Edinburgh Sucks! | Edinburgh’s Stalinist planners

Andrew Burns

Edinburgh’s Stalinist planners

By The Basa ⋅ November 3, 2005 ⋅

Excellent Column Today George Kerevan’s column in today’s Scotsman (unfortunately, this is in the premium content at the site) and I hope he won’t mind me quoting some of it here in the interest of public awareness:

In fact, I’m only moved to write this because in the past week I’ve heard several prominent environmentalists denounce Edinburgh’s traffic management scheme as a disaster for the city. Everyone from the Jeremy Clarkson Neanderthals to Edinburgh Council’s own official urban design adviser, Sir Terry Farrell, is united in thinking the city administration has laid a very large egg.

Sir Terry makes the obvious point that for the last decade, cities across the world have been ripping out the one-way street systems that Edinburgh is imposing. And in favour of guess what? - the two-way-street, open-grid system that was once the heart of the New Town. And we are not talking urban mavericks here, we are talking sophisticated Seattle. Two-way streets slow down traffic and make streets more pedestrian-friendly. Cyclists can share the road and keep up with traffic. Folk sitting at pavement cafes can actually hear each other.

He goes on to say:

Once again, Edinburgh’s Stalinist planners are behind the times. Sometimes this has advantages, as you can learn from the mistakes of others. Thus, in the Seventies, Edinburgh was the last municipality to try to bulldoze its classical architecture in favour of inner-city motorways, but fortunately was stopped by a timely public revolt. Currently, the council is fixated on building a billion-pound tram system just when everyone else is discovering that trams are expensive and don’t get folk out of their cars unless you actually build an entire, integrated tram network (which Edinburgh is not). I predict this tram scheme will crash and burn, too, at the 2007 local elections.

For the record, Edinburgh has had two transport problems in the past 20 years. First, it lacked air links with Europe. It has solved that problem under the energetic leadership of Richard Jeffrey, the boss of Edinburgh Airport. Second, the city’s booming economy means that a third of its workers commute in every morning, creating jams on the western approach routes. You won’t solve that with trams but by building a super-fast, super-efficient Glasgow-Edinburgh rail link. As for inner-city road congestion, has Edinburgh never heard of building proper public car parks like any self-respecting French town?

It is an excellent article and alone was well worth us paying the annual fee to access the content. He slipped up later in the article when he said:

I have a high regard for Donald Anderson, leader of the administration. But I have no regard for the transport supremo, Andrew Burns, who should have resigned in February when folk voted down his plan for congestion charges. Therein lies the problem. Once councillors reject accountability in favour of cronyism, an administration becomes arrogant.

We obviously don’t agree with his comments on Donald Anderson. To have high regard for Donald Anderson one would have to assume that he would do what was best for the city. Anderson is not and never has done. Anderson ONLY craves power as do all of his cronies in the administration.

If you have a subscription, you can read the full column here:
Edinburgh voters will not forget this shambles