Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Route – procedural inaccuracies may lead to removal of traffic filters

Campaign groups for and against traffic calming measures in the Braids area have offered their reactions following Edinburgh council’s latest published proposals.

Officers recommend that significant traffic filters are removed due to “inaccurate written descriptions” used in statutory notices prepared by the council. These discrepancies were not discovered until after a recent meeting on 2 April 2026. Then the matter was referred to the Traffic Regulation Orders Sub-Committee to consider making the measures permanent.

In a report to be discussed at the forthcoming sub-committee meeting on 12 May, officers propose approving the full Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Route – but without the filters on Braid Avenue and Hermitage Gardens, and Braid Road.

The Quiet Route (ETRO/21/29D since 2024) is a set of traffic calming measures which were first installed during the Covid-19 pandemic as part of an active travel scheme funded with UK Government monies. These included a network of filters from Braid Road to Bruntsfield Links at James Gillespie’s Primary School and other nearby streets.

A new filter will be implemented at Clinton Road which will stop any through-traffic travelling onto the southern end of Whitehouse Loan.

This is a main cycling route for the south of the city. There are few off road paths in the southern half of the city except the Innocent Railway Path and Tunnel in the south east. All other traffic measures installed at the same time have already been made permanent in the city, except the last schemes in the Braids area to be decided next week, and Silverknowes Road which will be considered in February 2027.

The same decision to retain the measures was expected on 12 May for the southern routes, bringing years of uncertainty to an end.

Supporters of the measures say that they limit “rat runs” and improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians, while opponents have also raised their own safety concerns, and have placed question marks over the impact of the traffic measures on vehicle drivers.

The current arrangements are covered by Experimental Traffic Regulation Orders (ETROs), which were put in place as a trial period in December 2024 for a maximum of 18 months, meaning that they will expire on 15 June.

While the report supports retaining most of the traffic calming measures, it recommends the removal of some others due to “inaccurate written descriptions” from a previous report.

The report states: “Officers have identified that the written descriptions of the two prohibitions of motor vehicles trialled at Braid Avenue and Hermitage Gardens as part of ETRO/21/29D were incorrectly drafted within the Schedules to the Order.

“This means these parts of the ETRO cannot be made permanent. Unfortunately, this was not identified by officers until after the TEC meeting on 2 April 2026.

“It is therefore recommended that the waiting restrictions associated with the modal filters at these two locations are also removed from the Order, should it be made permanent.”

Officers also recommend the removal of a third filter at Braid Road which they say is “interdependent” with the other Braid Estate filters.

Three other modal filters at Whitehouse Loan and Canaan Lane would remain unaffected, should councillors choose to move with the recommendations from officers.

Traffic calming measures in the Braid Estate have been a point of significant controversy. In June 2023, the Transport and Environment Committee (TEC) decided that the Braid Road, Comiston Road and Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Connection schemes should be placed into separate, scheme-specific, ETROs.

In March 2024, The City of Edinburgh Council’s Transport and Environment Committee (TEC) voted to dismantle traffic filters on the Braid Estate and install segregated cycle lanes.

However, the plans were not implemented, and two Morningside councillors who took part in the design of the options considered and subsequently the vote – Cllrs Marie-Clair Munro and Neil Ross – were censured by the Standards Commission in March 2026 for failing to declare an interest at the meeting. The Standards Commission said that since they lived in the vicinity of the proposed route, they ought to have made their positions clear.

The Standards Commission deemed Cllr Munro and Cllr Ross to be in breach of the Councillors’ code of conduct by failing to do so.

In April, the TEC decided to proceed with forwarding the decision to the sub-committee.

Comments

Braid Estate Safety First, a group of residents who have spoken out against the specific layout of the route, say they believe the current layout is detrimental due to increased traffic congestion, “rat running”, and safety issues due to poor sight lines and high speeds in some diversions.

A spokesperson for Braid Estate Safety First said: “We have always supported a Quiet Cycle Route through the Braid Estate, just not the trialled layout, which is not safe.

“There was never a logical connection between the Cluny Drive diagonal filters and the rest of the scheme, which was hurriedly implemented and never refined through the successive trial periods.

“We believe a better layout, which prioritises pedestrians and cyclists, is possible and would welcome the chance to engage with officers to share our views. 

“We support all of the measures on Canaan Lane and Whitehouse Loan, particularly given proximity to local schools.”

Another group of residents in the Braid Estate, who have supported maintaining the current measures, expressed their disappointment at the proposal.

A spokesperson for the group said: “As residents on the Quiet Route, including residents living on streets such as Cluny Drive, Braid Road, Braid Avenue and Hermitage Drive and Hermitage Gardens, we are disappointed this was raised so late in the process.

“The removal of filters will mean an increase in traffic volumes and speeds across the whole estate.

“This will impact the way children travel to school, elderly and young families use the area to travel safely. However, we hope the council can see common sense and make a correction.”

A spokesperson for cycling campaigners, edi.bike , said their community were “bitterly disappointed” in proposals by officers, branding them “unacceptable”.

They said: “We know from monitoring data that this will bring greater road danger for those walking, wheeling and cycling. There isn’t any suggestion in the report that there might be another way to fix the legal mistakes made and preserve the safety benefits of the route and the quieter, cleaner streets for residents, yet we know from previous council decisions and other councils that this is possible.”

“In other cities, wording mistakes in legal orders have been addressed using temporary orders, or made permanent later using a standard permanent orders.”

“The council must find a legal route to make the existing measures permanent, if members of the sub-committee vote to keep them. To tear them out because of a paperwork error would be an unforgivable failure of both policy and imagination.”

Transport and Environment Convener, Councillor Stephen Jenkinson said: “Transport and Environment Committee took a decision on this issue in April. 

“It would be inappropriate for me to pre-empt or comment on this report before colleagues in the TRO Sub-Committee consider it next week.”

The Edinburgh Reporter is grateful to edi.bike for input on procedural matters at Tec and the TRO sub-committees which he has been closely following in recent years.