andrewducker | Interesting Links for 03-02-2024

From:

channelpenguin

Ah. Plainly setting out what we all have realised. Thanks for that, good to point people at!

From:

lsanderson

You can write the same piece for the Spanish Flu and polio. Just change the vector and the dates. I maintain that if writing had been invented before the Spanish Flu epidemic, thousands could have been saved during COVID's initial rampage.

From:

hairyears

Thousands could have been saved, but not millions: stupidity is contagious in the Internet Age, and lethally dangerous.

From:

movingfinger

"Born in 1940" for the "Silent Generation"? I thought the border for that was earlier---mid 1920s or 1930? People who were children during the Great Depression were set apart by that experience.

Edited Date: 2024-02-03 08:10 pm (UTC)

From:

danieldwilliam

The next local council elections in Edinburgh are going to be about traffic management aren't they?

From:

andrewducker

Possibly. But as the only people in favour of more cars are the Conservatives, and they seem unlikely to do well.
And with over 3 years until then there'll be plenty of time for the changes to become the New Normal and to work out the kinks.

(Edit - it could all be a terrible idea entirely, of course, and lead to one of the other parties taking power because of that. But that doesn't seem entirely likely at the moment.)

Edited Date: 2024-02-04 10:17 am (UTC)

From:

danieldwilliam

I'm not sure any of those things are true.

From:

andrewducker

It might be helpful to discussion to expand upon what you think is true.

From:

danieldwilliam

I'm not sure that it is true that the only people in favour of more cars are Conservatives. I don't think most people are that defined by their voting intention. It's probably true that proportionally more habitual Conservative voters are in favour of more cars than other parties but I don't think wanting more cars is an article of faith for Conservative voters.

This also isn't just a decision between more cars or not more cars. At least not in people's mind. There's an option for more cars - i.e. actively promoting a move to cars, an option for the same amount of cars i.e. leaving people alone (which I think in practice will actually turn out to be more cars but I'm not sure people see it that way and two options for fewer cars - option 1, make public transport so good and shops so local that no one needs to drive anywhere, option 2 make driving your car in Edinburgh so unpleasant that people stop doing it.

So I think there are more groups of people who would oppose key parts of the traffic management plan than people who are consciously in favour of more cars.

I'm not sure that three years is time for it to become the New Normal. I doubt Edinburgh council can get a lot of it agreed and passed whatever judicial review process ends up happening in time for them to have everything normalised before the local election campaigns start up. Then they need to find budget and time to do the works. I think by the time the elections are happening we'll probably land right in the point where the new regime has been in place long to have irritated people but before they've gotten used to it.

There's also in my mind the same problem that the Conservative Party face on immigration, those people concerned about irregular migration to the UK mostly don't trust the Conservative Party to be competent on the issue. I think many Edinburgh voters are sceptical about the council's ability to sort out traffic and congestion. They might be in favour of fewer cars on the road but doubt that the measures being proposed will work.

People are also often poor at accepting that a problem is unsolvable. "You live in a small, rich city with a city centre some of which was laid out in the Renaissance there is no way that we can all move around in motor vehicles and for that to be a nice experience" is not a message folks are open to hearing I think.

From:

andrewducker

Apologies - I meant that "The only *party* in favour of more cars. I totally agree that car users are spread across all parties.

" I doubt Edinburgh council can get a lot of it agreed and passed whatever judicial review process ends up happening in time for them to have everything normalised before the local election campaigns start up."

They've been saying 2025. But I agree that it could definitely take longer if they get taken to court over it. I'm, not sure how much of "These roads are limited in these ways" is considered totally within the gift of the council, and how much of it can be stopped by a court.

I agree that some people definitely think that all problems can be solved, and that if the problem is solved in a way they don't like it's down to malfeasance. The Orchard Brae/Roseburn choice for the trams looks to be hitting exactly that kind of thing. And we definitely hit it with the congestion charge referendum 20 years ago. But there seems to have been a swing to the point where enough people are using the buses, and being frustrated by the cars getting in the way up The Mound, etc. that I think they might be okay on that front.

Edit: And thank you for the thorough reply! I appreciate seeing where I'm getting things wrong (or at least where there are points of difference and things I need to think about more.)

Edited Date: 2024-02-05 11:45 am (UTC)

From:

danieldwilliam

I do feel like the city has a bit of chicken and egg problem with public transport. Parts of it are too congested to allow more buses but until you can get some more buses on the roads you can't persuade people to stop using their cars.

I feel like part of the answer to that might be more point to point or circular routes that don't go through the city centre but I'm guessing at that.

We could do with an underground system (figure eight underneath with the cross under Waverley IMO) and a railway tunnel from Kinghorn to Leith but sadly we don't have a couple of dozen billion spare for those.

From:

andrewducker

I agree that until getting the cars off the roads makes the buses more reliable people are going to struggle to use them as much as they hopefully will do. Definitely a tricky thing to deal with. In some ways, ripping off the plaster and getting it done ASAP will be better than doing it piecemeal. I do hope that they can stick to a 2025 schedule so it does have time to bed in. Doing it three weeks before the next elections would definitely be the worst case scenario.

I'm sure there was some discussion of significant changes to have more radial routes. Sadly, most of the things I want to do take me from one side of town to the other. Morningside->Orchard Brae is going to be tricky to do without going through town. Although I regularly switch buses at Princes Street, so maybe that's just going to be a better approach, having people change a few times, guided by apps. There is a radial route from Inverleith to Orchard Brae, but it's every 30 minutes, which isn't frequent enough to not be annoying. It's regularly pretty full though, so maybe they will increase the frequency.

In an independent Scotland this would all be solved through the use of catapults, of course.

From:

danieldwilliam

There are a few bus routes that run too infrequently to be of great use. The 38 as you say and the 45 come to mind.

From:

andrewducker

And the 36.

From:

danieldwilliam

I wonder if there are places that would make good secondary hubs other than Princes Street. Somewhere you could have 4 or 5 bus routes pass through with a frequency of 6 or 8 an hour each so that transferring from route to route was convenient.

From:

andrewducker

Not quite as much as that, but from outside the Omni Centre there's a bus every 6 minutes up The Bridges and a bus every 6 minutes to Princes Street.

Similarly, from South Bridge there's one every 6 minutes to Princes Street and one every down Leith Walk.

Top of Lothian Road is similar for going to Morningside - there's a bus every 4 minutes.

They aren't all the *same* bus, of course. The buses then splinter from Morningside to go to different places, and vice versa. But there are enough going the way you want to go.

So you'd probably need to change a couple of times to get onto a bus to exactly where you were going, but if you're going between two major places there are probably enough buses that you don't have to worry much about how long you'll be waiting at the bus stop.

From:

danieldwilliam

I find getting from the office to the flat very easy. Any bus up Queenferry Road, cross Princes Street to Lothian Road and then any bus up there.

I'm trying to work out if there are any places like that nexus, or where a nexus could usefully go that mean that folks could hub and spoke to lots of places without having to come through town.

Haymarket station might be promising - especially if the second tram route goes past there too.

From:

andrewducker

There's a nexus at the end of London Road/Elm Row. That lets you get from Meadowbank or to Leith without going through town.

There's one at Cameron Toll, for sure.

Canonmills.

And looking at this map I'd say Crewe Toll was.

I'm not sure where else, as those are the major places I've lived/travelled through.

From:

danieldwilliam

In which case this might make a decent circular route

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Jeremiah's+Taproom,+Elm+Row,+Edinburgh/Canonmills,+Edinburgh+EH7+4HU/Crewe+Toll,+Edinburgh/Haymarket+station,+Edinburgh/Cameron+Toll+Shopping+Centre,+Lady+Road,+Edinburgh/Joppa,+Edinburgh/Jeremiah's+Taproom,+Elm+Row,+Edinburgh/@55.9521768,-3.1882981,13.25z/data=!3m1!5s0x4887b89b1c4d6e1d:0x7edf0a3a453a540c!4m44!4m43!1m5!1m1!1s0x4887c78ba21739df:0xcd2aed8412a25156!2m2!1d-3.1837301!2d55.9583611!1m5!1m1!1s0x4887c7ecbcd32be7:0xd2649edf2c697cc1!2m2!1d-3.1922588!2d55.9629285!1m5!1m1!1s0x4887c7ccde6a6d5b:0xe6a2506dc2a86f41!2m2!1d-3.2361571!2d55.9684451!1m5!1m1!1s0x4887c79f06501cf7:0xe9cbc95023566e92!2m2!1d-3.2186784!2d55.9453703!1m5!1m1!1s0x4887b8982fabc377:0x5d5710918b595caa!2m2!1d-3.1638126!2d55.9268621!1m5!1m1!1s0x4887b9a3c02c5d53:0x19feecf337b51b40!2m2!1d-3.095107!2d55.948429!1m5!1m1!1s0x4887c78ba21739df:0xcd2aed8412a25156!2m2!1d-3.1837301!2d55.9583611!3e2?entry=ttu

From:

andrewducker

I can see that pretty much all of that is covered by buses, but you'd need several of them to do the circuit.

The question is whether there's enough traffic needed along that circuit, or if there's not much to see along it, and all the exciting stuff is in the town centre.

From:

danieldwilliam

I have a working theory that most people won't take more than 2 buses to get somewhere. Three would be the absolute maximum for a regular journey.

People making changes from one bus to another probably need to be able to see the bus stop they get the second bus from and the buses need to be so frequent that you don't need to worry about whether you are going to make your connection or not.

What I'm mulling over is a circular bus to join up as many of the little bus nodes as possible so people can avoid the city centre if they aren't going to the middle of town and also as a way of driving passengers to nodes that aren't the city centre so it's worth laying on some more point to point buses that don't go through the middle of town.

From:

andrewducker

I definitely agree that three bus stops is the absolute maximum. Each one adds cognitive load and unpredictable delays.

If you can get side-to-side of the city faster by taking a circular route then people will definitely take it. But I suspect that the removal of cars in the centre of town will speed up the direct routes.

I think my major two questions are: What percentage of trips are to somewhere that's not in the center-ish of town. And do circular routes save time to get to those places versus straight lines (possibly multiple).

If 50% of trips aren't to the center then circular routes are worth setting up. If only 3% of trips are to sideways destinations, then not so much.

Both the 36 and the 38 (the circular routes I've used the most) are single decker and half hourly. Which indicates that there's not a huge amount of appetite. Although they do lay on more of the 38 first thing, to let workers get from Morningside to Kings Buildings and the ERI (and again at 5pm to let them get home).

(The 38 takes in the ERI, Kings Buildings, Cameron Toll, and Morningside, so has about as much demand as you can ask for on a radial route.)

From:

danieldwilliam

But I suspect that the removal of cars in the centre of town will speed up the direct routes.

Probably this is the most impactful thing. It is probably the case that clearing space in the city centre will do the most to improve bus flows and in turn make buses a more useful travel option for more people.

That in turn might drive enough extra demand for buses that other point to point or cicular routes become viable.

I think my major two questions are: What percentage of trips are to somewhere that's not in the center-ish of town. And do circular routes save time to get to those places versus straight lines (possibly multiple).

I think you might get interestingly different answers if you looked at actual trips and potential trips. I think there is also a bit of supply creating its own demand. I go to places on the bus that it is easy for me to get to on the bus. If I lived in Linlithgow I wouldn't take a job in Leith. I certainly wouldn't go to a restaurant in Leith. Well, I might now that I can get a train to Haymarket and a tram to Leith. I recall the late and much missed Bart Calendar talking about the permanent impact of trams over buses because people trusted that trams would remain on the same route.

I'm certainly entirely open to the idea that more point-to-point routes that don't go through the city centre will work better for most people.

Both the 36 and the 38 (the circular routes I've used the most) are single decker and half hourly. Which indicates that there's not a huge amount of appetite

And I have to respect the fact that Lothian Buses have more data and more knowledge about bus services in Edinburgh that I do.

I guess we'll see what happens when the combination of the traffic calming measures, impact on bus routes, low emission zone and whatever congestion charging ends up happening work through people's behaviour.

From:

andrewducker

Yeah, given an increase in overall bus usage I agree that new routes will be needed around the edges. Hopefully that will happen given the changes. The more people we can shift from cars to buses/trams the better!

From:

andrewducker

Just realised that the new South extension on the tram line will cover a chunk of that. Except it will go to the ERI, and then possibly on to Fort Kinnaird, both of which are also nexi.

From:

danieldwilliam

An alternative (or perhaps additional scheme) would be to have lots of buses that basically ran at right angles to the tram routes as they build out.

On reflection I think the most obvious thing to do would be to make sure the new (second) tram line goes through Shawfair on the Borders Railway and through Haymarket station and turn both of those in to bus hubs and then make sure a third line also went through Shawfair and one of the stations that connect to the line running along the A1 coastal route. That way you link up train, tram and buses in several different directions and several different places.

Edinburgh will be nice when it's finished, I just hope they manage to finish it before I die.

From:

andrewducker

Me too!

Very cool, if true

Interesting Links for 03-02-2024

Interesting Links for 03-02-2024

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