owner occupiers. Then massive increases in students and so more requirement for 'student flats' which may have been reduced by the recent mass building of student blocks.
Now people who can't get/don't want mortgages are renting.
Such change/diversity is all part of cities - which some people like and others don't.
No-one paying attention then(?)
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@TravelineScot Traveline Scotland
Travel news: Stagecoach Fife advise all Edinburgh services will be terminated at Ferrytoll due to severe congestion accessing Edinburgh
1 hour ago
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young professional types in my building
Mine too. And I'm one of them...
Well, I work for a living. does that make me professional?
I actually found it quite hard to find an affordable (for me) one bed place in town. The few that seemed to come up were just WEIRD.
The thing that's beginning to annoy me is that wasn't/hasn't the internet solved this problem for pretty much all the office drones slogging to work (myself included)
There still seems to be the old-skool management hangover of having to have you in the work environment to be working.
Whereas the work day seems to be
2hr commute to work
2 hours talking to colleagues about how bad your commutes all were.
2 hours working
Office closes early cos of the weather
2 hours home.
Surely still the lost time from watching Jeremy Kyle still outbalances the benefits of being present at your desk.
"There still seems to be the old-skool management hangover"
Lot of talk yesterday on the radio about people not being paid if they don't go to work.
Prime example Glasgow school dinner worker expected to report to school that was closed. Later modified - she must report to nearest school (also closed)...
Today Scottish Government Minister Mike Russell said that employers shouldn't be behaving like that. Will they take any notice?
I've got a solution.... as Scotrail aren't using the railway we should lift tracks, roof over and have a covered busway and cycleway! between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Hang on that's a guided busway.... we've done that before.
Radio Scotland Travel claims they can't get any coherent news on rail today. Mind you people in the north of Scotland are used to this.
I know buses aren't doing that well either.
Totally understand why people have to be self reliant outside city centre when it comes to transport. Easy enough for me in centre of city being a critic. Sure many rail staff are equally frustrated.
"2hr commute to work
2 hours talking to colleagues about how bad your commutes all were.
2 hours working
Office closes early cos of the weather
2 hours home."
That is exactly what happens here!
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