Our article Five Things You Need to Know Today mentioned that the Moray Feuars, (a group of New Town residents who have objected to the closure of Shandwick Place on the grounds of increased emissions in surrounding streets), had made deputations to the Council at previous meetings of the Transport Infrastructure and Environment committee. They have commissioned work at their own expense to calculate the emissions in the area where they live, and have claimed that emissions in Great Stuart Street had risen to dangerous levels. So we caught up with them today to find out where they think their campaign is at today. This is what they had to say:-
Following a long battle by ordinary residents of Edinburgh, to highlight critical flaws in the planning of the Edinburgh Tram project, the Council agreed a series of interlinked public processes so that these flaws could be highlighted, and of course, rectified.
However in the lead up to the first of the workshops scheduled for tonight 22nd February at 7:30pm, as objectors have been forming working groups and committees, they have found a worrying spirit of non co-operation in providing the information required to make the process meaningful.
The council said on November 23rd 2010 that leading objectors would be invited to the ‘Trams Sub Committee’ (TSC) formed from the ‘Transport Infrastructure & Environment Committee’ (TI&E) specifically to examine some critical points of scientific fact and evidence that were not accepted by the Council’s own department responsible for measuring pollution, ahead of the Workshops process.
As yet? Nothing.
But as well as not setting a date for that promised meeting, objectors had also requested that the Council supply various documents for tonight’s Workshop so that the ordinary people could see some of the ‘executive summaries’ and briefing documents that tie managers would have given to the council.
But these have not been forthcoming.With these documents, residents and traders from the West End Association, worried about declining numbers of customers since general traffic has been banned from Shandwick Place, feel they could see how the project had evolved, and where it began to diverge from paying attention to critical issues like pollution, noise, building damage and danger.
However without these documents that process becomes very much harder.
The question is this: Are the City of Edinburgh Council and tie being deliberately obstructive and withholding information they fear coming out?
It also serves to confirm fears amongst some of the objectors and residents, that the workshops may not be the hoped-for straightforward attempt to finally reach out and seek to create a genuine solution, but instead something to keep everyone occupied while they continue to push on regardless with the plan.
Allan Alstead, one of the residents prominent in the campaign, said:-“There have been some who have felt the Council and especially tie never intended to have an open and free debate on the Tram Project. However others want to give the Council a chance to be the people they say they are, and use the financial problem that has halted the whole project to change course while there is still time. For instance Dr Ashley Lloyd, has been extremely forceful in bringing the pollution dangers to the forefront; indeed his work is what led DEFRA to change their advice, yet he is right now working with others extremely hard to try and make the workshops a genuine, open and informal forum for the people of Edinburgh in which, at last, the real arguments can be truly heard. However I know his efforts are being blocked at every turn as documents promised initially are not turning up.
In effect Dr Lloyd, and others, have worked unpaid doing the work that tie and the Council should have being doing themselves, and that everyone Edinburgh assumed they would be doing, but which, sadly, they weren’t doing. Now, because it doesn’t fit their plans and preconceptions, rather than welcome it with thanks it looks as if they are doing everything they can to suppress it.”
Resident and former prominent Civil Engineer, Alistair Laing, someone who has been campaigning to flag up the dangers he sees in the plan for a number of years, said:-“I have to say I have heard rumours that some in the Council and tie camp may be having second thoughts on allowing the workshops to go ahead as they agreed, and am disgusted that the same old tactics with which we are so familiar appear to have started even though the workshops have yet to even begin properly.Their own report told them in 2003 that over 250,000 people, would have worse air quality in this city because of the Tram…not because of anything else. In London they are bringing in Hydrogen buses because they emit nothing other than water vapour…no toxins from the exhaust whatsoever, and vastly fewer particulates. They are recognising the problem they have and tackling it.
Here, we believe there are people who know very well that there is a potential problem but they are keeping silent for whatever reason and in that silence the politicians continue to play their games. We are not prejudging anything; all we are asking for is the general advice notes that the tie experts used to highlight their advice to Councillors.
At the moment they simply do not know how many will become ill or die. It would be a historic low point of public life in the City of The Enlightenment if they are purposely blocking their own enlightment because they fear that this issue could be the one that finally kills their pet project—they should stop playing games and release the information now.”
