Changes in Edinburgh’s traffic capacity

Things are changing From THIS map of Edinburgh’s centuries old arterial routes…..

To this one…. Spot the difference?

The six lanes of Princes Street have disappeared

Which means? You can see the narrow twisting crescents of Randolph Crescent, the residential street of Great Stuart Street, and around more twists and turns in Ainslie Place, have replaced the Princes Street sub arterial route. And instead of two such routes– Queen street and Princes Street—now there is just one.

Which means? Streets like this, built to carry traffic for literally hundreds of years…… Shandwick Place feeding into Princes Street.. Are left empty…

…While streets like this - Here Ainslie Place twisting into Queen street…. grind to a halt with the traffic they were never intended to carry…. Which means?

This chart shows how serious PM2.5s are… compared to elimination of ‘ALL Road Traffic accidents’, they are nearly FIVE times more lethal. Compared to eliminating ALL passive smoking they are around THREE times more lethal Which means?

It bears repeating…. Getting rid of these pollutants would give us FIVE TIMES more ‘life years’ than getting rid of all Traffic accidents put together.

Below the original report on air quality showed they expected for PM 10s the households (Not people) with improvement in air quality would be 119,100 - while those with worse would be 134,500 by 2026 with the tram. The only variable that changes is ‘tram’ to ‘no tram’.

All of which Means? One of the most serious Public Health issues. Edinburgh Council knew the way they were affecting traffic flows with their Tram plan could affect hundreds of thousands of people across the city. Blocking major routes and simply leaving the traffic to ‘find it’s own way’ must create more pollution --- why has this never been acknowledged? ___________________________________________

And Finally? One vehicle will create more pollution going down an unsuitable route—It will accelerate and brake more, it will travel more slowly, and in heavy congestion it will travel much more slowly, doing all these things for far longer in the same length of street. So will 100, 1,000 or 100,000 more Edinburgh Council know the more efficient streets were largely lightly inhabited—precisely because they have been the heavily trafficked streets and so more commercial or retail This means the people now exposed to pollution are being exposed to more and for far longer, because people spend far longer in the streets where they live rather than the roads where they shop. ___________________________________________

The Post-Tram legacy? The Tram did not need to grab major arterial road space to what will be the virtual exclusion of all other traffic. The Council did not have to go ahead with this plan. Their own report told them of the possibility of enormous numbers of households experiencing more traffic in their streets. They ignored this. The Council have never addressed this and still appear to have no idea whatsoever of the scale of the problem they are creating, let alone any idea of how to address it. Only a Public Inquiry can decide where the line between negligence and criminal negligence may lie in this project.