New Town residents want City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) officials to take traffic problems more seriously.
Albany Street, Abercrombie Place and Heriot Row residents are wearily resigned to the temporary increase in diverted traffic passing them during tramworks on York Place.
They hate the noise and vibration caused by around 600 vehicles per hour at peak times, whilst understanding why this flood has been visited upon them. However, what particularly irks is an exacerbating and dangerous factor: speed.
City Centre's Councillor Joanne Mowat recently asked CEC traffic data be sent to interested locals (see foot of page). When they received it, interested locals could not reconcile that data with their experience at (shaking) ground level. They found Council figures for average speeds along the street (monitored 24 hours a day) incredible.
Spurtle has seen recent September correspondence, parts of which we reproduce below.
[img_assist|nid=3424|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=113]Some wrote to Chris Highcock (Tram Communications), incredulous at the Council's average 23–4 mph figure. Attention was drawn to the narrowness of the street, and the frequency not only of speeding cars but speeding buses and HGVs too.
The problem with such averages, of course, is that one taxi stopping to pick up or drop off, or lines of briefly stationary traffic, can skew the overall reality as locals witness it.
Mr Highcock stood by the Council figures, replying that 'the safety of road users and pedestrians is our overwhelming concern before any other element of traffic management, and our monitoring is designed to ensure that we preserve that safety'.
He advised locals to report specific instances of particularly dangerous driving to the police.
One correspondent responded by wondering whether residents had been duped at the New Town and Broughton Community Council meeting on 6 August (Breaking news, 8.8.12) when they were offered 20 mph roundels. It was suggested that time-consuming and expensive sign painting might have been a waste of time – a sop thrown to pacify disgruntled residents rather than to offer any realistic means of controlling diverted traffic and minimising disruption.
Mr Highcock responded helpfully but with careful formality:
'It must always be borne in mind that Albany Street is part of Edinburgh’s public road network like any other street in the city. As a Roads Authority, the City of Edinburgh Council cannot restrict the use of the public road for the travelling public without due legal process. This can only be done by way of a Traffic Regulation Order (TRO). I understand that it was made very clear at the meeting held with the Community Council that the 20 mph roundels would be advisory only. To implement a 20 mph enforceable speed limit would involve a full TRO process, a statutory process that can take up to a year to complete.'
If anything, Spurtle's 8.8.12 coverage confirms the Council's account, although it is easy to understand how such a misunderstanding could have arisen.
And so it continues, with a spike in dissatisfaction since cross-city school runs restarted for the Autumn Term, and over this weekend as locals suffered even greater disruption during the closure of Broughton Street when traffic lights were being installed (Breaking news, 28.9.11).
[img_assist|nid=3426|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=150]Another resident – Alex Watts – has written to Mr Highcock claiming traffic had further increased since York Place reduced to one lane. He asked about installing speed cameras, noted the continued passage of occasional No. 8 buses, and repeated worries about the safety of Albany Street's rapidly deteriorating road surface.
John Macpherson – politely pugnacious – noted 37 cars passing on Albany Street in 112.5 seconds yesterday, '[equating] to a flow rate of 1,184 vehicles per hour on a Sunday afternoon'. How, he wondered pointedly, had it been possible to arrange an RTO for this weekend's Broughton Street closure so quickly (so much more quickly than the one-year timescale mentioned by Mr Highcock in earlier correspondence)? Or was no such RTO in place?
Mr Macpherson's original letter, and Mr Highcock's point-by-point replies are reproduced at the foot of this article.
This is probably just the start.
[img_assist|nid=3427|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=432|height=640]Of all the jobs in Edinburgh, Spurtle would not want Mr Highcock's. He is currently stuck at the epicentre of a debate about questionable Council statistics contested by influential and articulate non-experts arguing from personal vexation rather than Olympian detatchment. There is every danger he and fellow officials may become political shuttlecocks.
Of all the places in Edinburgh, Albany Street, Abercrombie Place and Heriot Row are among those Spurtle would least care to live in just now. We have every sympathy for residents there worried about the state of their health, the safety of pedestrians and children, and the structural integrity/market value of their beautiful but old and potentially fragile homes.
But New Town residents' current predicament is part of a wider picture.
City dwellers across Broughton, across Edinburgh, and across Britain are routinely disturbed, shaken, polluted and threatened by excessive volumes of motor traffic – a menace routinely worsened by excessive speed.
We all need to address these issues more seriously and more often – as perpetrators as well as victims – and not just when streets in our own neighbourhood are afflicted.
------------------------------
Email correspondence between John Macpherson and Chris Highcock [responses in italics].
Dear Mr Highcock,
I have now had sight of an email in which you explain to Mrs Corlett that a Traffic Regulation Order can take up to a year to obtain.
Presumably the present configuration whereby the residents of Albany Street, Abercrombie Place and Heriot Row are being subjected to traffic levels of around 1200 vehicles an hour on a Sunday afternoon was itself authorised by a Traffic Regulation Order.
As I noted in my previous email, the figure of 1200 vehicles per hour is not appropriate or accurate. That level of traffic has been extrapolated from a spot count that you did over a less 2 minute period. As I previously commented, traffic on Albany Street is fed from two traffic signal controlled junctions (at Broughton Street/Picardy & at Heriot Row/Queen St Gardens West) these junctions feed traffic into the diversion in bunches and as a consequence, it is incorrect to simply apply that flow rate over a full hour and draw conclusions from this. The pulsed nature of the traffic needs to be recognised.
With regard to the Temporary Traffic Regulation Order which is authorised by way of the Tram Act 2006, these control kerbside measures (parking/loading and waiting) and also moving measures such as introduction of banned turns at junctions, changes in street priority of prohibition of certain types of vehicles on a street. The TTRO has no locus in regard to traffic volume.
That being so, perhaps you would explain why it was that notice to affected residents of implementation of the present arrangement coincided with the start of implementation work. In other words, why was no notice given?
Notice was given in a number of ways of the changes. The distribution of notices intimating the details of last weekend's works covered 150 residents and businesses directly affected by the works on the ground. In addition to the letters, our Logistics Manager personally spoke to all but two businesses face to face explaining what was happening over the weekend. As for the wider area, wider area signs were installed at least one week in advance letting drivers and pedestrians know about the forthcoming weekend closure. Ever effort was made to inform the residents, businesses and road users of the change.
If the present arrangement was not so authorised, please provide full details of the legal basis upon which authorisation is asserted.
The installation of the tram on York Place involves major civil engineering works which includes alterations to the road alignment, the installation of the track and overhead lines and associated road works. In view of this it is necessary for the contractor to occupy the full width of the road for a significant period of time. It has therefore been necessary to introduce temporary traffic diversions to ensure that the travelling public can continue to gain access to the city centre with the minimum disruption and delay and a temporary diversion onto the wider road network via Dundas Street, Abercomby Place and Albany Street has been signed for this purpose. Albany St, Abercromby Place and Heriot Row are part of the public road network. As such, they are deemed suitable for all road going vehicles and are therefore available to the Council as a temporary diversion route while works are underway.
A diversion of this nature does not require a Temporary Traffic Regulation Order (TTRO). However any alterations to the parking regime or the introduction of banned turns etc do require a TTRO. This is available to the Council as Roads Authority under the powers vested in it by means of the 1984 Road Traffic Regulation Act. The TTRO has no locus in regard to traffic volume.
Regards,
John
---------------------------------
Reactions
Whisky Kiss @twistedtartan Whisky Kiss
@theSpurtle a tour de force,this reminded us of a rousing piece to camera by Nicolo Zito of the Free Channel in Camilleri's Montalbano books
Broughton Spurtle @twistedtartan Que? You mean the Ryder Cup or our announcement of tonight's NTBCC meeting?
@theSpurtle sorry no, neither. Was referring to your balanced piece on traffic issues. Telly fans can see montalbano on bbc4 at present too!
New Town Flaneur @theSpurtle Just to clarify: when we in New Town rampage across city in X5s, this is a droit du seigneur and, as such, entirely different.
@theSpurtle Some might say it's karma. Nonsense. The Buddha may have had 4 Noble Truths, but did he know 4 wheel drive?? I think not.
