These people are beyond a joke.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Today's Nick Cook frothing
(453 posts)-
Posted 3 years ago #
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Helen Martin tells us she happily walked to school on her own in P1. She also tells us that she is 68, which means she probably started P1 in 1957. DfT statistics show there was 6.6 times the amount of traffic on our roads in 2018 (latest figures) than in 1957.
Cllr Webber tells us she walked to school solo from P2 - she was born in 1972, so she would have started walking to school in 1978, traffic has more than doubled since then.
Cars are now bigger, accelerate faster and are quieter - I think parents have reason to worry about young children walking to school on their own. Rather than criticise parents for winder societal issues, perhaps they might want to present some solutions - unless they think adopting a stiff upper lip and not blubbing over a few more dead children is the way to go.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Let's not give Helen M***in any oxygen.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Would they really be happy waving their grandchildren, if they have them, off to school on foot in present traffic conditions?
Posted 3 years ago # -
Even though I lived through it at the time, it was still quite extraordinary to be reminded that traffic during lockdown was at 1970’s levels. It is amazing just how quiet it was back then. No wonder my parents weren’t worried about me walking 1 1/2 miles to school aged 8.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Did the clubbiedean loop after work tonight - bypass pretty busy maybe even precovid 19 levels
Walked to school from 5 years old and had to take my wee sister. Was 100 years ago and no traffic. Also they experimented with not putting the clocks back so was very dark one of the 1970s winters maybe 1972 from posting this before
Posted 3 years ago # -
I walked to school my entire school days, primary and secondary.
Drivers hitting school kids was not unknown even in the 1970s.
On his way home from school, my little brother was knocked down by a driver at a junction. Car ran over his leg, he needed a skin graft, still got the scar. Luckily nothing more serious, no broken bones or internal injuries.
My friend at high school lost his right arm after being struck by a lorry: he had been walking balanced on the kerb stones at the time, arms outstretched. Arm amputated, months in hospital, had to learn to write all over again with his left hand. He became a writer.
Also road rage very much prevalent then too. At the age of 11 I was chased down back alleys and roughed up by a driver who had taken exception to me flicking the v's at him (it wasn't personal, I was just a cheeky urchin). He did a screeching u-turn and flung his door open, Sweeney style, before giving chase.
Overall I remember the 1970s as a very violent period in general. Teachers could hit you, and they did. School bullies inflicted horrendous torture on their victims, and largely got away with it. Grown ups were at it too, down the pub, in the streets, or at home. Seemed like everybody was hitting everyone else for something or other.
On the other hand, kids were allowed to roam free in the 1970s. As long as were home for your tea no-one fussed much about where you were or what you were up to...
But there were fewer cars around, that's for sure. No internet or mobile phones either.
Maybe that's where some of the violence has been sublimated (and where the freedom to roam has disappeared to as well).Posted 3 years ago # -
"Overall I remember the 1970s as a very violent period in general."
It was the lead in the petrol. At least, that's the excuse.
Posted 3 years ago # -
"It was the lead in the petrol. "
And in the paint too. And the water pipes were made of lead as well.
Or maybe it was mainly the effects of rapid economic and social change.
Posted 3 years ago # -
That anecdata about the past being more violent, in full:
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Cabbie Chris Ansell reckons the difference between knife crime today and when he was a teenager in the 60s is that his generation didn't set out to kill. The 57-year-old Brummie said: "Loads of people carried knives. But it was rare for them to be used to stab someone and you never heard of anyone being knifed to death - it was a more a case of slash them across the face. Knife crime now seems to be copycat - kids doing bad things because their mates are. It's more glamorised."
VIOLENT BRITAIN? IT WAS WORSE IN THE 60s
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/violent-britain-worse-60s-1656306
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Posted 3 years ago # -
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/piranha.php
Mrs Simmel: Oh yes Kipling Road was a typical East End Street, people were in and out of each other's houses with each other's property all day. They were a cheery lot.Interviewer: Was it a terribly violent area
Mrs Simmel: Oh no......yes. Cheerful and violent. I remember Doug was very keen on boxing, but when he learned to walk he took up putting the boot in the groin. He was very interested in that. His mother had a terrible job getting him to come in for tea. Putting his little boot in he'd be, bless him. All the kids were like that then, they didn't have their heads stuffed with all this Cartesian dualism.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@Stickman, as we used to chant in the seventies:
"You're gonna get your f****** head kicked in!"
(Followed by stomping of feet or clapping of hands to the beat)
:-p
Posted 3 years ago # -
I always wanted to ask the obstructive folk at Community Council meetings how they remembered going to school, which would have been in the 50s and 60s for some of them. I bet not one of them was driven in a car - they would have walked or cycled. The school run is a fairly recent phenomnenon.
Posted 3 years ago # -
"The school run is a fairly recent phenomnenon."
1980s - started after Thatcherite "parental choice" in school placement. Kids travelling right across town to the "good" school, aspirational parents pile them into motor. Then in the 1990s it just became the "new normal" whatever the distance as more and more folk owned cars - one car, two cars, three cars per household...
Posted 3 years ago # -
Waving one's lycra aloft = bad but waving one's helmet aloft = good?
Posted 3 years ago # -
Gotta love the begging message at the bottom of EEN articles these days - if I ever feel the need of more than 2 daily (ad-blocked) doses of their reactionary crap I'll use incognito mode.
Posted 3 years ago # -
I liked the Green councillor arguing for the traffic lights to be tweaked, that was good.
I'll say it again: hand the city over to Mr Cook and his pals for a month. Start with no traffic rules at all. Drive any vehicle you like wherever you like any speed you like and stop wherever you like. Let's see what the rules are at the end of the month.
Posted 3 years ago # -
The neck of a bottle is not a design flaw!
Posted 3 years ago # -
Does anyone - CEC maybe? - have any actual data on traffic volumes through the closed part of Braid Road before the closure? That would at least give some idea of the amount of traffic that might have been supposedly 'displaced'. Not that I think Braid Road is at all well suited as a general through route anyway, especially the bit by the Hermitage where the closure is currently in place.
My own suspicion - based on no data at all, just personal experience - is that Comiston Road has always been busy and congested, and complaints that it has got worse since Braid Road was closed are at least in part based on faulty, rose-tinted recollections of what it was like pre-Covid, and partly on selfish frustration.
I would actually agree that the timings of the lights at Greenbank Crescent could be reviewed, especially since there seems to be no effective synchronisation between them and the lights at Greenbank Drive. There does seem to be a regular phase of the discordant cycle when the northbound light at Greenbank Crescent turns green, only for the one at Greenbank Drive to be, or to turn, almost immediately red, causing a tailback meaning that vehicles are unable to pass the green at Greenbank Crescent. That is bound to cause frustration. And the green light for a right turn out of Greenbank Drive is also often made pointless due to southbound traffic tailed back from the Greenbank Crescent light. I suspect that latter lack of synchronisation is a prime cause of the rat-running via Greenbank Lane and Greenbank Road, neither of which are well suited to carry anything but modest levels of residential traffic. (I wonder what the outcry would be like if Greenbank Lane were closed?)
The root cause of the congestion, though, is simply that there is too much traffic trying to use that corridor. Bringing South Morningside Primary into the argument for re-opening Braid Road looks too me like a rather cynical "won't somebody think of the children?" gambit. I'd suggest that the people who really need to think of the children are perhaps those whose vehicles contribute to the congestion.
I also suspect that traffic levels on that corridor aren't likely to reduce significantly while Midlothian continues to allow its towns to expand in to dormitory suburbs of Edinburgh with ever-easier access to the A702 - whilst also pursuing ways to dump some of the traffic that undoubtedly does blight the A701 off on to the A702.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@ejstubbs, school drop off at south Morningside is a nightmare. Always has been. During Covid lock down this traffic disappeared. Now it is back with added braid road congestion. Opening braid road will not relieve the congestion on Comiston Road.
Posted 3 years ago # -
My own suspicion is that Comiston Road has always been busy and congested, and complaints that it has got worse since Braid Road was closed are rose-tinted recollections.
I lived in the area for 30 years, and Comiston Road has always been busy. Only Sunday mornings were generally the exception. The Braid Road closure has absolutely nothing to do with current traffic levels.
I will look out one of my then-and-now photo comparisons when I remember. Morningside Road, like Corstorphine high Street, is a thoroughfare that hasn't expanded through (much) demolition to suit the late 20th century's fascination with armoured private transport.
Posted 3 years ago # -
“The root cause of the congestion, though, is simply that there is too much traffic trying to use that corridor.”
Completely.
Plus the fact that many complainers only experience it as they drive along at the busiest times.
Closing the road by the Hermitage is a good idea.
My experience of that road is that it wasn’t particularly busy (probably never there at peak times) but was a bit of race track - ‘twisty country road’ encouraged rally driver fantasies(?)
Posted 3 years ago # -
Why can no one see that the A702 needs to go on stilts? Preferably above the roof-line of the Morningside tenements. This would form a shady cobbled avenue underneath for street markets, bicycling, cafes and storage of residents' private motor cars.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@IWRATS
I Don’t think you are thinking radically enough? citizen Arellcat alludes to a better solution of bulldozing Morningside to let the cars through
Posted 3 years ago # -
Stilts over a bulldozed wasteland? This is not Glasgow, friend.
Posted 3 years ago # -
The problem with reopening Braid Rd is that it will reinstate two rat-runs: One along Hermitage Dr / Midmar Dr, and the other along the Northern half of Braid Rd itself.
It will simply mean the same amount (or more) queuing traffic elsewhere, even closer to where even more people live.
Same with re-sync-ing the lights, it will funnel new queues and associated fumes closer to the high-density housing of Morningside Rd. Better to keep the fumey queues further out of town, where housing density is lower.
Like I say, the neck of a bottle is not a design flaw.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Furthermore, the council are meant to be creating a "quiet" cycling route to connect the new Comiston Rd lanes / Braidburn Valley Park to the cycle network at Leamington Walk.
This would be completely scuppered if through-traffic was allowed back into the roads in the Corrennie / Midmar area
Posted 3 years ago # -
I would support Braid Road being fully reopened to traffic.
Just one condition. If congestion on Comiston Road doesn't disappear after a few weeks then Braid Road gets closed again - permanently.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Agreed, the new quiet route (which I think is the light green line in this image from P15 of this report . Almost like they want to full effort to make it as pixelated as possible) seems to go down Hermitage Gardens and along Cluny Drive then up Braid Road/Woodburn Terrace up Canaan Lane towards Whitehouse Loan. Reopening Braid Road would cause a fair bit of conflict at the mini roundabout.
I think in the end we'll end up with some kind of compromise like Braid Road opening one way with a cycle lane on one side.
Posted 3 years ago # -
After a remarkably enlightened tweet criticising his own party for not accepting various positive recommendations about drug decriminalisation, Nick is back to form posting an article from over a month ago in Brixton, where a Fire Engine apparently got stuck by some planters. The Fire service themselves say they support the scheme, there was quick modification (highlighting the adaptability of the planter approach), and frankly if it had been an emergency a light depressing of the accelerator pedal would have seen the fire-engine though that gap:
Posted 3 years ago #
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