CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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closed"York Place ‘like M6’ as works swell traffic"
"There are less parking spaces all of a sudden because the cars are now parking vertically"
http://m.scotsman.com/edinburgh-evening-news/york-place-like-m6-as-works-swell-traffic-1-2415975
Must be a different M6!
"It’s like the M6 – you can just see the traffic going backwards and forwards. There are less parking spaces all of a sudden because the cars are now parking vertically. Our customers are going to find it more difficult to park, especially with the amount of traffic. I think it will have quite a bit of impact on the residents too – there are quite a few residents here with children"
cars are now parking vertically
I should like to see that! :-)
It does conjure a certain image doesn't it...
I do like that their customers are going to struggle to park because of traffic, their customers being in no way at all traffic when they drive...
"...I don’t think I will come into town at all now unless I’m coming in by train."
Is this all actually a stealth public transport marketing campaign ? If so it appears to be working!
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cars are now parking vertically
I should like to see that! :-)
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Not forgetting the Pollock Free State version.
There is a whopping great hole in the ground opening up in Broughton Street just where the road was replaced less than a week ago. You can see pipework and everything. Staggering.
The above mentioned meteor impact crater botch job has been repaired with crumbly looking tarmac. I am sure it will last for ages and not be a problem again in our lifetimes.
[/scarcasm]
You young'uns probably won't recall the day Leith Street fell down into an adjacent hole (now a car park) could 'feel' the changes in the surface profile for months before it happened too.
I predict many of the works being carried out to divert utilities will be poorly detailed (removing the load-spreading layer of setts with over 100 years of getting settled regularly results in a long - if not continuing period of the aggregate backfilling sinking down in to the subgrade, and continually requiring a top-up)
Min you should get regular pictures, of the failures and the repairs - and perhaps an FoI can reveal how much each visit and repair adds up to a grand total cost. I've been tracking a failed road in Crewe which I see every 2-4 weeks, almost every time there has been another patch up job rather than doing it just once and doing it right. I see a hole that broke my hip in 2001 that continues to be patched and reappearing, but best of all are the slots in the tarmac where parts of the old tram track were removed 50 years ago, which keep reappearing every time the road gets patched up.
Yes, that is not a bad idea, I may do that.
I could also do the one in Nicolson Street that was resurfaced just over a year ago and has already been patched twice and last time I looked was back to being a big pothole again.
"I predict many of the works being carried out to divert utilities will be poorly detailed (removing the load-spreading layer of setts ... "
Are there any setts on the tram route?
@Tulyar do you know if any allowances have been made in the roads mending / construction department since the conversion of Lothian Buses entirely to low-floor buses, which are significantly heavier and more powerful than their predecesors, yet are still putting their weight on the road on the same 2 axles.
The signs at the start of York Place outside the Portrait Gallery say "buses only". On Thursday evening I took that to mean "buses and cycles". I don't think I'll be doing that again - now we're restricted to the left hand lane for most of the road the surface is absolutely appalling.
Oh, and the cones on Broughton Street have been replaced by a proper barrier, so it is much trickier to take that straight on on a bike when there's traffic...
Yeah I did that yesterday morning, I think they really mean buses only, fortunately with that wind yesterday I left the bus for dead.
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Despite the concerns, council bosses said the York Place traffic management works were “running very smoothly”.
Alex Watts, who has lived with his family in Albany Street for nine years, has been stunned by the council’s lack of understanding on the matter as an extra 1000 cars an hour drive past his door.
He said: “Motorways run smoothly, but I wouldn’t want to go and live next to one. I have two daughters, aged two and five, and I do not feel the street is at all safe with this level of traffic.
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Oh it's that 'smooth flowing traffic' thing again...
Oh its that "whining motorists who want to drive (and park) everywhere themselves but don't want anyone else to. At least not in their front yard" thing again.
“We are used to parking and stopping outside our houses to unload shopping or children – this is now becoming a highly dangerous exercise.”
This is just something I don't get. Presumably the additional traffic is just passing through, so nothing is stopping people still stopping outside their houses. So if they're stopping outside their houses why is it more dangerous?
If anything, they point out that the traffic isn't 'smooth flowing', so yes there are more cars, but they're travelling more slowly (or not at all) and so pose less of a danger...
"so nothing is stopping people still stopping outside their houses"
Well apart from danger (perceived or real) of increased traffic, there are fewer parking spaces as there is no longer 'end on' parking.
"I think they really mean buses only"
Yeah, but no idea if that is legal/enforcable.
Meant to post this the other day -
More - http://www.flickr.com/photos/chdot/sets/72157630710306250/detail
Hippo McCrit of Albany Street said "It is high time more people started walking, cycling or using public transport more often. Except us."
"Last week there were massive delays and I ended up sitting in my car for 40 minutes for what should have been a 5 minute journey to pick little Tarquin up from the nursery in the next street. Now there are no massive delays and that is wrong too"
So if they're stopping outside their houses why is it more dangerous?
It may be that their allocated space is across the road, but still 'outside the house'. So if the road is materially much busier, albeit slower moving, perception will be that the road is more dangerous to cross.
I assume the cooncil will only be happy when there's one massive nose-to-tail wall of cars between Joppa in the east and Corstorphine in the west, all moving "smoothly" along at 8.4mph. They can then proudly proclaim that the traffic has been smoothed and utopia reached.
Beneath the tarmac is often the original layer of setts or cobbles. Leaving this intact provides the fine load spreading function of a setted street. If laid properly each sett settles a small amount relative to its neighbour, and the street does not pothole or form deep sunken areas. When a utility company contractor digs down they destroy this load spreading mattress and instead of re-laying it (too expensive in the short term mentality) they dump in granular fill (Type 1).
Having destroyed the puddle clay or cold tar 'seal' that most quality setted streets are laid on the granular fill, usually dumped in without any filter membrane or geotextile reinforcement, can migrate down and outwards in to the soil of the sub grade, with ground water flows (or water introduced by the tar band seal of the repair failing) the fine material is lubricated and pumps with traffic loadings and moves away even more rapidly as a slurry, creating voids and causing progressive and continuous collapse, and never-ending revisits to top up the tar without actually fixing the problem.
Other incompetence includes relaying Cockburn Street with the wrong sort of setts in too loose a bond (the old surface was smooth top setts laid with a high quality of tight joints and a joy to ride down at speed, as I did daily when commuting by train to Glasgow, and the rapidly re-done cross-roads of High Street and Bridges where the new bond was laid parallel to the bridges and rapidly fell apart before the original and proper 45 degrees pattern was restored.
So what you are saying is, we can carry on pouring tar and gravel into potholes for eternity, but it does nothing more than provide a very temporary sticking plaster which rapidly falls apart and badly done it probably even increases the speed of further damage to the road?
We should memo that to the Roads Department.
This publication makes for interesting reading http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/rspg-2g-trmwys.pdf, in particular page 12 and clause 76. ORR use this as a standard to determine whether a tram system is fit to be opened. Standards for the on-street sections in Edinburgh would appear to be compromised, or very close to the minimum preferred
Here's a recent photo https://p.twimg.com/AyeaL-VCYAAIpvR.jpg:large
Basically Kaputnik yes. If you don't sort the fundamental defect which is causing the surface to collapse it will continue to collapse.
There are some details I'd like to see tested. For bus stops where the forces exerted on the tarmac cause it to flow up into wave crests and severe undulations, Strip out and lay flush setts at least 150mm deep and 150 x 250 mm top surface in a transverse bond (or herringbone with shaped edge blocks) these laid on a tensar or similar geotextile and membrane possibly on a thin clay/bentonite levelling grout. the blocks to be laid with tight joints and ideally with a washed in seal/grout (old system used tar, new polymer compounds may provide modern equivalent)
Unlike tarmac the setts as discrete elements do not move around and extrude with the effects of braking forces on warm tarmac assisted by the solvent effect of diesel and oil spillage from the buses weakening the tar.
And, K, add in the axle loadings of Lothian's buses and you have the perfect recipe for huge scoopings-out of tarmac and massive potholes that never go away. Have you cycled east along Lauriston Place recently? My jaw nearly hit the floor, physically and metaphorically.
Some of the roads around Park Circus in Glasgow have their original setts. None of those cheap, crappy rounded bicycle-eating cobbles an inch apart of Edinburgh there, these are flat, tightly laid and amazing to cycle on. Except in rain, when they get a wee bit skitey - but then that's good for teaching road users how to exercise restraint.
"So what you are saying is, we can carry on pouring tar and gravel into potholes for eternity"
Well you use Chambers Street...
@Tulyar, is that Haymarket Yards? I rode there on Friday and never even noticed that there was a notional cycle lane. I'd rather ride in the not-quite 4'8 1/2" between the rails.
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