CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
”Hundreds of mature trees to be chopped down for new path to move planes“
(17 posts)-
Posted 5 years ago #
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It would surely be much easier to remove the wings from the planes (as they did for Concorde) rather than cut down 299 trees.
would include car parking for nearly 150 vehicles
Sigh.
There should be no increase in car parking and instead a regular, low-cost (or free) shuttle bus from Drem station
Posted 5 years ago # -
Also no map, nor indication of plans in the EEN (shoddy journalism), but it's hard to see why cutting down trees is required.
None of the planes are hemmed in by the trees. And all of the planes could access the road network via the disused runways.
Unless they are thinking of putting a hangar on the other side of the wood, I just can't imagine...
Posted 5 years ago # -
Also no map, nor indication of plans in the EEN
This was annoying me too. The planning ref is 19/00692/PM for anyone wanting to see an actual plan.
Unless they are thinking of putting a hangar on the other side of the wood
That is what they're thinking.
The car park will be on the northern end of the western park here, with the building on the other side of the thin line of trees (which are presumably for the chop too.
Posted 5 years ago # -
East Lothian Courier has more detail about the rationale:
https://www.eastlothiancourier.com/news/18196384.national-museum-flight-plans-fell-299-trees-move-planes/Edit: after having read the EEN, it is pretty much identical to the Courier article.
There is a petition at
https://www.change.org/p/national-museums-of-scotland-stop-national-museums-of-scotland-killing-299-mature-treesYou could also write to the East Lothian planning committee.
Posted 5 years ago # -
There must be better ways to do this.
On the plus side, glad the Vulcan is being moved into the main hangar. I always find it such a shame it's hidden at the back of the site apparently being left to rot.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Do they have a 'green travel plan'?
They must have... surely.
Shuttle bus idea from Drem station good. They also used to run buses out from Chamber St.
Really can't have our galleries and museums promoting car use now. PR own goal.Posted 5 years ago # -
I've got a few thoughts on this one having taking a scout around the planning portal.
Firstly the "car parking for nearly 150 vehicles" is actually only 140 cars plus some bus spaces. This is an increase but only of 20 as the new car park replaces existing parking for 120. All other things being equal moving the parking off the scheduled monument site is a positive.
The Travel plan framework does talk about cycling and states that they offer a 10% discount if you arrive by bike. Which is good to know if you fancy cycling. It would be nice if there was a safe connection from the station for families to cycle but there are no plans that I'm aware of for that.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Here is the new site plans from the planning application (click to bigify):
Note that the tree band is being relocated from the north of the site to the south. Ignoring the age of the trees this might seem harmless enough until you look at the existing site plan:
Here (and in the satellite view below) you can see that the trees are not an isolated band but by relocating it they are breaking the continuity of the woodland band and isolating the sections on their new boundary. It's no wonder the woodland trust are up in arms about it.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@acsimpson Unrelated but how did you do that with the Imgur links? I'm forever spending my life resizing images to get them to fit here and ending up with dreadful quality.
Posted 5 years ago # -
The choice of site is also a little strange. I have added a line showing the boundary of the scheduled monument site where they are avoiding building. However as you can see there is a field directly next to the existing site which does not have any tree cover and is not part of the site:
I'm not sure who owns either field but it sounds like there is more to the choice of site than first meets the eye.
Incidentally I took a quick look at the option of craning it over the trees. A huge 200tonne crane wouldn't be able to lift a 50 tonne commet even half way over the trees. I don't imagine they would be able to get a much bigger crane onto site without causing similar tree damage.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@cyclealex, I seem to do it a different way each time. Just poking about until it works. On this occasion I was on the page usename.imgur.com/all and clicked the image, then at the bottom right of the popup click medium thumbnail. Finally click copy next to the linked BBCode text and paste it here.
Alternatively the code for the satelite image above is:
[ url=https://imgur.com/OvdI6A1 ][ img ]http://i.imgur.com/OvdI6A1m.png[ /img ][ /url ]Note the m just before .png denotes the medium thumbnail, an l would give large, etc.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Planning permission refused: http://www.midlothianview.com/news/tree-campaigners-defeat-flight-museum/
Posted 5 years ago # -
From link -
“
And they told Gordon Rintoul, director of National Museums Scotland, who made the case for the new centre, to go back to the drawing board, insisting they did not believe all options had been explored.
“
Well done.
Posted 5 years ago # -
So NMS are saying that HES say they can't use one adjacent field which is outside the scheduled monument boundary but can use another one requiring cutting down trees.
That would suggest they have crossed priorities and are not attempting to protect the historic environment, just the historic site.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I would maybe suggest that an unattributed statement ("Councillors [...] were told that Historic Environment Scotland had said it would not allow the hangar to be built there either.") isn't a lot to hang that statement on.
https://www.pastmap.org.uk/map
The field to the west isn't in the scheduled area, but it is listed in the HER as part of the airfield/airship station: https://www.johngraycentre.org/collections/getrecord/ELHER_MEL877/. Canmore layer on Pastmap shows the airfield Battle H.Q. on the west side (underground, mostly) and an air raid shelter on the right. The field also has a modern cemetery at the SW. Over on the east side outside the scheduled area there are various listed buildings at Crauchie Farm.Posted 5 years ago # -
That's some useful extra context. It's interesting that the battle HQ is situation outside the HER too.
Posted 5 years ago #
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