‘Council’s manipulative market research distorts the thruth’
Paul Bailey, city resident and Chair of Friends of Braidburn Valley Park, argues that the council’s preference for ‘market research’ over ‘public consultations’ helps produce the results it is seeking
The Transport Committee doesn’t trust Public Consultations and regularly conducts its own costly and much smaller “market research” which I think helps give the illusion that the public supports its plans.
But it is all a sham – a shameful distortion of the truth. The council has several tricks up its sleeve.
Let’s consider two such surveys – the highly controversial Corstorphine Connections Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) and the proposed extension of the 20mph measures.
Regarding Corstorphine, the council seems to think it acceptable to limit the survey to people who actually live in the LTN; they know the measures are hated by motorists living outside the LTN, but the result was that the views of over 2000 members of “Stop the Corstorphine LTN” weren't taken into account.
So there was a laughable declaration that there was a 49% “silent majority” supporting the scheme. Majority? The research was tiny – just 302 residents interviewed in the streets, only 35% of whom had travelled there by car. The council proudly claims that it has quotas for gender and age, but not for motorists.
Another trick is not to include any questions about controversial issues like the bus gate on Manse Road. Cllr Lang asked why not?
The answer that the survey was holistic was shown to be nonsense because they have many very specific questions like “What is your opinion of artistic works at school entrances?”. It even asks how many travelled to their destination by tram! Think about the pointless question – how many people living in the LTN in Corstorphine travelled by tram to reach their destination in another part of the same LTN (where trams don’t run).
The way the council goes about it seems to limit the influence of motorists, as happened in the 20mph market research proposals.
The council didn’t like the fact that the 20mph Public Consultation included “too many” drivers taking part – 77.4%. So they reduced the percentage of drivers to an “unrepresentative” 50.64% in the market research to get significantly different results.
According to “Scottish Government data: statistics. gov.scot : Road Vehicles 2021”, the level of car ownership in Edinburgh is 69%. The council admits that drivers are less likely to support the council's “bold” measures. “Respondents who indicated they drove in the last month were consistently less supportive in the measures presented in the online survey compared to those who did not drive.” [Mobility Consultation report].
Market research not only distorts the truth – it is a waste of money because respondents take part to receive an “incentive”, and don’t want to waste time on comments and interactive maps; the council asked for views on specific roads where they were considering imposing a 20mph limit, one of which was Colinton Road. They received 131 helpful views in all, 130 of which came from the Public Consultation, and just one from the market research.
The council with its Active Travel agenda has other misleading statistics. In its defence of the need for an Ultra Low Emission Zone, it has been claiming for over a year that exceedences of the NO2 levels were beyond minimum standards and has been forced to amend its untrue claim; thanks to John Lamb’s knowledgeable statistics on Twitter (X) we can see through their lies. John is a retired air quality specialist who is frustrated by the council’s misrepresentation of the facts.
When Cllr Arthur disagreed with Spaces for People measures in 2020 because of poor communication with residents, he reminded colleagues that “we are here to represent the public, not dictate to them”. Perhaps he needs to remind himself about this, rather than his colleagues. The big question is “Who is to blame for the misleading information, officers or councillors? But how can councillors make informed decisions when officers appear to have failed to let the Transport Committee see the Stakeholder comments from Lothian Buses who state “it appears none of our initial feedback has been taken into account” regarding plans to impose more 20mph speed limits on “key arterial routes” and causing serious problems for bus timetables. It is one thing to mislead the public, another to mislead councillors.