Edinburgh roads: South Queensferry residents speak out on boy racers and speeding cars on Scotstoun Avenue and Dalmeny Park estate

Residents have complained their street is being used as a late-night race track, often with up to a dozen cars starting down at the Hawes car park, in the shadow of the Forth Bridge, before heading up to the Dalmeny Park estate and Scotstoun Avenue.

One resident, Jim Aitken, says: "You hear them speeding past at night, you get all the revving and the angry exhausts. They do a circuit - they come up Burdock Road, go round the estate and then along Scotstoun Avenue and down again.

Scotsoun Avenue has a 20mph speed limit, but it is used as a race track by boy racers | TSPL

"My feeling is I just hope they never have an accident because it's mostly young kids looking for kicks and you feel eventually something is going to happen."

Councillors have approved traffic calming measures to help tackle the problem - two speed tables with pedestrian crossings are due to be installed on Scotstoun Avenue at the end of April or beginning of May.

Mr Aitken says: "That should put them off a bit, but it just feels like there's an accident waiting to happen."

Marion Gemmell, who has lived in the area for 50 years, welcomes the speed tables and the crossings. “That's what they should have done years ago,” she said. “I don’t understand why it’s taken them so long.”

Marion Gemmell says she is worried about the children ho cross the road. | TSPL

And she says the problem is not just boy racers but also speeding by ordinary motorists at all times of day. "Since the pandemic and the lockdown, speed limits have gone out the window," she says. "No-one observes it. It's a wide, straight street so they just come round the corner and put their foot down.

"It's the children that I’m worried about. They're so busy talking and if they walk out they haven't a chance. I just hope a child isn’t going to get killed.”

There are three schools - Queensferry High, St Margaret's Primary and Queensferry Primary - which children from the estate must cross Scotstoun Avenue to get to. Yet at the moment there is no crossing anywhere on Scotstoun Avenue.

Andy Irvine, who lives along the road, says the speed tables should slow the boy racers down.

"It used to be dead quiet up here,” he says. “There was the Hewlett Packard factory at the end of the street and no-one would really come up here, but now they can get through the estate so it's become a race track. You hear them at night, it's often at 9pm or 10pm, and motor bikes too.

"They will spoil it for themselves - one of them will get themselves killed or they'll hurt somebody."

Another resident, Craig Ferguson, is less sure the speed tables will make much difference. "They can slow down for that and then take off again," he says. "Two doesn't sound very much for the length of Scotstoun Avenue."

He says the noise made by the boy racers is a particular nuisance. "They fit things to the engine so that if you take your foot of the accelerator it pops and bangs - it serves no other purpose than to make a noise.

"I've lived here since 1987 and I've never known it like this. This used to be a dead end, but now they come racing along Scotstoun Avenue late at night, doing a circuit. It’s not quite as bad as it was since the police started making their presence felt down at the Hawes car park.

"But the basic problem is the 20mph limit is not enforced. The police are understaffed and they have lots of other things to be doing."

The decision to install traffic calming follows a petition by residents to the council’s transport committee, although council staff had been working on measures for some time.