Apart from the very south of the country, The Nederlands is very flat. There are slight embankments where bridges and dykes are in place.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Leith Walk: revised plans
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Posted 11 years ago #
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The first 0.8 miles of Leith Walk (from the foot) is a 0.8% grade. The second 0.8 miles half is 2.6%.
I believe our European cousins can cope with such mighty slopes.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@mgj. The 'green ways' dn't help much when busses are continually pulling in and out. And when cars turning - eg McDonald road - dn't pay attention to cyclists. And that's without mentioning the roundabouts.
I'm sure there are times without traffic (see chdot's flickr stream), but when there is traffic, there is a lot! And very unpleasant too,
I cycled down one night last autumn and it was terrifying. I was reminded why I did not uncle when I lived just off Leith Walk.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@SRD I was reminded why I did not uncle when I lived just off Leith Walk.
the reasons why you do or don't Uncle is best kept to yourself ;)
Another reason why I don't think Greeenways are a suitable cycling solution for Leith Walk are the endemic levels of ignoring them by many businesses. *Cough*...avorita! *Cough*
Posted 11 years ago # -
I have mentioned the Danish city of Aarhus before - it is hilly but it has a 20% bike modal share. Look here and here and here and here.
Segregation, like in the last link, can make cycling up a hill more pleasant. It's certainly preferable to climbing a hill with a bus at your back.
Posted 11 years ago # -
the reasons why you do or don't Uncle is best kept to yourself ;)
One can cry uncle or play uncle, but one cannot do uncle (except in the vulgar and probably illegal sense).
/pedant
Posted 11 years ago # -
Sorryr. I was wearing gembo's gloves
Posted 11 years ago # -
This is cheap!
Not sure about the bus stop (0:40) and what happens when there is a bus stopped - but this what LW needs to 'test' various proposals/alternatives.
Posted 11 years ago # -
That cost £10k apparently. Which is nothing, in the great scheme of things
The bus stops have been criticised for being Danish rather than Dutch (in Denmark, cyclists are required to stop if a bus stops at one of those stops to let passengers pass so the lack of islands isn't such a problem) but it's not a very busy street for buses, compared with LW
Posted 11 years ago # -
It is not a very busy street for any traffic? Couple of mopeds, a van, one car? Is italsomone way?i will watch it again
Posted 11 years ago # -
"
Jim Orr (@CllrJimOrr)
24/09/2013 10:02
Great news from the cycle summit. @KeithBrownMSP just announced £3.6m of funding for "visionary" plans for cycle/walking-friendly Leith Walk"
Posted 11 years ago # -
@KeithBrownMSP just announced £3.6m of funding for "visionary" plans for cycle/walking-friendly Leith Walk
Very welcome news!
It's a modest start, but let's not underestimate its significance in beginning to change the city for the better. Next objective: get this realised to a good standard.
After that, the next targets are surely Princes Street and George Street?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Posted 11 years ago #
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Everyone's getting very carried away about this on twitter, but does it represent extra cash that will improve the last set of designs we saw at MacDonald Road library, or is it just the cash that was needed to put those (in several places not ideal) plans in place?
Posted 11 years ago # -
is it just the cash that was needed to put those (in several places not ideal) plans in place?
This. However now that the cash is there, the final designs will be drawn up, presumably consulted upon? Anyway whatever opportunity there is to press for the design details to be improved, ought to be taken!
Posted 11 years ago # -
@PS & crowriver - I had it on (what should be) good authority, that we'd only get what was displayed in the public consultation if the Scottish Government chipped in.
The same authority also strongly suggested that what was saw was a done deal, so the "consultation" wasn't intended to improve the designs.
I've already pointed out to Jim Orr that:
I do hope the "visionary" funding announcement means more towards your experience in the Netherlands than the last draft publicly available. It would be a shame to repeat the "quality" debacle where even Her Excellency, Ambassador Van Assum couldn't remain entirely diplomatic...
I'm not holding my breath!
Robert
Posted 11 years ago # -
Roibeard - excellent comment to Jim Orr.
My understanding is also that the money announced today is to allow the plans that have already been consulted upon to go ahead, rather than new plans to be drawn up. The Council were quite clear that these plans were only affordable if the Scottish Government chipped in and that a simple road resurfacing is all that we could really expect if they didn't.
I hope the plans can be improved - but I'm not expecting much.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Posted 11 years ago #
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Good response from PoP.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Yup, good response.
"an exemplar commuter corridor". Oh please. Keith Brown is so ignorant.
Posted 11 years ago # -
It's in the EEN, it must be true. Commenters NOT at all happy with this "waste of money" it seems!
Posted 11 years ago # -
NOT a helpful headline -
"
£3.6m Leith Walk cycling path plan unveiled"
'We' need to not just concentrate on the cycle bits to get LW iconic/worldbeating etc.
SpaceForPeople
Posted 11 years ago # -
Headline will be entirely deliberate to stoke up the under-bridge-dwellers. A headline of, £3.6m to make Leith Walk a better place to be, just wouldn't get the same interest.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@WC, I think rather that it is just an unintended consequence of most of the Twittersphere excitement about this coming from.....cyclists or cycling campaigners. Of course, mentioning that cyclists might get any money spent on them is like the proverbial red rag to petrolheads.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Of course, mentioning that cyclists might get any money spent on them is like the proverbial red rag to petrolheads."
Which drives the trolls to the comments section, which increases page hits, which increases revenue. Twitter comments by cyclists or not, most of the print media world has cottoned onto 'stoke em' up' headlines. They worked in the olden days for picking up off the shelf; they work even better on interweb pages.
Posted 11 years ago # -
The thing about Chipwrapper trolls is that they just like to vent off, they don't really care about the things that whip them into a frenzy. If they did, they'd spend their time writing and emailing their MPs and councillors, organising campaigs, attending consultation sessions and/or logging Lothian Buses with GPS tracks to refute the nonsense coming out of that otherwise reasonable company.
But they don't, they just vent their daily bile on something that counts for nothing at all and they'll change nothing and simply work themselves into an early coronary.
Posted 11 years ago # -
To be fair, the politicians involved have spun this as cycling spend. Which it is, largely. If the funding had not been awarded, the roads would have been resurfaced, the paint lanes refreshed, the pavements re-laid. However London Road roundabout would presumably have remained, and no segregated cycle lanes would have been built.
The wider impact is, of course, as chdot suggests, to the benefit of 'everyone' ie. pedestrians, traders, etc. as well as cyclists. One might say it suits the EEN to report it as a cycling story, but I don't think it can be labelled misreporting either.
In any case, I can recall folk here calling for more positive coverage of cycling...
Posted 11 years ago # -
"£3.6m Leith Walk cycling path plan unveiled"
"... but I don't think it can be labelled misreporting either"
But the £3.6m isn't only for a cycle path, surely?
Not sure if I'd label this as a 'positive' cycling story. Certainly in my mind that's a story about how good cycling is, or the benefit of cycling over taking the car. This is just a capital expenditure story (are stories about the amount the trams cost 'positive tram stories'?).
Posted 11 years ago # -
@WC, it's just a reporting of statements by various politicians. Were they engaged in a conspiracy to aid EEN's web hit stats? No, they were aiming their comments at a well organised lobbying campaign backed by mass protests.....who really cares about the EEN commenters except 'us' anyway?
To get back on topic, I am minded to write to my councillors again welcoming the funding announcement and asking them to ensure the LW plans are not watered down further, and indeed where possible enhanced.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I wasn't suggesting the politicians were in cahoots with the EEN, but rather that the EEN had simply carefully chosen its headline, and that saying all £3.6m is on a cycle path is misleading (and deliberately so to entice the trolls out from under the bridges). I wasn't necessarily saying that we should care what the trolls post either, but just that with that headline, and the enticement, and the comments, it creates page hits and therefore revenue for the paper, which thereby increases the chance of another inflammatory headline aiming people to take a pop at cyclists in the future (a bit like Dave being referred to in the 20mph article as 'a cyclist' when they could have used his employment, which would be the usual way to refer to someone, or even, given he was riding a bus, as a 'bus user' - the fact he's a cyclist actually means nothing at all to that story (and if he walked everywhere would he have been referred to as 'pedesrtian'? I have my doubts, it's not an inflammatory term for the readers of the paper)).
"To get back on topic, I am minded to write to my councillors again welcoming the funding announcement and asking them to ensure the LW plans are not watered down further, and indeed where possible enhanced."
With that level of funding there shouldn't be an ability to fidge it. And yet. Yet.
Posted 11 years ago #
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