🚲 edi.bike | issue 54 | 19th Aug '24
your weekly edinburgh cycling digest
📰 News this Week
🎭 Free Bikes for Fringe Performers
A Canadian comedian named Dion Owen has been refurbishing and distributing free bikes for fellow Fringe artists:
“I have been helping people with bikes for the last decade and have combined it into a core goal wherever I do stand-up tours,” says Dion. “Last year I got a handful of artists bikes and it was such a boon to their wellbeing and festival experience. For me, the end goal is that every artist who wants a bike for the Fringe would have access to one.”
More on the Edinburgh Fringe Site »
🖼️ Photos and Video from the Roseburn to Union Canal ‘Mid Calder’ Bridge Installation
Following last Sunday’s installation of the blue bridge over the ‘Mid Calder Link’ railway, as part of the new Roseburn to Union Canal active travel route to Fountainpark (sort of near a canal!), the City of Edinburgh Council shared a series of photos to X and later also posted a video from the installation [x]. As with all council cycling-adjacent posts, for a longer and happier life don’t make the mistake of reading any of the roasters replying below it.
⚙️ Spokes - new Members’ Circular published
Spokes — the Lothian cycle campaign — have published their new Members Circular [PDF] which includes a competition seeking stories and advice around food and cycling with some fantastic prizes on offer, commentary on the Bus Lane trial report from the Transport Committee that we’ve reported on below, details of events, a cargo bike for sale and more. Have a read here;
🤝 Our August Transport & Environment Committee roundup
Find our write-up of the council’s recent Transport Committee meeting following these recent local & national news tidbits - by all accounts Convenor Cllr Scott Arthur’s last, but still with no successor named…
🏰 Local Bits
📸 Some lovely photographs were posted from the folks at community centre and active travel hub Bridgend Farmhouse after their event celebrating opening their new Bike Barn space with Mark Beaumont and others - images gathered on Facebook here and over here;
🛠️ Scottish Cargo Bike maker Ariel Bikes are looking to get 1,000 responses to their e-cargo bike market survey, and if they do they’ll give away a bike:
“Win an Ariel e-cargo bike worth £5600, with ZF 112Nm motor system, plus Magura, Shimano, Halo, Schwalbe, Suntour and Spinner parts and components. All on a hand built 4130 chromoly steel frame fabricated in our Scottish workshop. Finished in glorious orange metallic fleck powder coat.
We want to understand the UK e-cargo bike market better. So we’ve created a short survey. Fill in the survey and if we can get to over 1000 responses, we will give away the bike.”
📺 Andy Arthur of Threadinburgh shared a great wee video on X of “a new stretch of cycle/foot path linking West Bowling Green Street and the old railway path at Bonnington that's just opened”;
🚁 Some nice City Centre West East Link — CCWEL — overhead footage in this Sustrans promotional video on Facebook for the route. As with Council posts, don’t forget to skip the comments section (#triggered #youNarrowedTheRoadsNowThereIsBloodOnYourHands #gammonOnslaught)
📋 Noted a little too late to elicit further responses (sorry!), but the ETRO for City Centre ‘travelling safely’ schemes concluded its commenting phase on Sunday 18th August, as highlighted by Spokes on X. The other schemes have various end dates (barring ‘South’, which is not yet published) and can be found for comment at the Council’s Travelling Safely Commonplace microsite;
➕ Nationally
📈 “Recent analysis of national cycle counter data shows 24 locations across Scotland recording increases of above 30% in cycle journeys in June 2024 vs 2023.” — new, more at Cycling Scotland;
🪧 Great to see the new UK Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh, taking in some of the ‘variable’ National Cycle Network with Chris Boardman and Laura Laker - whose book Potholes and Pavements I am meandering through and very much enjoying at the moment;
🛶 Ever seen a self-made amphibious bicycle canoe? Keep an eye out for Ben Kilner’s incredible floating bike-boat hybrid!
💼 Edinburgh Council Transport & Environment Committee, 15th August ‘24: Our roundup
On what might (?) have been the last session for Convenor Cllr Scott Arthur — whose successor on the committee has yet to be named — a largely positive meeting of the Transport & Environment Committee (TEC) took place on Thursday at the City Chambers. As always, here’s our best attempt to summarise the items of interest.
Documents and Links
🌐 Meeting Page
📺 Watch the Webcast
📋 Business Bulletin [PDF]
📄 Motions & Amendments [PDF]
💬 Written Deputations
⚙️ Spokes’ Live thread originally posted to X;
🧵 SW20’s Bus Lane (and other issues) Thread ahead of TEC »
📋 Business Bulletin items
🌳 A Small Win for the Meadows to Union Canal Link
Meadows to Union Canal — protected cycleways and improvements from the western end of the meadows through Brougham Pl, Tarvit St and Home St, to Lochrin Pl — first consulted on in 2014, then again in 2019, looked set ahead of TEC to be headed for a third public consultation in the space of a decade.
Thanks to a written deputation from Spokes and an amendment tabled by councillors from the Green party group, it was agreed that instead ‘informal engagement’ would be undertaken with local businesses affected by loading changes and other concerns, avoiding further delays and instead progressing straight to a Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) which already involves some degree of consultation within its statutory process.
“The initial consultation on this link was launched ten years ago. There is a real risk — and obviously we’re all aware that the City Centre West East Link also took over ten years to develop — there’s a real risk that Edinburgh gets a reputation for being an absolute laggard when it comes to implementation of active travel infrastructure, meanwhile our colleagues at the other end of the M8 are getting on with it; I think we need to focus in speed and delivery, and less in getting every last detail right.” — Cllr Chas Booth, Scottish Greens
It’s great to see an opportunity to speed things along being seized here, and any possibility for greater momentum in infrastructure progress is definitely something to celebrate.
📄 Motions & Amendments
👍 7.2: Even ahead of a possible legal challenge, TEC votes to keep St James Square traffic-free
Relevant Report [PDF] »
Access to the ‘W H💩tel’ at the St James Quarter was discussed, where currently a temporary traffic regulation order permits controlled access for executive vehicles and taxis to St James Square at a rate of approximately nineteen vehicles per day; the developer argues that Executive coach or minibus access through the St James Quarter car parking is apparently not feasible due to height restrictions, and taxi access is deemed ‘sub-optimal’ due to fairly hand-wavey reasons about ‘how things are set up’ (which one would think are largely down to the developer failing to plan said access through the adjacent car park when they were building it).
Cllr Kevin Lang asked officers what the developer’s expectation for vehicular access to the square was based on - seemingly references to ‘limited access to the front of the hotel’ early in planning-stage design and access statements described taxi access to the front door, but such statements in planning are always caveated given that access is for the roads authority to agree to, rather than the planning authority.
Delighted to have my more cynical witterings from last week proven wrong as Councillors (the party of the motor lobby exempted, who do seem to tend to vote in their own special way) voted near-unanimously to keep the square outside the golden turd™ for walkers, wheelers and cyclists - true public realm, rather than a turning space for fancy people to rock up all the way to the front door of the infamously whippy-topped hotel. However, the fancy people also assumedly have fancy lawyers, so we’ll be watching this space.
🚦 7.5: More Details on the Local Traffic Improvement Schemes for 2024-2025
Relevant Report [PDF] »
Local Traffic Improvement schemes are a recently renamed and reworked programme to have local communities able to raise and develop small-scale improvements in their area not being met by other Council programmes - aiming ”to create safe, sustainable, and equitable transport landscape through the removal of barriers for the most vulnerable of road users when walking, wheeling and cycling in residential areas or accessing essential local services and amenities, particularly in respect of those highlighted in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.”
- 60 potential projects have been ranked and scored, with 6 larger and 4 ‘quick win’ schemes selected for this first round, with a second round of scheme selection opening in the new year;
- The report’s Appendix describes the scoring process for the projects;
- There is an overall £800k budget, with £650k spend projected currently;
- The discussion was kicked off by Cllr Thornley as ward member, as some local engagement had been promised for issues around the Parkgrove scheme regarding issues with rat running in the area at TEC in April, and no engagement has been forthcoming in spite of over a decade of endeavour at this point by local campaigners. As with some of the other LTI schemes, this is an area where there is real local demand for change in the face of dangerous road use, and this was reflected in some fairly emotive follow-up in terms of getting things moving;
- There’s not a massive team behind this work, so there were also some caveats given about managing expectations regarding delivery;
- Questions were also asked about how much money had been spent resurfacing the junction at Polwarth, only for it to be subsequently reconfigured as part of this programme - a pattern unfortunately seen elsewhere in Council prioritisation of resurfacing works without necessarily improving the road layout as they go.
🚌 7.6: The Route 44 ‘7-7-7’ Bus lane trial will go ahead without Private Hire Car access
Relevant Report [PDF] »
The council is gearing up for a trial of ‘7-7-7’ bus lanes - between 7am and 7pm, 7 days a week, only buses in the bus lane (also known as, ‘how bus lanes should always have worked’). The cross-section of the Lothian Buses number 44 route has been selected as passing through a good variety of road layouts and contexts, giving good trial data for anticipating and solving for issues and enforcement across the city if proven successful. The goals of this kind of bus priority are essentially to reduce the effects of congestion on bus journey times and reliability, in turn also reducing congestion by encouraging ‘modal shift’ from people choosing to take the bus instead of driving.
There was a danger raised ahead of TEC - and responded to in deputations by the Edinburgh Bus Users Group and Spokes - that the beneficial effects of the trial might be negatively affected by the introduction of access rights for Private Hire Cars (PHCs). As distinct from Hackney Cabs, this would include all Uber and Lyft traffic, as well as other Private Hire operators, and allow a significantly increased number of motor vehicles to congest the very bus lanes the trial aims to make more efficient and traffic-free. As you might imagine, the relative safety of a bus lane for the average cyclist is also a consideration here with the potential introduction of additional cars, though sadly not addressed in any part of the report - mentioned only by Spokes’ written deputation on the matter, and by Cllr Chas Booth who addressed that bus lanes have an important role to play for cyclists given our currently “wholly inadequate cycle network”.
The thinking behind this was elaborated on at committee. Essentially, as the trial is part of an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO), negative aspects of the experiment are easily malleable - for example, if introducing PHCs presented significant issues, this could be remedied by adjusting the ETRO in a matter of weeks. The reason Council officers had tabled the inclusion of PHCs in the trial was that the policy not to allow private hires to drive in Bus Lanes is currently somewhat tautological - they’re not allowed to drive in bus lanes because they’ve never been allowed to drive in bus lanes, rather than basing the prohibition on a set of data (which this trial could have remedied).
Regardless, the committee voted to exclude PHCs from the trial, with the Convenor laying out that they were quite a substantial variable in what will prove to be a vital trial for the smooth running of the bus network in the capital, with 40% of trips in the city taking place by bus.
We would be remiss to write about this item without also acknowledging two of the deputations given to committee by representatives of the Private Hire industry fell far short of the standard that should be expected of participants. The first representative to speak, clearly a self-diagnosed victim of the ‘war on cars’, decided to spend his five minutes largely lambasting the committee for making decisions based on ”opinions not facts”, which is laughably and demonstrably far from being a fact itself.
The third representative managed to continue to wave the accessibility of private hire cars for disabled users, and the relevant legislation, around like a tokenistic and out-of-touch Glastonbury banner, even when subsequently faced by the lived experience and testimony of Cllr Kayleigh O’Neill who presented him with extremely matter-of-fact anecdotes from her recent attempts to book PHCs and taxis as a wheelchair user. Unperturbed by an inconveniently real and present disabled person being there to speak for herself, the representative continued to strive for a gold in Olympic mansplaining, and while he subsequently apologised, was later asked by the Convenor to also issue his apology to the committee in writing. I’m making light of it — we do that around here — but it was frankly disgusting. Cllr O’Neill, in later comments seconding the Green amendment, mentioned the discomfort in the room following the incident, and said:
“The Disability Rights movement has a slogan that reads ‘Nothing about us without us’ and that counts with policy consideration. If you’re not ‘us’, you can’t really use us in an agenda when it works for you, and then forget us when it doesn’t. This isn’t the only time this has happened - it happens a lot but the reason I’m here is to call it out.”
My expectation from watching all this take place is that the parties were likely already largely united in their position to not allow PHCs in bus lanes, but the reverse-shit-sandwich of galling deputations from the industry certainly did nothing but solidify that position. Private Hire Cars continue to not be permitted in bus lanes across the city, including the new 7-7-7 trial, and I among others continue to be grateful for Cllr O’Neill and others who continue to bless our democratic processes with their perspectives and patience. 💚
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🛣 Route Closures and Issues
- There’s a series of timed full or partial road closures - including High St, St Giles St, Parliament Square(s), Cockburn St, Blair St, Lawnmarket, and Johnston Ter during the Edinburgh Festival;
- The Crawford Bridge - between Albion Ter and Bothwell St off Easter Rd - is closed until the 30th of August for refurbishment;
- Melville St at Walker St has some partial closures of the CCWEL segregated lanes for major works as part of the public realm improvements that recently commenced and run until December this year.
📆 Events and Happenings
📆 Upcoming / Ongoing
✊ Edinburgh Critical Mass is coming up on Saturday 31st August, 2pm Middle Meadow Walk; a friendly and welcoming mass protest ride, with the route typically published a few days before to their Facebook, Mastodon, X and email list. Ever want to join the ride late, but not sure where it is? You can use Critical Maps - an anonymous location-sharing app for cyclists in critical mass events, aiding coordination through real-time map visualisation. Only one or two people need to use it from the start, so that others can see where the ride is, to find and join in!
🚸 Parents for Future Scotland are hosting a bike bus webinar covering “logistics, the science of active travel's health benefits; and why children and adults alike have fun every time they ride!” - Mon 26th Aug, 7pm - 8pm;
✊🏼 🎭 EdFoC | Ongoing - 'Pedal Power', a free exhibition on cycling and activism in Edinburgh, co-curated by Critical Mass Edinburgh, Infrasisters, Spokes and folks running Bike Buses across the city - at the Museum of Edinburgh running until the 22nd September.
Edinburgh Council archives --- who recently launched the ‘Edinburgh 900’ project to celebrate 900 years since Edinburgh became a royal burgh --- have also asked ‘Pedal Power’ to be part of the programme and will tour the exhibition around communities in Edinburgh after it finishes at the Museum of Edinburgh in September.
🔁 Weekly Events
☕️ Active Travel Cafe is a national, weekly online active travel event; news, talks & discussion via Zoom on Tuesdays at 5pm. See their list of speakers and details;
👪 Every Friday in August; All-inclusive social guided bike rides with A Wee Pedal, 2-4pm from Bridgend Farmhouse. Check out their flyer for more;
⚡️ Porty Community Energy are trialling a weekly Wednesday evening advice drop-in [fb];
⚙️ The Wee Spoke Hub host a weekly ‘Bike Cleaning and Oiling’ drop-in session at their shop every Saturday, 2-4pm;
🛠️ Edinburgh Tool Library host a weekly Bike Kitchen providing 'tools, spare parts, and expertise' to 'learn, grow, and connect with others'; Open every Wednesday from 3pm.
✴️ Other regular events on at The Wee Spoke Hub - follow their schedule here including a Bike DIY Session this Thursday 22nd, 5pm - 8pm and Bike Puncture Repair Session: How to get rolling again this Saturday 24th, 11am - 1pm;
🫂 Help Needed
🛠️ SW20 and Edinburgh Tool Library are looking for project volunteers:
”We are looking to expand our team of amazing volunteers and offer additional services -- if you are interested, please complete this form and we'll get back to you”;
🚸 Parents for Future Scotland are looking for more volunteers to help with organising Kidical Mass rides:
“We need volunteers to help promote and organise Kidical Mass cycle rides. Just one or two hours a month will do - help us contact local media, spread the word on social media and recce the routes. Contact rosieparents4futurescotland@gmail.com if you're interested in helping out”;
♻️ SHRUB Co-op - home of fantastic community cycling resource The Wee Spoke Hub - are aiming to raise £50,000 in six weeks:
Until the 31st of August any donation you make via our crowdfunding page will be doubled. For every donation up to £250 we will receive match-funding from the AVIVA Community Fund. This means your contribution will have double the impact!
Your donations will help secure the continuation of the Food Sharing Hub and all our other zero waste initiatives… Every donation will make an invaluable difference to our community and will contribute towards a sustainable future for the Food Sharing Hub. 🥖🥑🍄
You can find the crowdfunder here.
Ongoing:
- 🚴🏼 Friends of the Skelf bike park and pump track just off Holyrood Park are [raising money currently;
- 💁 Help Fund a New Specialised Active Chair for Porty Community Energy Activist Roseanne Sinclair at her campaign page;
- 🚌 Volunteer to help marshal a local school Bike Bus - see the Bike Bus Hub Directory;
- 🙋 Sustrans seek volunteers for their ‘I Bike’ school programme: teaching kids, maintaining a bike fleet or marshalling rides with pupils;
- 🗨️ Spokes are in need of new members for their Planning and Resources groups;
- 🤝 SW20 are a Co-op Local Community Fund Cause - support them via this page;
- 🆘 Support Bikes for Refugees with an SMS donation 🐦or on EasyDonate;
🌈 Infrastructure Progress & Consultations
🌈 Lindsay Road ‘Pride bridge’ enters detailed design stage; welcoming ideas
A short thread from the Pride Bridge team last week updated on progress, and called for further ideas on the most popular design option for the bridge at Lindsay Rd following the public consultation, seeking ways to make it more accessible;
⚒️ Work ongoing, August to November - Lasswade Rd Cycleways
Spokes recently shared [x] the project page for a partial resurfacing of Lasswade Rd that includes a stretch of segregated cycle lane at each side, close to Gracemount High School. Spokes’ response makes mention of various interesting aspects and suggests changes.
✍🏽 ‘Spaces for People’ Lanes in East of Edinburgh - ETRO
This ‘East Area’ Experimental Traffic Order (ETRO/21/28A) covers a number of Covid-era parking suspensions used to facilitate bollarded cycle lanes around London Rd, Willowbrae and Duddingston, including cycle routes used by school pupils, teachers and parents to and from multiple primary and secondary schools. It is currently open for comments until 28th October by emailing TRO.Consultations@edinburgh.gov.uk quoting ETRO/21/28A.
👣 Foot of the Walk to Ocean Terminal
⚓️ 'Signs of life' [x] - 241 days of planned cycleway construction works starting some time between late Summer and Autumn this year - on the 'Foot of the Walk to Ocean Terminal' protected cycle route as part of Leith Connections, which promises to be a great continuation of the segregated routes slowly taking root in the city centre;
🌷 Just closed: Midlothian’s Active Travel Strategy
🚴🏼♀️ Nearby Midlothian Council have just concluded ’On the Move Midlothian: Our Active Travel Strategy for Everyone’, consisting of two parallel consultations on Active Travel (both of which have now closed) and also wider transport concerns across their council area:
The active travel draft strategy, which includes measurable and achievable targets, focuses on making Midlothian a place where getting around in a way that makes you physically active, such as walking and wheeling, will be an easy, convenient, cheap and realistic option for all.
📄 You can view the draft strategy online [PDF] and the 'Active Travel Survey'.
Thanks for reading - ride safe, and here’s to many more years x 🚲
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