Last winter, I carried out a short traffic survey of Princes Street. I wanted to see if Princes Street is really clogged up with buses, as is claimed increasingly in some quarters. Only half the traffic on the street turned out to be local buses.I repeated the exercise in August, to see if there was a marked seasonal difference and the answer seems to be no.
Local service buses again formed less than half of all traffic in Princes Street, with other significant vehicles including tourist buses and especially taxis. Many of these vehicles don’t stop at all on Princes Street, using it simply as a short cut thoroughfare. If reducing traffic on Princes Street is a key aim (as it appears to be as part of the ‘City Centre Transformation initiative’), wouldn't it make sense to look at removing such traffic first?
Before any plan to significantly remove buses from Princes Street is developed, a much more nuanced discussion is needed on what the street is for (especially the balance between ’movement’ and ‘place’) and what are the implications of major changes on other city centre streets. There are also, as I argued previously, a number of other small-scale measures (from improved traffic enforcement to minor bus route changes) which should be explored before any major change to the bus network is contemplated.
Of course, these surveys (both carried out on a Wednesday afternoon) would need to be corroborated by proper traffic counts, including at morning and afternoon peaks and weekends. But they provide enough evidence to show there’s a risk of arriving at quick ‘solutions’ without first establishing the necessary information.
Of course, these surveys (both carried out on a Wednesday afternoon) would need to be corroborated by proper traffic counts, including at morning and afternoon peaks and weekends. But they provide enough evidence to show there’s a risk of arriving at quick ‘solutions’ without first establishing the necessary information.
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