Council decides on changes to Corstorphine Connections – a response

The Traffic Regulation Orders Sub-Committee met on Thursday to decide the fate of the measures which form part of Corstorphine Connections – and decided to halt the bus gate but retain some of the other measures.

A full report on the meeting is here.

Corstorphine Connections is the council’s Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) project to create “a safer and more comfortable environment for residents walking, cycling, wheeling and spending time in the local streets and outdoor spaces of Corstorphine”.

There are many component parts to it, and there have been many column inches writing about the various arguments for and against. Low Traffic Corstorphine have been firmly behind the proposals and have issued a response to Thursday’s decision to halt the use of the bus gate on Manse Road.

The bus gate has earned £482,772,74 for the council in the form of fines, but has also cost around £300,000 to repair the criminal damage when the camera pole was cut down, and also when the cables to the camera were cut.

RESPONSE BY LOW TRAFFIC CORSTORPHINE

“Whilst the loss of the Bus Gate on Manse Road is disappointing, given it is a key part of the original goal of reducing rat running intrusive travel through the core part of Corstorphine’s oldest village, and roads which also flank a main local Primary school, the Corstorphine LTN has always been a much bigger project than just one bus gate, and, as such has many other important parts. 

“The media focus on the need for safety and active travel improvements this project has brought, both directly and indirectly, to the Corstorphine community over the last fouryears is unprecedented, and has, one way or another, brought wider attention to the issues here than we’ve had the opportunity to air properly in many decades.

“Whilst it is true the Manse Road Bus Gate has been the most contentious part of the project, there have been many other important and more widely accepted improvements introduced, for example:

• Wider pavements often with bollarded protection and improved crossings on main routes and around the Primary Schools,
• Traffic calming measures to slow traffic in residential streets where many children and parents/carers travel frequently by foot or cycle/wheel.
• Very welcome place-making projects which have improved the local environment with the involvement of the local primary schools, for pedestrians and community spaces, making many areas which were previously hostile to active travellers far more fun, relaxing and safe.
• Measures to reduce intrusive rat running through the Featherhall estate have made this space quieter for residents there, and the general acceptance over time of the ‘pocket park’ at Featherhall Crescent Sth/Nth which provides a much needed spot to stop and sit while walking from one part to another.
• Improvements around the Carricknowe Primary as part of the School Streets programme
• improvements to the shopping space at Carricknowe including a much more convenient direct route to Union Park and safer widened pavements and crossings there too for shoppers & visitors. 

“The loss of the bus gate element will most certainly lead to an increase in intrusive rat running traffic to Manse Road, which, prior to Covid, reached levels of 4000+ vehicles a day – through an unsuitable old village road with narrow pavements – a road even vocal opposers of the project have highlighted as unsafe for pedestrians.  This is not a line of messaging that rings consistent with a safety conscious council whilst elsewhere in the city pushing hard on street safety and reduction of driven miles targets they aim to fulfill by 2030. 

“Most critically, there is no evidence this will make any reduction in peripheral traffic on LTN boundary roads, because the increases reported there over the trial period were by no means fully attributable to the LTN interventions.

“Additionally there appears to be no sense within CEC of the effects on Corstorphine of the inevitable increases in local traffic as a result of the massive developments on our western doorstep which will undeniably increase the levels of traffic locally – if they’ve not already.

“Displacing traffic from boundary routes more capable of dealing with the extra traffic, back to local narrow village routes around residential and school streets is not progress and not the answer for any local community. And it’s certainly not progress for the residents of Manse Road – who will once again be beset by several thousands of vehicles passing or sitting outside their homes every day on a road which has very little space between road and front door, unlike, say, Station Road for example.

“And yet, all is not lost. Other elements within the project have helped to make it safer and more pleasant to travel around by foot and wheel, and the community does indeed, according to local surveys, feel safer to travel more actively. Environmental improvement of the community spaces within the LTN project area has, in our view, made the place more pleasant to live and work in.

“As such we are happy to see the vast majority of the LTN elements retained and we look forward to them being made permanent and in keeping the local Corstorphine environment.

“Low Traffic Corstorphine will continue to encourage and support all efforts to achieve a safer and more sustainably accessible Corstorphine for all who live and work in this local community.”