CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
"Princes Street reopens as York Place closes for a year"
(144 posts)- Started 11 years ago by chdot
- Latest reply from crowriver
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Posted 11 years ago #
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"The road surface along the completed section could be used for general traffic, including HGVs, if required"
The completed section of Princes Street is, as is pointed out elsewhere in the story, to the west of Waverley Bridge. Albany Street is not to the west of Waverley Bridge. There are still road-blocking roadworks across the bit between South St Andrew's Street and Waverley Bridge so HGVs wouldn't be able to use the easternmost bit of Princes Street to get to Leith Street or North Bridge or Waterloo Place or wherever HGVs like to go.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Abandon hope.
Will the last one out please turn off the lights.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Quite often it's completely jammed with buses, so to add general traffic to the mix is really going to nail the timetables.
Of course, when the buses faced a few seconds delay each trip from the 20mph zone they exempted bus routes, but if the city centre motorist / Evening News reader is inconvenienced - why not just tear up the timetable altogether?
Posted 11 years ago # -
The traffic is pretty much constant and we’ve lost a lot of parking spaces and also the ability to park nose-in. It is therefore much more dangerous to unload shopping or children.
Surely if you're having to park side on you're unloading shopping and children directly onto the pavement? Am I missing something? If that's the case in what way is it more dangerous than unloading your shopping and children into the road as you would with nose-in parking? (or 'vertical' parking as I'll forever know it as now)
Posted 11 years ago # -
Ach, just let them do it! The effects on us would be negligible and a week after the traffmageddon the EEN will be lambasting the trams people for allowing that volume of traffic on to Princes Street. The traffic could then be re-diverted, the poor souls in the New Town will just lump it because at least now they can get their cars to their office 500m away, EEN comentators would be shown they were wrong- they would of course now claim that they never thought the traffic should be there any way. The overall cost of the two sets of diversion work would appear as a rounding error on the total costs of the
farceproject.I remember when Princes St. was a free for all my Mum would always wait on the 38 to get from Balgreen to Cameron Toll then walk up Dalkeith Road, with two kids in tow, to our dentist at the Commy to avoid getting the 3 because it was still quicker than getting through town. This was 25 years ago and I don't imagine the traffic levels have dropped any.
The 2 must have had a different route back then because reading that back and knowing the buses that is just daft!
Posted 11 years ago # -
Ouch
I had to drive to work with the classic car so I could take it for it's MOT in the afternoon, turned left down Queen St Gardens West thinking to get to Dundas Street. WRONG no left turn at top of Dundas!
What
The
Hell?Mess - total mess, glad to be back on teh bike this morning
Posted 11 years ago # -
Oh FFS.
families in Albany Street, Abercromby Place and Heriot Row complained
Well there's your problem, right there. What people in Albany St, Abercromby Place and Heriot Row want, they get. They don't want wheelie bins, they don't get wheelie bins. They don't want
motoristsother motorists in their nice posh street, they don't get them." claims that the balance was wrongly set in favour of motorists and not local residents."
If they want the street set in favour of residents and not motorists then they will have to give up all of their parking spaces and their right to drive along their own street but they won't do that will they?
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Ach, just let them do it!"
There is part of me that think the Council should, for a week, say 'righto, no traffic restrictions, no parking restrictions, away you go' and then watch the catastrophic carmaggeddon with a look of sly satisfaction. I can't understand this 'open everything and traffic will flow' idea. Remove restrictions and more people will take cars, simple as that. Space, folk will find, will fill up quickly. And allow people to park where they want and junctions become more dangerous and slower; and some routes get completely blocked to 'larger' vehicles which then causes a tailback behind.
Still, some folk (generally on EEN comment pages) seem to NEED something to moan about.
Posted 11 years ago # -
junctions become more dangerous and slower; and some routes get completely blocked to 'larger' vehicles which then causes a tailback behind.
Happens on the Calder Road roundabouts every time there's an accident at Hermiston Gate, or when they're digging up the crossroads at Gillespie/Lanark Rd.
Once I've finished "Off the Map: Bicycling Across Siberia" I'm going to re-read "Traffic" to remind myself about flow theory and road restrictions.
Posted 11 years ago # -
That latest Scotsman article will save Arellcat the bother of having to read "Traffic" again to learn about flow theory...
Edinburgh Taxi Association chair Raymond Davidson has it sussed:
"
He said: “I’m not so sure it would make it any easier allowing traffic along Princes Street, it could all result in gridlock. The problem in Edinburgh is that the city is so wee that there are no exit roads on to, say, a motorway. It’s very easy to clog the city up
"Posted 11 years ago # -
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/530125_10151062952742278_456309295_n.jpg
Worth thinking about...
Posted 11 years ago # -
For once I agree with the IAM. Expecting residential streets to take the loadings of major arterial routes without strengthening works is ludicrous.
How does the axle loading of buses compare with articulated lorries? I'm increasingly sure that it's the buses, lurching from one side to another, stopping and accelerating all the time, that's ruining our roads.
Posted 11 years ago # -
From an old post of mine;
It can't help that the new low-floor buses weigh in at almost twice what the old high-floor ones did and have an engine nearly twice as powerful
(a google suggests 10.4 tonnes and c. 130-160bhp for an old Leyland Atlantean vs. 19.4 tonnes and 300bhp for a new Volvo B9TL, both dominant in Lothian fleets of past and present)
DfT figures give maximum weight for a rigid, 2 axle vehicle of 18tonnes, so perhaps buses have an exception as their empty weight exceeds this.
According to NHS figures, average UK male weighs 84kg and for a female 70kg. So let's imagine a reasonably full bus with 30 males (30x84kg = 2.5 tonnes) and 30 females (30x70kg = 2.1 tonnes) on board, that's an additional 4.6 tonnes, so that's a gross weight of 24 tonnes for a low-floor bus or 15 tonnes for a high floor bus.
That gives axle loads of 12 tonnes for a low floor and 7.5 tonnes for a high floor. Or a low floor bus has an axle loading 60% higher than a high floor.
Maximum permitted weight for an HGV is 44 tonnes in the UK and that requires 6 axles, giving a rough axle load (assuming even weight/load distribution) of 7.3 tonnes.
A 4 axle HGV can be up to 36 tonnes, which gives axle load of 9 tonnes.
DfT Also states that for operations over 40 tonnes, individual axle load cannot exceed 10.5 tonnes for "road friendly suspension" (at least 75 per cent of the spring effect is produced by air or other compressible fluid under pressure) or 8.5 tonnes without the latter.
DfT guidelines assume that drive axles have twin tyres, so that can be taken out of consideration.
So, whichever way you look at it, low floor busses seem overweight and have an overly high axle loading that is 15% higher than the maximum permitted for an HGV.
Earlier finding by Excitable boy was;
as a rule of thumb... for reasonably strong pavement surfaces" to be proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight. This means that doubling the axle weight will increase road damage (2x2x2x2)=16 times.
So that 15% increase results in significantly more than 15% more damaging forces on the road surface if that holds true.
I'm sure others have further insight into this.
Posted 11 years ago # -
A 15% increase in axle load would increase road damage by 75%. That's a lot. It also suggests that many of our roads are already operating at the limits of their durability.
Posted 11 years ago # -
According to Phylis from the Edinburgh Reporter, the spray-painted pavement markings were put in by the council and are "official" - Edinburgh Reporter article.
I've pointed out to her that they've used the wrong symbol for a start, and they don't get to make up the markings as they go along. I await all the "no driving" symbols in the cycle lanes. Oh wait, you CAN drive in our on-street cycle lanes...
Posted 11 years ago # -
"
The New Town Community Council is meeting to discuss one topic tonight at Broughton St Mary’s Parish Church on Bellevue Crescent:- Trams and road diversions through the City Centre and the New Town in particular."
Posted 11 years ago # -
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]This was posted two weeks ago. It is being dug up again today.
No I am not kidding.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Latest intel is that the spray-painted "no(no) cycling" signs on the pavements in the New Town are infact the work of Lothian & Borders. Make of that what you will.
Posted 11 years ago # -
They are already starting to wear off anyway so they wasted their time.
Posted 11 years ago # -
So the police have spare resources for spraying anti-cycling graffiti on posh pavements, but when it comes to enforcing speed limits or cracking down on double parking, there are apparently no resources?
Life's all about priorities, eh?
Posted 11 years ago #
Topic Closed
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