Are Edinburgh's residential streets really suitable for double-decker buses? – Helen Martin

The next road plan of the City of Edinburgh Council sounds intriguing. It’s LTNs, short for low-traffic neighbourhoods.

Should Edinburgh's buses stick to main roads and avoid residential streets? (Picture: Scott Louden)

Trials are now planned for Leith, Corstorphine and East Craigs. (My thanks to Steve Cardownie for including this in his column.)

The point is that traffic should use main, strategic roads rather than local resident streets.

We live in a fairly narrow, totally residential street in a conservation area with no shops, businesses, etc. Within a five-minute walk we have four main and strategic roads around us that do have shops and businesses.

We do have some traffic coming through, but not nearly as much of a problem as the buses. They come every 20 minutes, in both directions.

There is only one bus stop on each side of our short road, but it’s also rather unfortunate that it’s our street where they meet each other.

There are road humps between slightly extended pavements, so one bus has to pull in to the left and halt to let its opposite pass.

The same happens if they meet delivery vans. And our street needs, and has, parking spaces too.

They used to be one-deck buses. For some reason now they are double-deckers. And the road is so narrow that if there are passengers on the upper deck, they usually look over our hedges and inside our windows.

Cars passing at 20mph are actually not disturbing at all. And the main roads around us have oodles of buses just a few minutes away. Something else for CEC to consider?

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