CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
“The case for expanding the rail network”
(15 posts)-
Posted 5 years ago #
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Not in this thread but elsewhere we discussed rail link to Glasgow airport, which now appears to have been scrapped. This would have maybe been five miles too but across land below sea level, black cart water, M8 etc. Quite tricky.
Posted 5 years ago # -
On train from Dunbar to Edinburgh last Tuesday. Still no sign of East Linton station work. (New electric train had good long bike spaces at tip down seats).
Compare and contrast with this.
Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route: The road cost more than £1bn and measures 36 miles (58 kms).
Took only 4 years to build once route was agreed.Posted 5 years ago # -
‘Everyone’ drives and they ‘all’ vote...
Posted 5 years ago # -
Worked out that the value of the Workplace Parking Levy at EuroCentral could pay for a new station right on the Western site boundary at Mossend North - would have 8 trains/hr Motherwell 5 min, likewise Coatbridge. Glasgow 20-25 min, add in a cycle route from Holytown on Shotts Line (4 trains/hour).
Worth working out what the West Flank might generate, or whether Sky/Nationwide would deliver enough to underwrite bike hire/bus shuttle to Inverkeithing/Halbeath.
What would the ERI site deliver?
Posted 5 years ago # -
Tulyar - NHS sites will deliver nothing, as the Scottish Government has already indicated that NHS premises will be exempt from the WPL. I know you could argue that, being a PFI site, it might not be exempt - but politically that just wouldn't wash.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“but politically that just wouldn't wash”
Could argue for Consort to pay the tax, with or without a guarantee not to pass on the charge.
Arguably not politically correct for SG to exclude NHS and education workers.
Maybe SNP is hoping for such an outcry...
Posted 5 years ago # -
I suspect it will be challenging to persuade councils to spend any money they recoup from the WPL on infrastructure that they do not own/control (eg, the railway). Park & Ride, buses, trams, (proper) cycleways (we can but hope) more likely to be on the councils' minds.
ERI WPL could start to fund tram line 3...
Posted 5 years ago # -
There are precedents for other parties 'owning' new (and old) stations - Prestwick Airport (PIK -owned) Milton Keynes Central (MKDC), Berney Arms (the Berney Arms), Warwick Parkway ....
There's a pub quiz question in there somewhere.
Posted 5 years ago # -
The more I think about it the more I feel uncomfortable with a blanket exemption for NHS workers. Like all other details I feel this should be left for councils to decide.
Why should someone working on a bus route in a 9-5 job be exempted while someone else working 9am to 7am shift work 3 miles from a bus route not be?
PFI might get round the scheme if employees are paying for parking provided they are paying the PFI company and not their employer. In this situation they may be considered customers and so would be exempt.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I would not agree there should be charge for parking at work, tend to think this will cause roads to be congested with parked cars.
However if a charge not sure why there should be any exemption for NHS or emergency works, emergency works work shifts as do many other people. If working a shift it would be no different from anyone else start at a time finish at a time. If on the rare occasion someone called in to work out with a shift then may be there should be an exemption but then again this could happen with factory workers or other jobs where someone may be called in.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I would not agree there should be charge for parking at work, tend to think this will cause roads to be congested with parked cars.
Then we need to look at cities where WPL is in place. Did Nottingham experience widespread parking on the streets, at first? If it doesn't now, why? Has it been the investment in public transport (et al) that has encouraged modal shift, or have employers passed on the costs to drivers? If the employer makes the employee pay, how do they police it – or rather, how to they unpolice it when someone doesn't drive one day, or uses the street rather than a works' car park?
Posted 5 years ago # -
IIRC Nottingham has used some of the proceeds to implement a free residents parking permit system in some affected areas. I suspect this may be required in the area around the Gyle, although given Kaputnik's recent twitter thread many of the cars which would find themselves parked in local residential areas would belong to local residents anyway.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Dead easy to stop use of streets for workplace parking, apply and enforce parking regulation (CPZ transformed where I live in Glasgow - overnight we lost 50+% of daytime parked (commuter) cars)
Nottingham has a long history of keeping roads clear for moving traffic, moving on drivers blocking a lane when queuing for a car park. Glasgow by contrast encouraged drivers to queue and block back across major road junctions...
Also enforce Section 129.2 and 129.5 Roads Scotland 1984 or Section 137 Highways Act 1980 et seq. A strong line on this seen clears the street of dangerous and obstructive parking.
Remember too its the site owners who are taxed and not the employees & visitors, who are already getting free parking (worth up to £3000/yr in Central Edinburgh - possibly more for prime locations), plus the opportunity cost per space - estimated at c.£1200/yr to the site owner for not being able to use the land for more profitable purposes than parking.
At yesterdays Rail conference, former transport minister Tom Harris, revealed how he managed to add a station at Woolwich to the Crossrail project, by getting a housing developer to pay in some of the extra profit they would make from having their new houses connected to Crossrail to get an additional station delivered. Just need to convert this all to serious £££
Posted 5 years ago # -
Also enforce Section 129.2 and 129.5 Roads Scotland 1984 or Section 137 Highways Act 1980 et seq. A strong line on this soon clears the street of dangerous and obstructive parking.
Ah, that's where we're going wrong.
129 Miscellaneous summary offences.
(2) A person who, without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, places or deposits anything in a road so as to obstruct the passage of, or to endanger, road users commits an offence.
(3) A person who…leads or propels a vehicle or animal commits an offence if any load which is thereby being carried projects beyond the vehicle or animal so as in any way to obstruct or endanger other road users.
(5) Subject to section 64 of this Act, a person who, in a footway, footpath or cycle track, as the case may be drives, rides, leads or propels a vehicle or horse…commits an offence.
(6) A person who parks a motor vehicle wholly or partly on a cycle track commits an offence.
64 Use of appliances etc. on footways, footpaths and cycle tracks.
(1) No enactment prohibiting or restricting the use of footways, footpaths or cycle tracks shall affect the use of appliances or vehicles—
(a) for the construction, maintenance, improvement or cleansing of a road;
(b) subject to subsection (2) below, by statutory undertakers for works on footways, footpaths or cycle tracks maintainable by a roads authority, in connection with apparatus belonging to the statutory undertakers.(2) Statutory undertakers may exercise rights enjoyed by them by virtue of subsection (1)(b) above only if they have obtained the consent of the roads authority; and such consent may be subject to such reasonable conditions as the authority think fit.
Posted 5 years ago #
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