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.
@CycleAlex
There's a forensic thread on the history of this mess somewhere. No responsible body could be found. Developer, council and Scot Gov all had plausible deniability. I even got Scot Gov's letter which made their funding conditional on retail growth but it didn't specify a gyratory. Nobody did - it just grew there unbidden and unloved.
@IWRATS Thanks - had a dig through some docs and found the rather horrific initial plans. At least what we're getting is better than this... https://cycleparking.net/cycle-routes/picardy.png
Yeah better than that autofantasy but far from good (for anyone).
History is well murky.
Including (apparently) CEC officials signing stuff off without running it past elected representatives.
Also arms-length SG subsidy.
Plus assumptions about number of car spaces - and therefore ‘need’ for roads funnel.
It remains to be seen if car park will every be particularly full or if roads (immediately outside and further away) would actually cope.
Whether ‘shopping’ continues to be popular/profitable is far from clear.
As is the future ‘shopping (etc.) experience’ of Princes Street.
Perhaps the Christmas Market could be held in the empty stores - no problems with the weather...
My (somewhat embellished*) understanding of it was that a road designer who learnt their trade while working as an apprentice while the original centre was being built saw this as a chance to correct what they viewed as the underprovision for private motoring utopia in the area.
They duly plugged the numbers they wanted into the traffic model they had built and tweaked a few things to ensure that anything other than a car-gyrator would trigger alarm bells and long red lines.
*Actually it's a largely made up story which helps me cope with the systemic failures at all levels. However I do think that flawed traffic models were used to justify this abomination.
" flawed traffic models were used to justify this abomination."
Indeed they were. FOI request revealed how half-arsed the models were. "Unacceptable queuing" * was the official reason given as to why only the gyratory from the original 2006 tram street design team could be taken forward, despite alternative proposals from Sustrans etc.
* - Unacceptable to motorists, presumably. Pedestrians and cyclists will face even more unacceptable queuing than they had to before.
Had a wry smile at this fake news from the Chipwrapper
"The road layout has been changed to allow for trams to travel down Leith Walk and to improve the road for cyclists and pedestrians." (!)
I think it's only fair that cyclists and pedestrians get a chance to deliver equivalent 'improvements' to drivists. A 5-lane motorway straight into the pit of Hades perhaps (no u-turns allowed).
Oh bloody hell! All the traffic re-routed via Annandale Street just as my son has to walk that way to orchestra rehearsal - during Monday evening peak traffic. The roundabout junction with East London St is already pretty lethal for pedestrians, now it will be much worse, even with some traffic evaporation.
That diversion seems a bit overkill? Surely be easier to send people down Broughton Street and then Albany Street rather than going via Elm Row/East London Street.
"The road layout has been changed to allow for trams to travel down Leith Walk and to improve the road for cyclists and pedestrians."
I'm speechless.
Locked solid back to the Bridges. Hard to filter even.
There are too many cars. Too. Many. Cars.
Way too many cars. Every commute this past week has involved junctions blocked by vehicles that went on green without checking if there was anywhere to go to.
And that's before the diversion takes effect. It'll be "fun" next week...
I cycled the Hellscape for the first time yesterday evening, heading Leith St to Broughton Street. This was by accident as my enthusiastic filtering coupled with the rearrangement of the work site since the last time I was there meant I missed the last opportunity to get off and walk by John Lewis and was halfway down the entry chute before I realised. Oops.
Strangely it wasn't nearly as bad as expected, though I got lucky with the traffic.
Still wouldn't fancy the "full experience" heading towards London Road.
What diversion?
York Place is closing westbound for a couple of weeks.
Right, thanks. The Macdonald Road junction is going to be reduced to rubble.
Locked solid back to the Bridges. Hard to filter even.There are too many cars. Too. Many. Cars.
You could sense its power on North Bridge today. Perhaps it is feeling starved of attention while the commentariat temporarily re-direct their ire to the Christmas Market.
Aye, there was a guy on a wee 125 motorbike who feared to filter this morning. I showed him a clean pair of heels, scuttling between the buses like a suicidal rat in a drainpipe.
With York Place closed they’ve changed the road layout up and it’s not nearly as murderous. Very disappointed.
Aye, cycled through this morning. Completely fine northbound, other than there being too many cars.
Southbound traffic seemed to be backed up from Leith St onto the London Road roundabout. Took several light cycles to get from Montgomery St to London Road. So I turned left and came via Abbeyhill instead.
It really is chaotic right now. Southbound traffic backed up right down London Road. Most buses from London Road diverted via Regent Road.
Terrible driving across the board meaning emergency vehicles struggling to get through.
Pavements are so busy on Leith Street everyone is using the cycle lane and people are still spilling out on to the road.
Walked north yesterday coming home from the pub where I had a glass of Ledaig whisky and talked politics with some English tourists to celebrate the triumphant purchase of a new smart outfit. I hate shopping.
The east side pavement of Leith Street should be illegal. Hoaching. But the builders of the Hellscape had knocked off and the relative silence was lovely. None of the vehicles were moving you see.
I wonder if tour coaches will obey " TEMPORARY TAXI RANK ONLY NO STOPPING" on the way up to the playhouse, or if they'll add their bulk to the exciting arrangements. If it weren't for some cones I could sneak through I'd've had to wait behind a bus this morning. I assumed that York Place being Shut would mean a few people with no prior experience of going up Leith Street having to do so, but there was a car actually waiting at the Waterloo Place junction rather than sit in the middle of it waiting for Princes Street to move.
Today's North Bridge to Leith Walk filtering word is interstitial. That's interstitial.
A seemingly timid cyclist followed a rather more confident cyclist into the middle of the London Road roundabout. They were there for a while...
I'm still trying to figure out where some of the cars came from this morning. Maybe out of the operational areas rather than roads? Hypervigilance required.
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