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.
"...a traffic warden will be on your case"
There are no traffic wardens in Scotland (Police Scotland withdrew them a couple of years ago)
"... like you were parking in a Princes Street bus lane"
There are no bus lanes on Princes Street.
"The whole reason for moving the Lothians’ main hospital to the outskirts was the seemingly limitless space on offer"
No, it wasn't (http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/download/meetings/id/9136/royal_infirmary_of_edinburgh_-_lauriston_place_to_little_france)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I think Miles has been over-promoted beyond his abilities. He fails to even comprehend his brief as Shadow Health Secretary (!), let alone master it.
I daresay if the Conservatives had a post of Shadow Secretary for Rugby, Munro Bagging & Grumbling Motorists he'd do a reasonable job of it, or at the very least have a fair understanding of the brief.
As it is, he's either ridiculously incompetent, or a very accomplished troll employing a Trumpian attention grabbing style: just say whatever pops into your head, regardless of how nonsensical, and the media will be full of it.
One of the two: or maybe both.
A Miles Briggs and Nick Cook Twitter double whammy!
I'm assuming that this will provide some more material:
"Today I’ll be leading my @ScotParl Members Debate on the Edinburgh City bypass.
Motorists and businesses across Lothian and beyond want to see a long-term solution to address the increasing traffic congestion. "
https://twitter.com/milesbriggsmsp/status/1002099924866039809
Miles doesn't seem to suggest any solutions beyond the Sherriffhall rebuild.
http://nen.press/2017/11/24/briggs-city-bypass-improvements-should-be-a-national-transport-priority/
If the Minister needs to be convinced of the rationale to reduce congestion on the road, perhaps he should try to use it each day at peak times and face being stuck in lengthy queues and traffic jams like so many of my constituents?
“
“Gridlocked trunk roads create a bad impression for inward investors and those wanting to visit our area,” Tory Lothians MSP Miles Briggs said yesterday.
“
It makes perfect sense just look at London it's a thriving mecca for investors mainly due to the free flowing 10 lanes of the M25.
https://twitter.com/MilesBriggsMSP/status/1006105162472198144
"Today I'm launching my campaign for road safety improvements at the Hillend junction on the A702 / A703.
I’ve written to the SNP Transport Minister calling on the Scottish Government to investigate options to improve road safety including a new road layout at the junction."
Credit where it's due, it's a really nasty junction and I hope it can be improved.
I think it's the only junction I actively avoid in a car. Really nasty, you have to look in about three directions to pull out from any of the side roads. Fortunately, it is easily avoided using the bypass and other roads. At the very least, exiting from Old Pentland Road should be banned for motor vehicles, and for Seafield Moor Road for everything except buses. I wonder if going further than that would help bus priority and reduce traffic through Hillend?
In a car I only use that junction between about 11am and 3pm. I used to cycle that way home and found it far easier to navigate on my bike than a car. The number of people cycling that route has gone up massively since the Vet School moved to the Bush and the Roslin Institute expansion.
"“agonisingly long waits”
Mr Yousaf gave an undertaking to look at smart motorway technology in relation to the bypass and report back. He also said he would look at a plea from Mr Briggs’ for a feasibility study on widening the bypass.
From Mr Briggs' what? Controlling demon?
What a pointless exercise. Talk about starting with a solution and working backwards towards the problem. (except it's not a solution, and they won't even realise they haven't thought about what they are actually trying to achieve)
smart motorway technology
Unfortunately, the flaw of smart motorway technology is that it is reliant on either intelligent driving or enforcement of the tech's speed recommendations, neither of which are in play. You just have to drive over the new Queensferry Crossing anywhere near "rush" hour to observe how much congestion is caused by nothing more than a combination of impatient, inattentive and inconsiderate driving.
It seems like they'll do anything to avoid doing what actually works, which is to introduce tolls.
Other forms of rationing are available
Would you describe the monetary system as "rationing" for other limited resources, such as bread, electricity, gas, phone use, train travel, etc.?
Or is it the whole UK mindset of "OMG, they're going to charge me for this road. Rationing. War on motorist. Chaos. But it's always been free..."?
I meant that there may be fairer options than just allowing those with big wallets to ignore restrictions on use.
"there may be fairer options than just allowing those with big wallets to ignore restrictions on use."
Exactly. As we saw ten years ago, the "market" is not the solution to everything. OTOH driving is ridiculously cheap at the point of use, compared to the external costs all of us have to put up with, such as air pollution, deaths and injuries from collisions, etc. So introducing tolls would at least bring motoring costs further along to their overall environmental and social costs.
I'm all in favour of toll roads on one condition: that the amount of money people have is directly related to their social utility.
Otherwise the Duke of [Redacted] winds up driving round the bypass laughing and showing his hairy behind to cleaners walking to their early shift at ERI.
There are also fairer ways of allocating bread & electricity than the monetary system, but the monetary system is what we have. Why should roads be any different?
Why should the Duke waste electricity heating his enormous mansion with the windows open while laughing & feeding the ravens organic bread, while the cleaner at the ERI shivers in the freezing cold?
At the other extreme, there are fairer ways to allocate the helicopters in this country - perhaps we should all get a 5 minute share of them, or form an orderly line the length of Wales to get our allocated shot on one?
Then how would you stop people bartering their shares? They might even use imaginary bartering tokens (one might call it currency). Oh no, we’ve come full circle.
Can people now see what an anomaly free roads at the point of use are?
Why should the Duke waste electricity heating his enormous mansion with the windows open while laughing & feeding the ravens organic bread, while the cleaner at the ERI shivers in the freezing cold?
I have to admit that I do not know why that should be.
Ration the use and the rate of use. Steaming along a toll road at seventy should use up more road-use-ration than going along it at fifty. If someone uses up their road use too quickly, further use becomes a penalisable crime, not merely an expense that the sufficiently-rich could afford.
If people want to find a solution they can. Tom Waits last gig in Edinburgh was £75 a ticket. These tix could have gone for ten times that. However, Tom insisted that you brought your passport along.
The trouble with drivers is they do not want solutions to the actual problems (pollution, congestion ettc and related health problems). I mean solutions that work for society, all of us together. Drivers just want to get themselves from A to B. All of them and all of us just want to get from A to B quickly. But now there are too many of us and no one is blinking.
So now it is all fake solutions
I think the blame lies more squarely with the motoring companies. The likes of GM, Ford and BP wont stand by and allow a country to reduce it's reliance on them. They have almost bottomless coffers to ensure that we keep pumping money in their direction. Be that through lobbying government directly or manipulating the media into perpetuating the myth of the open road.
As long as tolls rise at the right rate I don't have too much issue with unlimited usage schemes. If Lord Toad of Toad Manor want to keep motoring once his personal usage charge reaches £1,000 per mile then so be it. The alternative option is that he employs a team of chauffeurs who must use their limits to his benefit. Or alternatively keeps a taxi driver on a personal retainer, presumably licensed taxis would not be rationed under such a scheme.
“So now it is all fake solutions”
Depends
Widening the bypass wouldn’t exactly be a fake solution, just wouldn’t be a permanent one - unless, miraculously, there was finally a balance between demand and supply.
Of course one problem is ministers saying ‘I’ll look into it’ rather than “no”.
As always, politicians refuse to say ‘you’ve had your new roads, now it’s time to fix all the existing ones and spend the necessary on making walking/cycling (much) better AND sort out the buses.
Tom Waits last gig in Edinburgh was £75 a ticket
TW was in the vanguard of elevated gig prices
Big Time tour '87 was obscenely priced
well ahead of his time
next big hitter was the VU reunion tour '93
they are all at it now, though
@bax, I thought Tom Waits gig at Playhouse in 1987-88 was the best £22 I ever spent at a gig.
I bought the last four tix We had random seats dotted around the auditorium. I had an empty seat next to me all night. During encores the guy comes in and sits down next to me. He asks me Has he been on long? I cried for this poor punter.
The VU gig on the other hand was very pedestrian. My fave was Mo Made Out of Glue
ah gembo-san, great times
swamptrash.. hex.. def heights cajun aces
Tom Waits gig at Playhouse in 1987-88 was the best £22 I ever spent
now my memory isn't perfect but i reckon this was my favourite gig '87-88
note the price
actually no, the pogues 'fall from grace' tour @ aberdeen capitol '87 trumps that woodentops gig, but only just
as you were
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