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.
My bold
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Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Michael Matheson: “the task was now to ‘lock-in’ positive changes in travel behaviour. "This is why we have committed to invest over £500m in active travel over the next five years. By improving our match-funding offer for permanent infrastructure at the same time, it will help our local authorities make some of the temporary changes permanent where appropriate”.
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They include a shift to more environmentally-friendly ways of heating homes and the creation of new "active freeways" dedicated to cyclists.
There are also plans to ramp up digital connectivity as more people work at home during Coronavirus lockdown.
Mr Matheson said public projects will play a key role in bring about a "green recovery" in Scotland's beleaguered economy.
"This plans confirms an additional £2 billion of low carbon investment to be made over the course of the next Parliament," he told MSPs in a Holyrood statement today.
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I see that the trams down NEPN to Granton is slowly resurrecting. Every time I think of this, I remember the purpose-built bridge carrying the tram and cycle path over the mainline which is too narrow for the council's own gritters to service the cycle path... or the street cabinet dodgem that is just to the west. No doubt cycling will be a similar first-class citizen of the next leg of the tram route :Z
Putting the trams down the NEPN has never struck me as a good idea even before they showed lack of due car and attention to other road users in phase 1.
Even if they manage to find a way to build it while leaving a path of comparable width alongside the track it will result in years of disruption to Edinburgh's best active travel corridor. That's before you start looking at sections like Coltbridge where I can't feasibly see them fitting 2 tracks and a path.
If they do put the trams and a decent path down the side then it will result in considerable loss of greenery. The only reason I can see that this route has been chosen is because it doesn't remove any capacity from the road network. But times and councils have changed since it was first proposed and I think we now need a better route.
The economic case for sending trams along the NEPN was always kind of ropey, largely based on several thousand flats being built on the derelict British Gas/Forth Ports land at Granton. Given these haven't (will never?) be built, I don't see this happening - certainly not before line 3 (Royal Infirmary) and the proposed city centre loop. At the current speed of roll out that would likely be decades away.
“The only reason I can see that this route has been chosen is because it doesn't remove any capacity from the road network.“
That would be a factor, but I suspect ‘it will be easy, the track space is already there’.
Can’t remember where the stops were planned to be, but on purpose was mass movement of people from the Waterfront to city centre.
That still expected to happen?
I have missed a few of the Granton Waterfront future meetings. Still talk, no building.
Edinburgh College at Granton is fab.
“I have missed a few of the Granton Waterfront future meetings“
Waiting at a tram stop?
@chdot, yes then loads of them all came along at once
‘it will be easy, the track space is already there’.
That's only true if you aren't also trying to fit a path in.
“That's only true if you aren't also trying to fit a path in.”
Yes, but I’m sure the original plan didn’t include that.
I blame those pesky Spokes people (pre secret cabal of cycle campaigners).
And the badger botherers..,
The original plans did include a shared-use path, but it was badly compromised at all the bridges, as you might expect.
I think one or two bridges had a 1 metre width of path, with the tram envelope encroaching on it. <scream emoji>
Not sure what the proposed “general” width of path was, but I’m sure it wasn’t greater than 3 metres.
Path if it exists at all about a metre wide. And then about a centimetre from the track?
“then about a centimetre from the track?“
Not quite, but severely restricted width at various bridges AND a fence.
“The original plans did include a shared-use path“
OK, I assumed ‘early fuss’ was about lack of parallel path, but perhaps it was about lack of adequate path plus the extensive planned closure of route to walking and cycling.
A better public transport option would be via Crewe Road, passing WGH.
Edinburgh Bike Co-op coming over all lukewarm. At best.
To all our #Bruntsfield and #Edinburgh customers, this week there are changes afoot outside our shop. This might mean you aren't allowed to drive up Whitehouse Loan and park outside the store.
Presumably the gradient wouldn't work on Orchard Brae, Dean Bridge perhaps not ideal for trams either.
One of the other reasons for the tram being on the NEPN is that far fewer utility diversions would be needed, something that accounts for a lot of the time/cost of the current project (despite previous work). It would probably be cheaper to build the tram on the NEPN and build seg. routes on Queensferry Rd/Crewe Rd S/Orchard Brae etc.
All the PA's for the Granton line from the initial project are still on the planning portal if anyone wants to get lost down a rabbit hole for an hour.
“Presumably the gradient wouldn't work on Orchard Brae”
Well yes, but
Always amazes me that the old trams managed The Mound, so?
Pic 4 -
Not directly related to Spaces for People but a bunch of car drivers are on Facebook trying to tie SfP into burst tyres due to running over a kerb somewhere in the Maybury Road conefields.
Sounds like they were going too fast (and possibly not looking where they were going).
I often forget that the EBC sells mountains bikes too and a lot of mountain bikers are into their driving. Certainly on the Granites etc. fair enough. Shame EBC not even willing to meet trouble half way....
I once spoke to a downhill mountain cyclist who didn't view his downhill mountain bicycle as a potential mode of transport, not even very early in the morning when buses were sparse.
@pringlis: you're right that Braid Road reopening is at the request of Lothian Buses. Annoyingly it's not the traffic volume per se that's the problem apparently, it's apparently the number of rat-runners coming out of side streets in the lower part of Comiston Road (Comiston Place, Comiston Terrace, Braid Crescent, etc) causing chaos by turning left/right.
I suspect that a high proportion of those rat-runners are coming from Charterhall Road/Cluny Gardens and in the "good old days" would have gone up Midmar Avenue/Drive, along Hermitage Drive and then turned left up Braid Road. From what I've seen of the Morningside Clock junction there's next to no traffic taking the left-hand lane there to go up Braid Road these days, so I don't think folks are going that way and then cutting back on to Comiston Road further up. (I can't fathom just now why the Braid Road closure would encourage rat-runners to turn right on to Comiston Road from the roads to the east.)
I believe it is a non-trivial task to put in measures to dissuade rat-runners from using whatever routes they can find through a highly permeable street pattern such as the Comiston Road/Cluny Gardens/Midmar Drive/Hermitage Drive area without making access unreasonably complicated for residents. (We have a similar dilemma where I live, as it happens, though on a slightly lesser scale - folks rat-running to/from Comiston Road/Oxgangs Road to avoid the Fairmilehead traffic lights - but most of the local residents don't seem to want any of the non-active travel access routes impeded in any way.) So I have some sympathies for the council trying to come up with an effective SfP plan for the area. But I am concerned that the Braid Road southbound reopening may have been decided without a proper understanding of the cause of the problem complained of by Lothian Buses. And to go ahead with that without reinstating the modal filters originally in the quiet route plan looks like just giving up.
“I am concerned that the Braid Road southbound reopening may have been decided without a proper understanding of the cause of the problem”
Presume various people on here will be ‘monitoring’ and suggesting modifications.
I once spoke to a downhill mountain cyclist who didn't view his downhill mountain bicycle as a potential mode of transport,
I've only ridden an enduro full sus mtb and even with a big powerful motor I wouldn't consider it a mode of transport.
This was about sixteen years ago. I was chaining my ratty old downtube-shiftered road bike to a lamppost near the top of Waverley Steps for the day prior to being picked up for a work ski club trip, so I can imagine someone being horrified at the thought of leaving something outside all day in a relatively unsafe place if it cost a lot of money even if it couldn't be easily ridden away. Perhaps such things could be classed as a fairingless geared wheeled toboggan if they're only for going down things on.
@wingpig, yes an all weather/terrain wheeled toboggan if one was somehow biased against such contraptions? As they also work on grass and indeed The Slabs.
I am currently reading Tolstoy’s Man and Master which is about an ill fated sledging trip around xmas. Sledge pulled by horse but driven By a drunk master and a sober serf. I cannot see it ending well. George Saunders commentary on this 50 pager is called And Yet They Drove On
Do they go up the hills they subsequently go down, or do they have motor assistance or a chairlift/ski-tow sort of thing?
@wingpig there is a concept of "uplift" at most trail centres. This is where you pay £25 or so and get unlimited lifts up the hill with your bike on the back of a trailer. They have this organised by local company at innerleithen and Glentress for example. For those out of hours many on super downhill machines push their bikes to the top of the hill.
I prefer riding up but I have a very different type of mountain bike. Interestingly if you want to see what Enduro looks like this is not the same as downhill. Often Enduro includes prolonged climbs or sprints which can elicit very high outputs of energy. You also have to cycle up the hills to the start of the decents although this isn't timed.
Is the Strathpuffer Enduro then? Or extreme cyclocross?
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