Any idea what's going on here?
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Portobello Road surprise infra
(55 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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I think it's being done as part of a road resurfacing project.
Spokes has previously been told with similar projects that there isn't enough budget to install segregated cycle paths, but perhaps this is some sort of trial?
Posted 4 years ago # -
You do wonder how a cycle path can come as a surprise to a Green councilor for a neighbouring ward.
I don't think I would use this as it's on the pavement and gives way to side streets but it's a nice try.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Looks like it has priority over at least some sidroads. It's raised at points
Posted 4 years ago # -
Perhaps the active travel team got sick to death of consultations so they've just decided to start building everything.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I spotted this last night - pleasantly surprised, though the lane currently ends by going straight into the back of a parking space, which had a car in it last night. I presume at least the exit to the lane will have DYL.
On the other hand - I fully expect to get even more abuse for cycling on the road here...
Posted 4 years ago # -
I presume at least the exit to the lane will have DYL.
That would need a TRO although it should be a pretty painless process to add a bit of DYL (I believe any objections would purely be handled by committee).
They might just do what they did on Lothian Road and apply new road markings during resurfacing and then retrospectively do the TRO. How valid that actually is I have no idea...
Posted 4 years ago # -
I-Bars (colloquial term, if not the technical one) don’t need TROs and seem to work in many places.
Posted 4 years ago # -
This is a nice Christmas pressie for cyclists in the east of the city. Good work CEC!
Posted 4 years ago # -
@chdot Looks like there's a disabled space between the end of the cycle lane so far and the next double yellows so not sure if they could put those barriers the full way.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Apparently better known as H bars!
Posted 4 years ago # -
Went past today - looking pretty good so far. Seems they’re adding the bollard island style dividers on the other side as well. Completion ~01/05/20 according to the sign.
Width is good for unidirectional (add 25cm and it would be a flagship bidirectional lane...)
Still mildly bemused (although not complaining!) that this had no consultation but changing a pelican to a toucan gets two consultations...
Posted 4 years ago # -
Maybe just the photos, but it doesn't look very wide to me - less than one car width.
@cycleAlex Can you confirm the width?
Posted 4 years ago # -
@neddie The photos don't really do it justice since I had to squeeze them down to fit here. Not sure of exact width but wide enough for two people to comfortably walk side by side along it.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I'm really not keen on things being built without consultation. There is a chance that the designers might build something that we're happy with as being useful and of a good quality standard, but, sadly, there's a much higher chance that they'll build something that is a bit (or, even worse, a lot) mediocre in some ways, and we simply won't have any means to input into it or object to it, if necessary. This is a potentially very slippery slope...
(Reminds me of when really bad things used to happen (and probably still do), such as when the Scottish Office (as then was) would do things like designate the footways at the hellish busy A77 Whitletts Roundabout near Ayr as shared use and add drop kerbs to the islands, and the first they told the local cycle campaign about it was to seek approval for the redetermination order, by which time the con-struction was already done and it was effectively too late to input or object in any meaningful way.
(Actually, looking at the roundabout now, I see that it has since been enlarged and has considerably increased numbers of lanes, but at least it now has traffic lights at each entrance, whereas the previous "improvement" basically left anyone walking or cycling at the complete mercy as to whether any approaching traffic would actually give way at the "give way" lines (we said that their works would be utterly useless without traffic signal control, oh well, I guess we got "something" in the end, many years later).
It's noticeable that there are no pelican or toucan crossings at these traffic lights, however, and the drop kerbs appear to have been lost in the later reconstruction. You can still see the remnants of one of the "crossings", or a later incarnation of it, utterly useless (and dangerous) as it is, on the eastern B743 arm of the roundabout.)
The spiel that we were given at the time was that this was an important cycling access improvement to help people travelling towards the Scottish Agricultural College just east of the roundabout. Well, one thing that farmers do know a lot about is manure, and I very much doubt that these diffacilities helped in the slightest.)
Posted 4 years ago # -
I'm inclined to support shovels in the ground without consultation given that the council seems just as capable of building rubbish with consultation as it does without (see Leith Walk) or indeed building nothing at all.
I think it's pretty certain this simply would not have happened if there were any consultation requirement. We may just have to wait for them to get this right by trial, error and moaning.
Posted 4 years ago # -
My understanding from reading the Spokes stuff is that these are 'road renewals' projects that are now including cycle provision. As such, these are dependent on the condition of the road.
Considering Lothian Road had to be done so quickly cycle things couldn't be considered, I think needing consultations would just result in going back to 'as-is' works. For a first attempt it seems pretty good.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I guess one question is how much consultation occured in places which actually successfully built a cycle network. Seville/ Copenhagen / Paris?
Another is how much impact consultation actually has, which seems to have varied in the last couple of years that I've paid attention.. Picardy Place started off as extremely rubbish and looks to finish as totally rubbish. Leith Walk blowback worked well final designs are much improved but we don't know if what ends up on the ground will actually be any good yet. I'll be intrigued to see the next round of Cameron Toll designs after some really easily fixable patches of dire infrastructure were pointed out.
Another question is whether the speed of crappy infrastructure cancels out the benefits of consultation. Average benefit to cost ratio of UK cycle infrastructure is huge, average bit of UK cycle infrastructure is awful.
Posted 4 years ago # -
If they recruited experienced Dutch and Danish infrastructure engineers no consultation would be necessary.
They could even work from home to avoid unpleasant visa restrictions and still do perfectly good work.
Posted 4 years ago # -
I'd be curious to know how much more cost effective installing cycle infrastructure is this way vs a dedicated scheme. No associated consultation costs (leaflets/drop-ins/consultants/staff time) and having one contractor deliver improvements at the time resurfacing would have happened anyway.
Picardy Place started off as extremely rubbish and looks to finish as totally rubbish
In fairness, Picardy Place started as purely lead in lanes to ASLs many years ago and will now have segregated lanes on nearly all approaches.Posted 4 years ago # -
If you ask the people what they want you'll end up with faster horses. Give them what they need, they need options to get them out of their cars
Posted 4 years ago # -
I agree with CycleAlex. The Picardy Place cycle lanes will actually be pretty good once they're finished.
What is a terrible disaster is the lack of placemaking. Picardy Place will be a soulless, polluted, noisy desert that people will want to cycle through as fast as possible.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Consultation should be for local details planners haven't thought of like 'don't put the cycle parking right there, that's where all the school parents stand in the morning' or 'if you move the bus stop 20m it'll be right outside the old folks' home' or, yes, 'please don't ban loading outside my shop, I sell really big sofas.'
Consultation shouldn't be for dictating to traffic engineers how to do their job. We try and use it that way with some occasional success, but we shouldn't kid ourselves that this is a terribly effective or efficient way for a city to do things. No matter how many times we asked for continuous footways on Leith Walk, we didn't get them because the engineers running the scheme didn't believe in them or understand how to do them properly. Improving the standard of traffic engineering is probably much more efficiently delivered by pressure on their elected managers rather than piecemeal comments on consultations that will probably be forgotten next time the consultants change.
Posted 4 years ago # -
What is a terrible disaster is the lack of placemaking.
^This. Totally this. The potential for a significant public space at the entrance to the city centre, surrounded by major public entertainment and commercial centres, and an actual cathedral, has been squandered in the most old fashioned and backward-looking way.
Now it's emerging from the mess I can see some improvements on what used to be there (not difficult, obvs) but the crying shame is what might have been.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@neddie
Aye, spot on.
Posted 4 years ago # -
“Improving the standard of traffic engineering is probably much more efficiently delivered by pressure on their elected managers rather than piecemeal comments on consultations“
Still not efficient enough though.
There must be plenty of traffic engineers who began their careers when ‘how to do things differently/better’ was at least talked about. But the impact on their employers (officials and politicians) seems to have been minimal.
Too many clearly think ‘priority car’.
In Amsterdam some things got going when the officials decided to do stuff without (apparently) actually telling the public or politicians too many details.
Here in Lothian Region days the top two Highways officials kept designing roads after councillors told them not to on the basis that ‘those councillors won’t be around for ever’.
Officials had to be persuaded to take early retirement.
That was FORTY YEARS AGO.
A whole generation of road engineers since then...
Posted 4 years ago # -
I guess what really needs to change is for road engineers to be told, in no uncertain terms, that their purpose is to make using a car to travel through the centre of the city a lot harder. If anything, actively make traffic flow worse (for anything other than buses, trams and bikes).
Posted 4 years ago # -
@cycleAlex Can you confirm the width?
Did a rough measurement with my phone - initial width is ~1.75m increasing to ~2.1m at the bus stop.First layer of resurfacing has been done so doesn’t look like there’ll be any more segregation for now.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Did a rough measurement with my phone
Genuinely intrigued. Laser?
Posted 4 years ago # -
Nothing as cool as that unfortunately! On newer iPhones you can scan an area with the phones camera and then, using 'augmented reality technology', measure distances. More: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208924
It can be very accurate but it was pretty dark this morning.
Posted 4 years ago #
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