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The Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday December 04 2024 #Transport
The Scotsman
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04/12/2024
Dale speaks to transport correspondent Alastair Dalton about all the latest news on Scottish travel including 20mph speed limits and plans for a new electric bike hire scheme in Edinburgh
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Travel
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00:00
Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin for this Wednesday.
00:05
My name is Dale Miller.
00:06
I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Transport Correspondent, Alastair
00:11
Dalton.
00:12
He's coming live to us with a 20 mile per hour zone sign in the background and you'll
00:17
find out exactly why he's there in a moment, but we'll talk through the front page of today's
00:23
Scotsman firstly.
00:25
It was hard not to lead on the Scottish budget preview.
00:28
Shona Robison will stand at 2.50pm to deliver the Scottish budget.
00:34
You will be able to get all the very latest coverage around that, including analysis,
00:38
key points from the Scottish budget.
00:40
We will be running a blog across the site from 2pm.
00:45
The Scotsman is your one stop shop for everything coming out of the budget, so please tune into
00:50
that.
00:51
Alastair, you'll be tuning into the budget for any transport announcements as well, but
00:57
that's not why I'm speaking to you this morning.
01:00
You wrote a story about 20 mile per hour zones in Edinburgh and there's a substantial roll
01:06
out that is being looked at.
01:09
Yeah, that's right.
01:10
I'm actually in Glasgow today on a bus route that has a 20 mile an hour limit.
01:15
That's what Edinburgh City Council is proposing, that when it rolled out the 20 mile an hour
01:22
zone across the city, which finished in 2018, it left some major routes, particularly bus
01:28
routes at 30.
01:29
But now it's planning to add 20 mile an hour limits to stretches of some of those.
01:35
So there's a total of 66 roads in the built up part of Edinburgh, which would go from
01:42
30 to 20 under the council's plans.
01:46
And that's stretches of main roads like Queensferry Road, Lanark Road, London Road,
01:54
Dalkeith Road, some of the main routes into the city centre.
02:00
What they're saying is that these are areas which have high numbers of pedestrians and
02:06
cyclists, there's shops, there's high density housing like tenements and flats, and some
02:11
of these streets are narrower.
02:13
So there's a need for a reduction.
02:16
They're also saying much of the time buses don't manage to get up to 30, even in 30 mile
02:23
an hour zones because of traffic congestion.
02:27
So there shouldn't be that much difference in journey times.
02:31
Although Lothian, Edinburgh's main operator, has expressed concern and it's particularly
02:36
worried about off-peak journeys and night bus journeys when there's less traffic on
02:41
the road and its buses will be slowed down.
02:45
Alistair, am I right in saying that there's going to be maybe some impact on semi-rural
02:51
areas within Edinburgh as well with plans to move towards tighter, lower speed limits
02:59
effectively?
03:00
Yes, so a second part of the council plan is the rural area of Edinburgh.
03:07
It stretches quite far west of the city bypass and many of the roads in that area that fall
03:14
up against West Lothian are 60 miles an hour.
03:17
But the council's saying that's inappropriate, particularly where you've got roads going
03:22
past houses, small hamlets.
03:25
So they're proposed to reduce many of those roads either to 50, 40, 30 or in some cases
03:34
20.
03:35
And the lowest speed would be on the narrowest lanes, including some of those that connect
03:40
Verano to the Pentland Hills and the Lezawars, which are very popular with cyclists, pedestrians
03:47
and horse riders.
03:49
But for other areas, there would be lower speeds than there are at the moment.
03:55
And they said that West Lothian Council will collaborate so that where a road crosses the
04:00
border, that might see a change in the speed too.
04:04
Alistair, I think it's certainly interesting as we see expansion of some residential areas.
04:09
We're also seeing a lowering of speed limits in traditional areas as well, even noting
04:15
in more recent times a 40 mile per hour zone on the main route past Edinburgh Airport,
04:20
where we know there's a lot of fresh residential and even industrial development planned as
04:26
well.
04:26
So watch this space and you can read that story at scotsman.com under the transport
04:32
tag.
04:33
One other story, Alistair, electric bikes or bike hire scheme looks like it might be
04:38
coming back to Edinburgh.
04:40
Yes, so many people would have been surprised that Edinburgh traditionally has quite a number
04:46
of people cycling.
04:48
A cycle hire scheme was introduced in 2018 Council and it quickly became very popular.
04:57
It was expanded.
04:58
There was a quarter of a million journeys a year within a few years.
05:02
But it collapsed just in three years.
05:04
There was a large amount of vandalism, bikes being stolen, and it was costing the Council
05:11
far too much.
05:13
And that is in stark contrast to Glasgow, which has had a scheme since 2014 for the
05:18
Commonwealth Games and it's now continuing expanding, has some half a million journeys
05:24
a year.
05:25
So the Council has been talking to several potential operators and hopes to get a scheme
05:31
up and running by next summer.
05:35
They've decided that because of the slightly hilly nature of Edinburgh, although Glasgow
05:40
is pretty hilly too, to just have it as electric bikes.
05:47
They also are saying that they have learned the lessons of the last scheme.
05:51
So the new project would be at no risk to the Council.
05:57
There's all the risk and no cost to the Council.
06:00
The operator would have to carry any losses.
06:04
And they also say that lock technology has improved a lot, which would make it much more
06:09
difficult to steal a bike and take it away.
06:15
Finally, they plan to limit it initially to the city centre.
06:19
I think it's some of the outlying areas that had some of the biggest theft and vandalism
06:23
problems.
06:25
You would anticipate, given the number of tourists moving through Edinburgh at different
06:29
times of the year, that it could be a well-used scheme again.
06:32
You can read both those stories we've discussed today.
06:35
As I mentioned, that's Scotsman.com.
06:37
You'll find all Alastair's coverage by going to the navigation bar and finding the transport
06:42
section.
06:44
Please do read those.
06:45
You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky.
06:49
And please visit our site for all the very latest budget coverage throughout the afternoon
06:54
and into the evening.
06:55
And pick up a copy of The Scotsman tomorrow, where we will deliver the full package.
06:59
Alastair, thanks very much for joining us.
07:01
And thanks to all our viewers as well.
Recommended
6:55
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