‘Aspirational’ trial to keep traffic off Old Town roads
Streets to close once a month Public back ‘radical’ approach
Old Town streets will close to traffic once a month while the public has backed a “more radical approach” to overhauling how people move around the Capital.
An “aspirational loop” of the Old Town including the Royal Mile, Holyrood Road and the Grassmarket, will be closed to traffic on the first Sunday of every month from May, in an 18-month trial.
The council believes the Open Streets trial “will be one of the first big interventions to start to inform what we are doing in the city centre”.
More than 5,000 people took part in a consultation, with 51 per cent saying they wanted a more radical approach to the city centre transformation, 37 per cent calling for “targeted investment” and only 12 per cent happy with a business as usual attitude.
No solid proposals to transform the city centre’s transport network will be tabled until May, but the council has illustrated “a flavour of how amazing the city could be”, including images of pedestrianising the Royal Mile and Cowgate and creating a plaza across Lothian Road with reduced traffic.
Project director Daisy Narayanan, said the area outside the Usher Hall should be a “beautiful civic space”.
She added: “In most European cities, it would be a plaza, but it’s cut through with six lanes in places, with an urban motorway.”
The council has tabled three appraisals, a combination of all will be brought forward in the final strategy.
The “smart” appraisal would not require a huge amount of investment and make better use of current assets. The “local” appraisal would be community-focused and involve strengthening town centres such as Portobello, Stockbridge and Leith Walk and “making it less necessary for people to make cross city centre trips”.
A third appraisal, “connected”, would require substantial investment to provide “big zones of pedestrian priority spaces and closing access to vehicles”.
Transport and environment convener, Cllr Lesley Macinnes, said: “We have got very ambitious plans around changing the way in which people move around the city in order to support our growth in the next 20 years. Our vision for the city’s future is ambitious and it’s clear that the people of Edinburgh share that ambition. There is not only a demand for change, but recognition that this needs to be significant in order to achieve an inspiring, healthier and more inviting city in which to live, work and play.”
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