Why does Edinburgh Council hate cars?

[andrewducker]

I occasionally see people complaining that Edinburgh Council hate cars. And, to be fair, I suspect that some of the council members do dislike them (The Green Party are not known for being big car fans). But the Green Party don't run the council (it's currently Labour supported by the Tories and Lib Dems - but their policies about cars vs buses are very similar to the SNP administration), so why is it that people think the council as a whole hate cars?

It's because the council has very little choice.

In a very rural area cars make total economic sense and buses make very little. There aren't enough people travelling between any two points at a given time to make it worth running buses that often, so buses either don't exist, or only connect larger areas rarely. And because they don't run that often, you can't just wander out and leap on to one to get where you need to. So you pretty much *have* to have a car.

Once you more urban you have a situation where buses are running regularly on key routes, so if you live on them then you'll be able to rely on a bus to get too/from work/school. And if you're doing that enough that you're paying for a bus pass, or that you're able to get to most of the places you want then a chunk of people don't need cars any more.

And then, as you get even more urban, you reach a key point where there are *lots* of buses. And to manage the concentration of people in the city you run out of space on the roads, at least at key parts of the day. You now have traffic jams at rush hour. And that's because you have vehicles that are 4.5m long that are carrying one person and other vehicles that are three times that length that are carrying 100 people. If you want to keep those 100 people moving then one of the most efficient ways of doing it is to get the incredibly wasteful vehicles carrying only 1 person out of the way.

Now, this is problematic. If you do it before you have decent bus routes set up for people to switch to then there will be a lot of resistance. You clearly need to hit a critical point to make it doable. And obviously you need some exceptions. But *something* like it is inevitable as people get more concentrated together. You simply cannot fit everyone in the roads if they are using cars, you need something more compact than that.

Comments

[calimac]

I define an adequate mass transit environment as one where buses run more frequently than N and lines are densely packed enough that you don't have to walk further than D to reach your destination. Going to such a place, unless under other constraints I will happily park my car on the edge and take bus or other mass transit (light rail) in. I do that all the time when going to San Francisco.

I've defined N as 20 minutes. If they run more frequently than that, I can count on one coming soon and don't have to check the schedule.

I'm not sure of the limits of D, but it's less than 1 km.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. My bus route from Sophia's school to the centre of town on the way to work has a bus every 4 minutes at that time of day, which is amazing.
The buses from my house into the city centre are less frequent, but between 9 and 10am there are 7 of them (on 2 different routes). So nothing to complain about there either!

[mtbc]

Definitely, once they're every ten minutes or so then I become much more happy and relaxed.

[movingfinger]

I seem to recall (dusty memory from transit chatter) that N is actually equal to 15 minutes (or less, possibly 12 minutes?). If you want to get people out of their cars, the short wait and reliable service combination are essential.

Keep in mind that if a vehicle is skipped, that doubles the actual wait time anyway, and if there is a delay the wait is even longer. That sort of thing loses riders' patience fast.

When I lived in a transit-dense area, and did not have reliable information about arrival times (thanks MUNI), if a scheduled vehicle didn't appear when it was supposed to, it was a safe assumption that one should start walking along the route to the next stop. A delay of 15 minutes would mean a delay of the scheduled service for 15 minutes, so the interval from previous service could be 25 or 30 minutes or worse, so it would be sardines on the vehicle and one might as well walk to the closest multiple-line transit junction or even the destination.

[calimac]

I'm defining N to my own satisfaction, from my experience waiting for buses. Also, it's <20, not =20, so 15 isn't far off.

My experience with MUNI, if you mean the San Francisco bus system, is that if the bus is delayed, two will come in short order, and if the first is sardines, the second will be one of those crisps packages that's mostly air.

Also, these days many of the MUNI stops have electronic displays giving estimates times until the next two buses on each route that stops there; and it's also possible to get this info on a smartphone app.

[andrewducker]

I'm glad it's better now!

[danieldwilliam]

My personal measure is whether a bus service is "metropolitan" which I define as so frequent / dense that I don't have to check when the next bus is due or where it's due from - I just go to the nearest bus stop.

I think you're schema is probably more helpful than mine.

[calimac]

What I attempted to define was how frequent/dense is enough.

But it may be necessary to know where the bus is coming from to know where it's going, depending on how the route system works. One bus I take regularly in San Francisco stops in different places on the main street on which it runs than do all the other lines using that street. There's a reason for this, but it's not intuitive unless you know it.

[simont]

You simply cannot fit everyone in the roads if they are using cars, you need something more compact than that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/ifjz29/replace_cars_with_bats/ :-)

[andrewducker]

The best solution!

[mtbc]

Sounds good. Our main obstacles in Glasgow are reliability, frequency, cost. The bus service here just isn't fit for purpose in my opinion (like most of our local council services, frankly). I've been a mostly happy bus user in large cities in the US but here, if R. attempts a bus journey with a connection, I am wholly unsurprised by the later telephone call petitioning for rescue by car. Apart from R.'s issue of them simply not turning up, personally I avoid the buses here also because the tap-off sometimes doesn't work, I worry that I thus get charged the maximum fare, and the driver never seems to care. If Edinburgh actually has decent bus service then car-hating indeed becomes far less painful. (Glasgow's traffic engineering may suggest some car hating but Hanlon's Razor applies, and parking fee increases are just about infeasible budgets.) The critical point that you mention is, er, critical.

To add to the busward pressure, I wouldn't give taxis any special favours either though. Why can they go in the bus lane and through special barriers to drop my friend with luggage off at the station, when I can't give them that same lift? (At least I don't recall Edinburgh annoying me greatly like that.) They're also cars but, irrelevantly, with strangers driving.

For selling buses as the way, I'd also emphasise the importance of decent bus routes for park and ride, with it being easy to pop back to the car to drop stuff off. If I can't cheaply and easily visit as a family for shopping then you run into the stupidity in places like Cambridge that fail to combine "do all your shopping here" with "and don't bring your car anywhere near it" (so I don't, and shop in Haverhill or wherever instead). At least Glasgow has some decent park and ride near subway stations (not as useful to us with the dog, mind), for Edinburgh I typically just use the Q-Park near Fountain Park which is at least easy to get to from here but I can imagine to be less fun at rush-hour.

[andrewducker]

Edinburgh has the park and ride at Ingliston with the tram route in to the city centre. (Amongst other park and rides)
And we have tracking on the buses, so you know when they will really arrive, not just when they're scheduled. That makes it much easier to at least know that your bus will be along in a few minutes, which reduces stress a lot.
And all buses (other than the airport bus) are the same price, no matter the distance, so you don't have to tap off.

[mtbc]

That sounds great. Back when I moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1996, the buses were $1.10 + 10¢ per connection (bus taken within n minutes of previous) which was just fine and simple. It does sound like the grass is greener in Edinburgh in that regard!

(Admittedly, I've avoided the trams so far as they always look rather full of people! With luck, supply will meet demand … Have yet to try the P&R.)

[andrewducker]

Although I see FirstBus are doing live tracking now as well. Which is helpful.

[marymac]

Now, this is problematic. If you do it before you have decent bus routes set up for people to switch to then there will be a lot of resistance. You clearly need to hit a critical point to make it doable

And you absolutely cannot do what Belfast did over 2024/25 and shut down more than one part of the public transport OR car infrastructure at the same time. There will be chaos.

I do like the attitude of Dublin City Council when accused of hating driver, which is "Yes! The road layout is ONE THOUSAND YEARS OLD, vehicles don't fit! And you're all terrible drivers."

[andrewducker]

Good grief, what did Belfast do?

[marymac]

Well, you know how you can't really get round Belfast or in fact it's commuter belt without going into the city centre? Whether by train, bus or automobile?

That means if you decide to build a great big new bus and train centre on a site which happens to sit on the middle of the network of streets which allow access between the city centre and the Westlink. And the West of the city. And are part of the one way system. You have to really think through what you're doing.

Because you will need to close off several of these roads, realign the rail line, and take down a bridge. Each of which steps is an invitation to gridlock on its own. So they decided to do them ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

And, while 35% of the normal traffic was being dumped on to already rammed roads, the rail realignment closed the southern rail routes and added extra bus fuckery to the equation, DfI thought it would be a good idea to
1) Do a major resurfacing of the Hillhall road, which everyone who couldn't get the train from Lisburn used to drive to Belfast.
2) Simultaneously start resurfacing the Sydenham bypass on the weekends in case East Belfast felt they were missing out.
3) Allow taxis in the city centre bus lanes.
4) Just for shits and giggles, move all the city centre bus stops, adding lost schoolchildren and pensioners to the mix.
5) Insist entire DfI staff come back into the office three days a week. Adding several hundred more cars to the roads.

We were in gridlock from August to February and it's only barely improved since the trains went back on.

The Minister's response to the wall of righteous fury was to tell everyone to stop driving and cycle. He was not, somehow, torn limb from limb by the populace, but that's probably because he makes sure to never be near the humans.

[chickenfeet]

I wish someone would explain this to the car lobby and the provincial government here. They don't seem to get that you cant reduce congestion in a city of 2.8 million people by any other means. The current favoured solution is getting rid of bike lanes!

[andrewducker]

Ouch. I hope they eventually realise!