An ‘ambitious’ prioritisation programme for projects under the City Mobility Plan (CMP), over the next decade, has been agreed by city councillors.
This programme effectively manages the resources we have, to continue to deliver on the city council’s CMP objectives to:
- Reduce the volume of traffic going through the city.
- Improve how we move around the city, with more options for sustainable travel, including prioritising public transport.
- Provide safer conditions for walking, wheeling and cycling.
- Reduce harmful emissions.
- Provide better access to local facilities like shops, schools and outdoor spaces.
- Improve community and public spaces.
The council says it has engaged extensively on the CMP and its objectives over the years with a range of stakeholders.
This reports also outlines the future decision-making process, with an annual update report covering any proposed changes.
Prioritisation was scored against 15 separate criteria points across three key areas: Objectives, Deliverability and Financial. Some examples include impact on road safety, public transport, inequality, and capital raising challenges.
Over 70 projects are set to be taken forward, including:
- Walking, wheeling and cycling connection from the Meadows to the Union Canal, including better public space around the King’s Theatre.
- Public transport and active travel route between West Shore Road and Waterfront Broadway, complementing the Granton redevelopment.
- Major city centre projects, including a trial to reduce vehicle traffic on the Lawnmarket, Cowgate improvements, Meadows to George Street walking and cycling upgrade, and the transformation of George Street.
Over 50 projects are recommended to be paused, the vast majority of which are already on hold or not started. There are also around five projects which are set to be paused for this financial year only. Again, these are all either on hold or not started.
The full list of projects and their statuses can be found in the report on the city council’s website.
The report was approved with amendments from the Administration and the SNP group, along with an addendum from the Green group.
Transport and Environment Convener, Cllr Stephen Jenkinson said: “I’m really pleased that we’ve agreed this bold programme for our city. Prioritisation allows us to work smarter with the resources we have available – making sure we have a clear and achievable path to achieving our objectives.
“This programme follows the successes of major infrastructure projects such as Trams to Newhaven and active travel projects including the City Centre West to East Link (CCWEL), Roseburn to Union Canal and Leith Connections.
“This is an extensive piece of work which allows the City Mobility Plan to be agile, and able to adapt in the future as necessary.
“However, one key element in this conversation is the fact that we remain dependent on external funding for many projects, particularly from the Scottish Government and by extension Transport Scotland.
“Complex projects which take years to plan and complete but which are subject to annual external funding decisions makes this situation inherently difficult, we need commitment and stability from the Scottish Government if we’re to deliver the changes which our city needs and deserves.
“We’ll now take forward these projects which will keep Edinburgh moving and make our city a safer, more sustainable and accessible place for all.”
Living Streets Edinburgh calls (again) for more investment in everyday walking
LIVING Streets Edinburgh wrote to city councillors prior to the meeting. The campaigners said: “We’re surprised, and very disappointed, to see no mention of some key initiatives which we were able to get included in the CMP delivery plan.
“Especially disappointing after the committee decided to freeze footway maintenance while increasing spending on roads, only last month.
“We’ve therefore sent councillors this message:
Dear Councillor
I’m writing in connection with the report on City Mobility Plan priorities, Item 7.5 on the TEC agenda for 22 May bit.ly/43ktlep The recommendations do not adequately reflect the CMP’s ambition to effect “a transformational change in walking and wheeling in Edinburgh”.
Over two years ago, two new initiatives were introduced into the Active Travel component of the City Mobility Plan: ‘Action for Better Crossings” (ABC) and the “Edinburgh Accessible Streets Initiative” EASI). These programmes (both proposed by us) finally offered the prospect of a strategic, rather than piecemeal, approach to addressing some of the most fundamental problems with getting around the city as a pedestrian – for example:
- the time that you have to wait for the green man at traffic lights,
- the thousands of missing dropped kerbs on pavements,
- narrow footways,
- pavement clutter, etc.
As we understand it, effectively nothing has been done yet to implement either initiative as a coherent programme. We had hoped that they would form a key part of this report. However, there is no mention whatsoever in the report of either ABC or EASI, despite Council having confirmed them as at the heart of CMP policy only last year (see attached).
Instead, some elements of ABC and EASI are simply noted as part of the ‘rolling programme’ in Appendix 4b. Paragraph 4.14 of the report states an expectation that these will be funded at “an overall level roughly equal to recent overall investment”. This isn’t good enough: there is no indication of how much money is budgeted for these schemes; certainly there has been no systematic investment at all in recent years in widening footways. Many of the other aspects like the pedestrian crossing programme and the crucial school streets reviews have huge backlogs owing to lack of resourcing.
These vital programmes need to be considered alongside, and on the same level playing field, as the active travel and public transport listed in Appendix 1.
Councillors should be able to consider whether investment in school streets, road safety, ABC or EASI is more or less worthy than these projects, whether they be George Street, Hawthornvale-Salamander Street, the Lindsey Bridge or Dalry 20 Minute Neighbourhood.
Otherwise the opportunity to consider where best to invest both staff time and capital funding is lost and a ‘silo’ approach is entrenched.
We also have serious concerns with the overly-complex methodology for assessing projects in Appendix 1. It gives no weighting to walking and wheeling (“top of the travel hierarchy”) and doesn’t sufficiently value schemes relatively modest but important to pedestrians such as Calton Road and the Causey.
These projects fail to score highly enough only because work on them has already been “paused’ for years.
However, the fundamental weakness of the report is to take too narrow an approach to evaluating a limited set of projects. We would therefore like to see the report deferred perhaps for two cycles, and a new report brought forward with a more strategic approach to future investment, including the programmes mentioned above.
David Hunter – Convener
