Councillors to choose new layout for Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Connection

Transport Convener Cllr Scott Arthur said he feels it is now time to move on from the Spaces for People discussion relating to the Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Connection by adopting a permanent solution.

Councillors will be presented with three options for creating the permanent arrangement on Braid Road when they meet next week.

The three options are firstly one which is more or less the status quo which has modal filters or planters making it harder to drive through the area, a scheme where there will be fully segregated cycle routes created through the area and a third which is a combination of the two.

There was extensive consultation with local residents in autumn last year when 1,867 people responded to the council, and full details of the responses and those interviewed are included in the report for councillors.

Support in the consultation was divided: for option one it was around 10%, for option two around 20% and for option three 50%. But council officers are not recommending any one solution and will leave it to the members of the Transport Committee to decide which option will be progressed.

Transport Convener Scott Arthur said that people are nt happy with the status quo and that there is still quite a lot of traffic cutting through the area on its way to somewhere else. He said: “People feel that streets which were previously quiet are now too busy. Problems were added to due to the way that Braid Road was reopened to traffic. Since then we had more concerns raised by cyclists about the operation of the route, so it is not quite working.

“The whole issue has proven to be intractable and I was really hopeful that we would actually be able to bring people together on this particularly in the Braid Estate itself. But I think some of it is partly due to the way the previous committee handled this. I think it is important that we fix it now.

“We have to respect what local people want here and that appears to be Option three. I think it will mean slightly higher traffic levels in the Braid Estate but it is important that we move on. Spaces for People generally are just consuming so much overhead inside the council. This scheme specifically has taken a lot of time and it is now time to draw a line under it.”

The kind of segregation will look a lot like Holyrood Road where cyclists are kept separate from vehicle traffic with kerbs and cycle lanes and the likely cost is around £400,000.

The Transport Committee meets on Thursday.