Not for profit planning
  • Home
  • Services
    • Accessible transport
    • Inclusive streets and public realm
    • Strategy and planning
    • Governance
    • Policy development
    • Culture and heritage
  • News and events
  • About me
  • Blog

Princes street traffic/buses (part two)

9/29/2018

0 Comments

 
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.
Picture
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?​
Picture
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.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

     “I hate the way everyone responsible for urban life seems to have lost sight of what cities are for. They are for people” Bill Bryson, Neither here Nor there, 1991 p61

    Welcome to my occasional blog: mostly this is about making public places inclusive and attractive, but I may touch on other policy and governance topics…


    Archives

    November 2022
    January 2022
    May 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    December 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    February 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.