Getting really depressed already...
I'm going to have to start an email, but there's so much bad with the design it's hard to know where to start.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Latest plans for Leith Walk - and how to deal with them
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Posted 6 years ago #
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@ Morningsider
Agree with all that.
Problem is, they are not listening and don’t want to listen.
Don’t know whether L Mc has been ‘captured’ or whether she naively believes that the responses to the consultation will show that the proposals are welcome or even that opposition will strengthen her hand in calling for something different.
The basic problem is that we are STUCK with ideas that probably weren’t fit for purpose at the time (Spokes actually PAID consultants to come up with better proposals) and CEC won’t acknowledge that things have moved a LOT (in the ‘real’ world).
Posted 6 years ago # -
Posted 6 years ago #
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Yes, Andy has done a fine job with that thread. My comment was slightly rhetorical...
Posted 6 years ago # -
Posted 6 years ago #
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Some good news -
Posted 6 years ago # -
Sustrans don't like it and won't fund it
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/news/edinburgh-tram-extension-our-response
Posted 6 years ago # -
Really pleased to see Sustrans putting the foot down
I hope the project need their support
Posted 6 years ago # -
"In 2013, Sustrans Scotland entered into an agreement with City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) to provide £3.6m from Transport Scotland over three years to deliver an exemplary design for Leith Walk which would enhance the public realm and enable a greater number of journeys by foot and by bicycle.
As a consequence Sustrans Scotland was invited to join the CEC design team and attended regular design review meetings. The Agreement expired in 2016 with £1.4m spent and work completed between the Foot of The Walk and the McDonald Road junction. "
Looks like CEC walked away from the remaining £2.2 million.....rather profligate!
Got bogged down in St James and tram, presumably.Posted 6 years ago # -
Wow, the devil is in the detail
CEC really do have trouble spending money on cycling even if granted or ringfenced
Posted 6 years ago # -
When an organisation ends up negotiating with the Council via press release then things really aren't going well.
Remember - the guys designing the tram street layout are all professionals. It's not that they can't design high quality cycle infrastructure (they work for companies that do this sort of thing all over Europe), it's that they are not being asked to do so, or know that their clients really favour traffic flow over walking and cycling and produce designs accordingly.
Posted 6 years ago # -
“it's that they are not being asked to do so, or know that their clients really favour traffic flow over walking and cycling and produce designs accordingly“
The first half is definitely true, the second half is probably true though I have a lingering imagining that CEC thinks ‘well we’ll just ask the experts what they think is best’.
(Though that’s probably some councillors rather than officials.)
Posted 6 years ago # -
Either left hand doesn't know what right hand is doing, or secondment of Sustrans staff member signifies very little. Sustainable transport only for city centre, narrowly defined as tourism/shopping zone? Everywhere else, traffic flow rules?
My mind keeps wandering back to the Picardy Place consultation, and a senior officer claiming reduced roadspace for motor vehicles would result in "unacceptable queuing". Something similar at work with Leith Walk: traffic engineering driven design.
Posted 6 years ago # -
“traffic engineering driven design”
Yep, and it’s not even that it WORKS.
More cars just displaced to the next lights/intersection/bottleneck.
Meanwhile ‘we’ are vilified as minority/special interest group/nimbies/naive/treehuggers/stuck-in-the-past etc.etc.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I mean, on the face of it, the effect of the central reservation is to turn Leith Walk into a dual carriageway. Six traffic lanes south of London Road: six lanes!
Remember this is a 20mph zone in the most densely populated area in Scotland, where driving a car has only an 18% modal share. An urban dual carriageway is not the right solution. Get rid of the central reservation. Bring back the pedestrian crossings, signalised if need be, all single stage.
We need pedestrian permeability and car bans where necessary. If it can be done for Shandwick Place, it can be done for the Foot of the Walk.
Posted 6 years ago # -
The good people of Anderston send their thoughts and prayers.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Maybe if there was some standard cycling infrastructure in Edinburgh, the design of a non standard road (very wide, has trams, long and quite steep etc) wouldn't be a) difficult, b) subject to debate c) so poorly proposed.
Mind you, I had a bus move left towards me this morning at traffic lights on Gorgie Road as I used the infrastructure to approach an advanced stop line.
Posted 6 years ago # -
MY bold
“
We've had a very positive meeting with the trams team in @Edinburgh_CC . We’ve been greatly reassured that any views expressed in the consultation on the trams will be considered. It’s important that your voice is heard- http://bit.ly/2G6f7oK Closing date is the 29th of April.
“
https://mobile.twitter.com/sustransscot/status/976141888695631874
Posted 6 years ago # -
This may be of interest. Presented at Council, November 2015.
I've placed FOIs to try and discover exactly how this process took place.
Posted 6 years ago # -
CEC embezzled that £1.4million. They are crooks.
Posted 6 years ago # -
The Council has a suite of transport policy documents - said to favour walking and cycling, which it ignores during the delivery of the £750,000,000 tram project. Hundreds of cyclists are injured and one dies - despite concerns being raised before a single rail was laid.
It then allocates another £200,000,000 to extend this project, continuing to ignore its own policies and the previous concerns - despite the litany of injuries.
It ignores a huge response to the consultation on Picardy Place on how to make it an outstanding place, as its hands are tied by previous decisions - taken behind closed doors.
Then, somehow, again - it is down to a small group of active citizens to convince decision makers to change well established plans, parts of which are apparently unchangeable due to decisions already taken, behind closed doors.
[Rule 1] [Rule 2].
Posted 6 years ago # -
"The Council has a suite of transport policy documents - said to favour walking and cycling, which it ignores during the delivery of the £750,000,000 tram project."
I suppose it could be argued that those designs pre-date most of the pro active travel policies.
"It ignores a huge response to the consultation on Picardy Place on how to make it an outstanding place, as its hands are tied by previous decisions - taken behind closed doors."
Yes, highly questionable and infuriatingly short-cited. Democratic oversight and scrutiny of the GAM contract in particular was sorely lacking.
"It then allocates another £200,000,000 to extend this project, continuing to ignore its own policies and the previous concerns - despite the litany of injuries."
That is inexcusable, given that the designs have been revised after all the pro active travel policies were adopted.
I suppose we will wearily drag ourselves to the trenches and barricades once more to try and make a stand against wily Council officials bulldozing pland through in the teeth of public opposition...
Posted 6 years ago # -
“I suppose we will wearily drag ourselves to the trenches and barricades once more to try and make a stand against wily Council officials bulldozing pland through in the teeth of public opposition...”
I’m hoping for CA/FB moment.
Clearly need some whistleblowers!
‘We’ all know this ‘stupid’.
It’s not just that ‘we’, selfishly, want nice safe places to cycle.
It’s not really that ‘we’ all hate cars - unlike the rest the population of course.
It’s nice to have some conspiracy theories about how some officials have a secret agenda to create perfect traffic flow and are, somehow, persuading councillors to go along with it.
So if there isn’t a conspiracy and officials are just try to do the best for the City, why don’t WE get it?
Posted 6 years ago # -
Posted 6 years ago #
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The plans are utterly dispiriting. My worry is that the same techniques will be used to resist them as were used against the gyratory;
* Careful marshaling of facts
* Professionally worded e-mails and Tweets
* Polite engagement with real-world and on-line consultationsThe result last time was that they laughed in the faces of objectors and sent in the long-planned bulldozers to create their island of the dead.
If people behave as if they were dealing with their managers at work then our representatives will behave as if they were our bosses and not, ultimately, answerable to us, the citizens.
They need to be put on the back foot first before they'll take talk of place-making seriously.
Posted 6 years ago # -
“They need to be put on the back foot first before they'll take talk of place-making seriously.”
Sustrans did a good job yesterday and is getting press coverage -
https://twitter.com/profscottthinks/status/976361567917871104
BUT
CEC is acting as though it’s all fine - ‘we’re listening, we can do some minor changes’.
Without a complete rethink the whole thing is much more than just “another missed opportunity”.
Sustrans withholding a few million quid isn’t going to hurt them.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Sustrans did a good job yesterday and is getting press coverage
You'd need a microscope to see the Venn diagram of people who read the Evening News and give a monkey's about Sustrans.
And as for Herr Doktor Professor directing people to the consultations....he went AWOL rather than vote on the gyratory which was overwhelmingly rejected at consultation. There are words for people like him.
Posted 6 years ago # -
SPOKES' take and update on the public meeting:
http://www.spokes.org.uk/2018/03/west-east-cycleroute-to-end-at-pilrig-instead-of-leith-spokesmtg/
Posted 6 years ago # -
I don't think anyone has posted a link to the actual consultation on this thread, so here goes:
Edinburgh Trams to Newhaven Public Consultation
https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/tramstonewhaven/
Closes 29 Apr 2018
Posted 6 years ago #
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