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.
"on the basis it would make the route profitable in the long-term"
If they mean 'it can't make a revenue profit on the current short route' then might be worth spending the capital required for a 'viable' route(?)
(Not that I am suggesting I would believe any "business case".)
Of course it would be nice if public transport was counted as a 'public good' in the way that roads are...
Though of course if anyone was bothered about 'value for money' they'd just build cycle infrastructure.
Tram terminates at Shandwick west end.
Serious incident at Lothian Rd. Bus diversions.
Photos of the flooded A8 Tunnel: https://twitter.com/edinburghtrams/status/872347148268048384
One must ask
Was a pump not provided
Or if it was, why is it not able to clear the water?
Do trams have snorkel gear?
To clear it where?
This water might have overflowed from the gogar burn along the road?
The water could be cleared to a SUDS pond (artificial lake for surface discharge) if they have one in the depot, a storm drain, or further downstream if there is a burn close by.
It's not really a lot of water, it's just gathered at the lowest point and needs a static pump to get it going.
Assuming this is a lack of a pump rather than a broken down pump, the incumbent management aren't due any hate the first time it happens.
I live across from the Murrayfield tram station and the poor woman on the tannoy is getting hoarse apologising.
I'm pretty sure that the Gogar Underpass (i.e. the road) was fitted with a pump for the same reason.
Temporary pump sooked the water up and away into a closeby drain
Nice and dry now
Given how close the drain is, a permanently installed pump and automatic float switch is not a difficult engineering proposition.
Well you'd hope so!
If this is gravity drainage I'd check levels here and at the outfall on the River Almond as cannot have a great fall over the distance. If Almond rises than outfall will submerge and drain will back-up or a flap valve on the outfall will close to prevent river flowing back up drain. I've seen 6+ft fountains spraying up from manholes due to the downstream outlet submerged by rising river levels, and pressure can blow cast iron covers off several feet into the air. Cutting through from Gogar Station Road to Edinburgh Park you might note/follow the flood relief channel(s) and surge ponds for river flow management, noting that Gogar Burn us culverted right under Edinburgh Airport to emerge close to where the old A8 was chopped off at the North perimeter. A severe storm surge will probably have to hold water upstream of that culvert in the attenuation ponds at Edinburgh Park.
Surprise that there is not a sump for the underpass with a float switch and pumps.
Some very basic maths on the car parking and road surface areas at the Gyle should tell you how much water is not being soaked up by 'grass' (about 70% of a storm surge can be held back by having grass in place of tarmac/hard landscaping (around 5,500 cu.m per hectare per year as a crude figure from green (tram) track handbook).
Get your calculators out Rainfall:The precipitation value in mm is referring to the amount of rain per square metre in one hour. One millimetre of rainfall is the equivalent of one litre of water per square metre.
One car parking space is 12.5 sq m and usually requires the same again for the 'access' roadways, how many parking spaces at the Gyle? 87 litres per sq m of water to get rid of?
What an appalling opportunist piece. Riddled with typos - they can't even spell Princes Street - makes it almost unreadable.
They are seriously unwise to make the claim that it was the tram track that trapped her wheel. Having looked that the pictures at the scene and visited the crash site I strongly suspect a very different narrative may emerge.
What a pile of tosh about how the tram track issues are resolved by other systems - rubbish - no one has delivered a groove filler that squashes down and springs back for tram rails - there is a system for level crossings, but you need to build the system for level crossings, with normal vignole section rails instead of grooved tram rails to be able to use it. That would have been possible if the tram system had been designed with this type of rail at the crucial locations.
More data here: http://d3cez36w5wymxj.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/13160310/TPS-2016-Edinburgh-Trams-Autumn-2016-results.pdf
The Reason for the positivity, they only asked people on using the trams and most of them 57% are using it for leisure with only 24% using it for Regular commuting ( 3 or more days) See page 47!
So in other words, as has been said a million times, the trams are a tourist attraction that very few people can use as a serious alternative to more conventional forms of transport.
70% gave the "Places Reachable" as the key reason for not using the trams more! I'm still waiting at Granton for mu first tram!
I don't think that table shows its only tourists using it. "leisure" will include shopping, going to the pub, visiting friends, generally getting about the city - anything that is not work.
The "where people using the tram live" table shows more than 60% have EH postcodes. That a tram serving the airport and train station has a lot of non-Edinburgh users shouldn't be a surprise.
@Stepram
My office (until 30th June when I leave) is at Edinburgh Park, and pretty much all the visitors from London - staff or clients - use the tram to get there.
Anyone going on a jolly up town, likewise uses the tram.
The argument that people only use our single tramline to commute if it goes close to their house is the same as if you did a citywide survey of the number 5 bus.
The tram is great, but its limited depending on what you want to do / where you want to go.
It doesn't go to Granton, so that is a limiter for you, but I spoke to an ex colleague yesterday who lives at the Gyle and trams in every day to his office in George St - he thinks its the bees knees.
I was surprised coming back from the airport at rush hour once to see the volume of people commuting from out of town (Edinburgh Park etc) back *in* to their central Edinburgh homes. A reversal of the norm!
From the Gyle to either our Haymarket office or the pub I never get a seat. That is at random times of ranom days they're not all foriegn tourists who've just flow up for a shot on our tram...
How does that commuting/leisure split compare to that of driving, cycling, walking and bus travel?
Does holiday travel to and from the airport count as "leisure"? Leisure makes it sound a bit frivolous but an airport journey seems a bit more "essential" than a trip down the shops. Though both avoid a car trip.
Yes council should ban people commuting from the centre outwards as causes unnecessary pollution and creates 2 journeys. People commuting in means someone that works in the centre can’t get a house and has to commute in. Weakness of congestion charge is that should cover people going in both directions commuting in and out also cross town traffic. Unlike compared to London where relatively to Edinburgh a bigger volume of movement may be people commuting in Edinburgh may have more in and out and crosstown.
I suppose there should be boundary charges when entering or exiting the centre. Even a person walking in to the centre if consumes goods or services in the centre is adding to congestion as the beer or clothes has to be transported to the centre. Everyone could wear a tracker and then the council charge when people cross different boundaries also considering what transport method. Cars could have the highest boundary charge then taxi bus and trams, and pedestrians the least but what about a bike? The carbon foot print depends what way came. If some holds up 7 buses then the extra pollution created up by slowing and speeding would be larger than say if took the canal or cycle route where nothing held up. If someone pressed the green man and it stops a milk tanker going uphill externality would be much higher than if downhill. So would be based the externality created by someone’s behaviour. There would of course have to be proportionality based on choices, method of transport, in respect allocation of costs of the externality. If someone holds up a truck this create extra pollution so if added or removed person holding up truck this would appear the extra cost, but would have to consider if a truck the most efficient way to move the goods then is it the most efficient truck, but perhaps before this would have to consider are the goods worthwhile enough to move. I mean if the truck was moving red dresses if red is the new black then the making red the new black has a cost if there was a rule that no unnecessary items are allowed to be promoted then would save further so may be externality when goods are not promoted on increased utility . So may be its types of consumerism planned obsolescence (more often through fashion than functionality) and conspicuous consumption.
So in this utopia for transport everyone could be chipped and journey costs added, but also promoters of good that cause journeys could be considered also.
Fashion changes could cause extra journeys so if someone is promoting a change in style that has no utility benefit be it in clothes houses cars or anything than an extra pollution charge could apply.
The tram project began as a way to deal with the projected future demand of moving large volumes of people from North and North East Edinburgh to where they work (the city centre and the western business zones)
Leith Walk is historically extremely populated and the plans at the time were that Western Harbour and Granton Harbour would be equally so by today's date.
The 22 has over the years expanded and expanded and the city centre is at the tipping point where if you add more busses it will negatively impact every service.
So this is where light rail comes in. Every tram can take 3 busses of passengers and they load in a fraction of the time.
We currently have tram line that despite serving none of the core residential areas it was supposed to is staggeringly popular at rush hour.
I think I have said here in the past, because the City Centre is the end of the line, the "shop window" of the tram to passers by is really quite bad. That's because a good %age get off at Haymarket, Shandwick Pl, and so on. So it's easy to walk past one in St Andrew Sq, see the 5 passengers left going to York Pl, and be dismissive of it as a failure.
Does holiday travel to and from the airport count as "leisure"? Leisure makes it sound a bit frivolous but an airport journey seems a bit more "essential" than a trip down the shops. Though both avoid a car trip. “
Well if a trip is for leisure to then and a trip to the shops if for leisure then both frivolous so I suppose would depend on which method has a larger impact.
Commuting may be regarded as the gold standard in usefulness however this is also determined by choices that may be frivolous. If someone’s commute is so can have a larger garden by living 20 miles away this is the cost of the garden.
What about if someone commutes so can earn more to be spent on extra cars clothes meals out, beer and holidays frivolous also as the commute is the cost of these extra frivolous things above what could earn with out the commute.
Comrade Ed1 has your invite to the inner party proceded as discussed?
Beer is not frivolous.
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