CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh

Want to see a better Rocheid Path?

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  1. chdot
    Admin

    "

    ROCHEID PATH TO RECOVERY
    Monday, 24 October 2011

    A new group – Friends of the Rocheid Path – has formed to make sure the popular beauty-spot and pedestrian/cycle route between Arboretum Avenue and Inverleith Terrace Lane is better looked after.

    Founders want to see the area replanted and enhanced, particularly once extensive and highly disruptive flood-defence measures on the Water of Leith are completed in 2012.

    The group's first Annual General Meeting  will take place tomorrow evening at Edinburgh Academy.

    To receive the group’s news and details of future meetings, email: therocheidpath@gmail.com

    "

    http://www.broughtonspurtle.org.uk/news/rocheid-path-recovery

    Rocheid was once intended to be obliterated by Edinburgh's Inner Ring Road plans.

    The flood prevention work won't be quite as damaging - in the long term.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  2. wingpig
    Member

    I finally got round to Googling for a map of the proposed city-centre roads-on-stilts inner ring road thing after seeing it mentioned many times. Eep.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  3. chdot
    Admin

    Useful find Wingpig.

    They were serious.

    As I've said before, Edinburgh's innate conservatism meant that things dragged on without decisions being taken, so that big urban road schemes were no longer fashionable - or affordable.

    Edinburgh didn't get the roads, but is still gripped by 'cars more important than people' attitudes.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  4. wingpig
    Member

    Ignoring the possibilities for big fat stilted roads being congested and slow, imagine how much more embedded would the car=faster assumption (usually false over city-centre distances) be if there was a big fat stilted road linking A and B instead of a selection of piggledy cobbledy streets and lots of traffic lights with a few pinch-points and one-way restrictions...

    Posted 12 years ago #

  5. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    Although I like the idea of a bike lane slung underneath - separated from everything and with a natural rain cover above.

    Of course there are some downsides, wind blowing you off, and a lack of easy access...

    Posted 12 years ago #

  6. crowriver
    Member

    @wingpig, those plans are completely insane. A1(M) through Duddingston village and round by the crags? A motorway through the Meadows?

    Thank goodness for the oil crisis I say. Mind you, fashion, money and expensive oil haven't stopped Glasgow from pressing ahead with their motorways on stilts...

    Posted 12 years ago #

  7. chdot
    Admin

    TODAY

    Anyone going?

    (It's north of Princes Street)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  8. Stepdoh
    Member

    It's a path I use on the nursery run, not too keen on it from a cycling point of view. So much so that I run the gauntlet of the Cannonmills junction more usually now.

    It's a nice walk though, and I'm not sure I'd love to see it tarmacced, possibly flattened a wee bit.

    Just imagine how 60s futuristic Embra would look with an elevated highway.

    What's more worrying is that this plan was only 'Stage one'

    Posted 12 years ago #

  9. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Was it to be a tunnel under or a birdge over Waverley station?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  10. DaveC
    Member

    Looking at the plans it looked like a tunnet under Leith Street to Waterloo Place then over a bridge to the top of Jeffrys street.

    I'm glad they didn't pursue the plan also as it would have changed the make up of Edinburgh beyond belief and turning back the clock (i.e. removing roads) is near impossible in thie day and age.

    I'm reminded of every other city I've visited with huge tracks of land given to traffic flying past, it creats dead areas. Think of the elevated setions above the M8 around Cowcaddens. Every other elevated stretch of motorway is similar in some respects. At least rail sections have arches which businesses occupy.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  11. chdot
    Admin

    "Was it to be a tunnel under or a birdge over Waverley station?"

    BUT whether it could all have been built is another matter.

    The last part that was still planned in the mid 70s was the Bridges Relief Road - St. Leonards to Picardy Place.

    I did a route profile and didn't see how it was possible to get a road under The Royal Mile and over the station.

    At a press conference I asked the Director of Highways if the route had been surveyed.

    He said No.

    Reminds me of the time I helped a mate demolish a room-dividing wall in a Georgian House as part of a restoration/upgrade job. The architect had drawn up plans 'showing' that the ceiling level was different on each side of the wall!

    Strange.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  12. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Yes it does all look like it was done by simply drawing a line around central Edinburgh with a marker pen on an O/S map, making no consideration for the topology (or the volcanic substrate you would have to try tunnel through!)

    I often think cycling infrastructure is designed this way. Someone does a nice top-down CAD drawing of the arrangement, thinks "ooh, this looks nice", then the roads people are sent out to build the thing according to plans. Nobody actually goes along and looks at it at ground level and considers how end users (cyclists, pedestrians, cars) might actually interact with it.

    The nonsense over-elaborate and utterly confusing maze of an arrangement at intersection of Melville Drive and Argyle Place is a great example. I go that way every day and it still confuses me as to how I'm really "meant" to go through it. I just do what seems sensible.

    Posted 12 years ago #

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