I think it's fair to say that the rollout was not done particularly well. We get letters through the door to say that the pavement will be resurfaced or there's telecom work. If the council sent a form letter through the front doors of the people living on the streets that were directly impacted by SfP, I don't remember hearing about it. Instead it seems like people were surprised by cones going out, which seems like a predictable own goal.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Scottish Govmt announces £10m for pop up cycle/walking lanes
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Posted 3 years ago #
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@Dave: I keep reading about how emergency services can't access anything due to bollards.
As has been stated a number of times in the CEC and Sustrans SfP mythbusters pieces which can be found online, emergency services have been consulted about the SfP changes. It therefore seems quite likely that any issues they may subsequently have encountered would be due to people not using the new road layouts as intended, not observing or complying with the new signage, or just not GAF.
If the council sent a form letter through the front doors of the people living on the streets that were directly impacted by SfP, I don't remember hearing about it.
Unless the tradespeople happen to be from the same neighbourhood, they wouldn't get such notifications anyway. But I agree (and think I've said before on here) that relying on Twitter and councillors' blogs to spread the word around is far from satisfactory.
@davecycl: ...we also need to try to think from the perspective of an ordinary person driving who unexpectedly now finds they can’t unload where they could before, has no idea what they’re “supposed” to do...
An ordinary person should know what a double yellow line means, even if there wasn't one there before. What do responsible and considerate ordinary people do when they can't park exactly where they feel like? I'd suggest that they go looking for a place where they can legally park*. Only the DGAF/carry-on-doing-it-as-long-as-we-can-get-away-with-it-regardless-of-who-it-might-inconvenience fraternity actively choose to ignore the regulations and react aggressively when challenged.
* ISTR someone posting on CCE recently a disturbing statistic about the % of traffic that was made up of vehicle being driven around in search of parking spaces. So yes, signage would be helpful - but I imagine that someone who chooses to ignore a sign telling them what they can't do is also less likely to take any notice of a sign telling advising what they can do.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Drove from Broomhouse up Meadow Place Road just after school pickup time. I’m still struggling to see the circumstances under which an ambulance would get delayed because of the new lanes.
Posted 3 years ago # -
All I can think of is, if there is a Northboind queue at Tescos and someone heading Southbound just stops - rather than continuing to drive past the end of the queue.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@ejstubbs: that is probably referring to the work of Donald Shoup. This is a good article about the statistic and how it has been misinterpreted:
https://www.reinventingparking.org/2013/10/is-30-of-traffic-actually-searching-for.html?m=1
Posted 3 years ago # -
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One thing is pretty clear: there is virtually no evidence that LTNs routinely, or even regularly, delay emergency services. The single proper study of the phenomenon found no delays; neither the London ambulance service (LAS) or London fire brigade (LFB) believe there is a general problem; and the handful of attempts to prove a widespread issue fall apart on examination.
“
Posted 3 years ago # -
@Stickman: Thanks, that provides some useful context behind the numbers.
Posted 3 years ago # -
At Transport Committee Cllr Neil Ross asking for the new quiet route from Braid to James Gillespies to be removed.
Cllr Ross did not ask for the Quiet Route to be removed, he did however ask for "an immediate review".
He then went into a rant about angry frustrated drivers, 3-point turns, speeding and new rat-runs being opened up because of the new filters. Then he claimed the whole route was unsafe for cyclists because of the angry drivers.
What he has failed to understand (or chooses to ignore) is that the scheme will take time, up to 6 months, to settle in - for drivers to get used to the new routes, to not drive the same way they previously did only to become lost and confused.
Sadly, the council officer responding waffled a bit about a review and did not mention the need for patience and time for bedding-in. <facepalm>
You can watch the sorry show on the webcast between 1h50 and 2h00 https://edinburgh.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/563410
Posted 3 years ago # -
Cllr Ross did not ask for the Quiet Route to be removed, he did however ask for "an immediate review".
@neddie - ah, fair enough. To be honest I switched off the longer he ranted and assumed that he wanted it all gone.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Looks like new planters are starting to appear: https://twitter.com/SpokesPorty/status/1386699258133422085
Posted 3 years ago # -
Curious if any statistics are being gathered on the effect of the new cycle lanes on bike usage in Edinburgh
My casual observations are that they are mostly empty unfortunately.
In fact it is remarkable apart from the usual suspects in the Bruntsfield /Marchmont areas, how few city cyclists there are.
Being bollarded in with all the crap and sunken drains doesn’t help even though it gives us some protection from other traffic, but I think even if they were all nice and smooth ,it might not make much difference
There are factors beyond our control that do not make Edinburgh an ideal cycling city for many- a glut of hills and an almost continual meteorological purgatory prominent among them
I hope someone has the numbers to prove otherwisePosted 3 years ago # -
That's the thing about efficient transport infrastructure. It almost always looks empty. During normal times, at least a couple of thousand cyclists travelled up/down Middle Meadow Walk every day, but it always looked really quiet.
I'm not going to pretend Edinburgh is flat, or that the weather can't be a bit dispiriting. However, 9% of commuting trips made by Edinburgh residents in 2019 were by bike. Roughly one bike commuter for every four car commuters.
The evidence is clear that if you give people the means to cycle in safety then a decent number will choose to do so. We are already starting from a decent base. I am confident the new lanes and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (although not perfect) will help increase that number.
Don't know about data collection though. There is a network of cycle counters - but these will not normally cover the new lanes, where typically relatively few people cycled.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@jss
hills aren't a major issue when you've not got cars up your behind and can take your time, and even if they were.. Ebikes now start at £600, so city can be effectively flat for less than a year's bus pass.
'almost continual meteorological purgatory'
Edinburgh gets 704mm of rain a year, drier than most cities in the UK and only 17% more than Copenhagen gets a year (the city with the highest cycling modal share in the world). edi CopDespite the council building virtually no meaningful infrastructure, Edinburgh's modal share still managed to consistently rise for across the decade pre pandemic e.g. https://cyclingindustry.news/edinburghs-cycling-modal-share-highest-ever-recorded/
The reason that cycle lanes might look empty is A) they're efficient and so you don't see queues of traffic and B) there's been nowhere for people to go for the last four months til yesterday.
When people use the eye test to guage modalities, they just see whatever their confirmation bias tells them to (see excessive weather pessimism).
Sadly the middle meadow walk counter data parser doesn't work any more https://www.bicyclecounter.dk/BicycleCounter/BC_Statistics.jsp
We'll see what official numbers come back with as more stuff opens up later in the year https://road.cc/content/news/cyclings-modal-share-scotland-fivefold-lockdown-275601
Posted 3 years ago # -
Doesn't include cycling but does say how little people are moving around compared to normal.
https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2021-04-23_GB_Edinburgh_Mobility_Report_en-GB.pdf
Think the city probably has highest WFH rate in UK too:
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18519142.new-map-shows-edinburgh-inactive-part-uk-lockdown/Posted 3 years ago # -
I cycled parallel to the East Coast Mainline in the east of the city the other day. Disappointingly I did not see a single train pass. Must be the hills and the bad weather putting them off, eh? (The terrain was almost entirely flat and there was blazing sunshine all day).
Posted 3 years ago # -
Are there any bollards that intersect with the automatic pollution counters? It would be interesting to get that data and see whether they are actually causing pollution or not. (I know what I think, but anecdotes != data etc.)
Posted 3 years ago # -
I thought I would google and found http://www.scottishairquality.scot/latest/site-info?site_id=ED1&view=graphing
Fumbling around for two minutes, it looks like PM10 / PM2.5 are flat year on year but NOX is down about 1/3rd (Q1 2021 on Q1 2020).
Someone who knows data would probably want to look at it before any conclusions are drawn..
Posted 3 years ago # -
« Efficient transport infrastructure almost always looks empty »Really ? ,like the underground system in London ,or the permanently crowded cycle lanes in Amsterdam, Cologne and other mostly flat European cities I have cycled around
Electric bikes might well make going up Dundas street or the Mound more palatable and overall the new lanes are great ,but will they overcome the inertia that seems to stop a lot of people cycling - clothing ,perceptions of discomfort and danger?
Wonder if electric scooters legalised and restricted to safe speeds might become more a more attractive option as just street clothing required - obviously no health benefit to the user - but less pollution generallyPosted 3 years ago # -
BTW « meteorological purgatory » was Robert Louis Steven’s description of Edinburgh in spring, his descriptions of the other seasons are less flattering!
Posted 3 years ago # -
It's perfectly possible to cycle pretty much any distance inside the City of Edinburgh Bypass (to pick a commonly cited boundary) in street clothing, especially if using an EAPC when you are less likely to get hot & sweaty. It is absolutely not obligatory to wear lycra (though the type of bike you choose to ride can make a difference to the comfort level in street clothes - so for example a more upright riding position such as you get with a Dutch style bike might be more suitable).
Weather wise, you'd get just as wet on an electric scooter as you would on a bike. And, although I am willing to be convinced otherwise, I'd have my doubts about the usefulness of those tiny wheels on wet surfaces.
Posted 3 years ago # -
I got rollerblades about this time last year, as a kind of gentle midlife crisis. You can hardly ride over the roughness of NEPN, let alone on a real street. Scooter wheels a little bigger than 125mm though.
Posted 3 years ago # -
It seems like you need a few prerequisites to get much cycling adoption. If you feel personally unsafe (danger from drivers, or no street lights, or a potentially dodgy path for getting jumped) then it's a non-starter. You need somewhere to keep your bikes that they don't get stolen. It's surely true that hills and rain make it less attractive than flat with permanent sunshine, but I doubt they are such barriers that you can never achieve a high modal share. I think the real issues are going to be things like tens of thousands of commuters living in dorm areas many miles outside the city which have been made possible by mass car use and aren't so easy to displace.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@jss - at peak times the London Underground has roughly 540 trains (that are between 70m and 130m long) in service on a 402km long network. That really is efficient. For the vast majority of time the track at any point will have no train on it.
Cycle lanes in Copenhagen are not permanently crowded - here is the google streetview of a cycle lane outside Copenhagen town hall. I am sure it gets heaving, but it was quiet the couple of times I have cycled it myself.
Hills and poor weather do have an impact on cycling uptake, but cycle lanes and supportive public policy can increase cycle trips and modal share, e.g. see Heinen, van Wee & Maat. (2009, December). Commuting by Bicycle: An Overview of the Literature or Rietveld & Daniel. (2004, August). Determinants of bicycle use: do municipal policies matter?
Posted 3 years ago # -
Not sure if unfortunate souls who live next to overground sections of the Tube would have the perception that there are no trains on the line for the majority of the time.Staying occasionally in such a flat ,I think the interval was about every 5 to 10 minutes.Some respite between 1 and 5 am I seem to recall
Maybe if that was keyed in ,the statistic would come truePosted 3 years ago # -
At peak time I think they are getting on for 30 trains an hour. But then on Leith walk there were famously more than 60 buses an hour IIRC (maybe both ways).
Still I guess the point stands. If you were so inclined to put an infrastructure critic under a bridge with a train every two minutes they could well criticise it for seemingly sparse use compared to an adjacent road.
I used to sometimes count cyclists between Currie and the shore. This is maybe four years back. Quite often would get to just under a hundred. My guess is if I did it now the number would be significantly higher.
Posted 3 years ago # -
@jss - I don't want to labour this, but if a train passes every five minutes and takes 30 seconds to pass then there is no train present for 90% of the time. At a two-minute headway, there is no train 75% of the time. Now, I wouldn't want to live with either, and I do feel for people who do, but we are talking about efficiency. Tube lines really do look empty most of the time - even though the tube regularly carried more than five million passengers a day.
One Central Line train (carrying capacity 930, length 133m) can transport more people than 580 cars with the English average occupancy of 1.6 people. Parked nose to tail, that is a queue of cars around 2.9km long (assuming each car needs a space of 5m). Roads look busy, because cars are so space inefficient.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Length of vehicle per occupant is the basis of my new congestion charge
Anything above 3metres long will be ten pounds sterling. Obviously there will only be one occupant in any car being driven in to Edinburgh at commuting times.
But if anyone turns up at the gate in a cinquecento with a passenger they can have first week free
Posted 3 years ago # -
Many thanks for the correct science on this-next time I am trying to sleep in my relatives’s flat down there, I will repeat to myself that there is actually no train 75% of the time !
Posted 3 years ago # -
@jss more than that if you stay up until 1am before going to bed
Posted 3 years ago # -
Just because a train can carry a lot of people in very little space doesn't mean it isn't space efficient. I have heard the underground rumble in various houses in London and find it far less obtrusive than living on a busy arterial road. Neither of these is ideal and I'm sure some people find it easier to sleep with a busy road despite it also affecting air quality and daytime peace.
Turnhouse handled just short of 1 passenger for every 2 seconds in 2019 while Heathrow managed more than 2 passengers per second. No one can claim that they don't affect those living under the flight paths.
I'm not sure where that sits in terms of Edinburgh's busiest roads but the Bypass by comparison handles almost exactly 1 vehicle for each Heathrow passenger.
Posted 3 years ago #
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