Bus lane 7-7-7 trial is proving damaging to local businesses - Iain Whyte
As I wrote last month, the council’s 7-7-7 bus lane trial has been rolled out in east Edinburgh with a huge impact on small businesses at Meadowbank and Abbeyhill.
A month on and those effects can be demonstrated with concrete evidence. Yesterday Nikki Boyd of Nikki’s Fleurs on Wolseley Place presented her 2000 signature petition to the Transport Committee asking to pause the trial and consult the affected businesses and residents properly.
Backing up the petition she reported an 85 per cent reduction in walk-in business at her shop on Saturdays. That’s not a minor issue; it’s an existential threat to a small business.
Yet the omens were not good. In advance of the meeting the transport convener had lodged an amendment suggesting the committee “Thanks the petitioners for raising their concerns and agrees that no further action is required”.
In the end the committee rejected my Conservative colleague’s call for a swift report on the issue raised and instead asked officers to look into some loading bays in a side street.
As was explained to them, this is not much use when carrying heavy stock for quite some distance. It certainly won’t increase passing Saturday trade.
This trial has always been an ideo-logical obsession for some councillors backed by lobby and sock puppet groups. With no proper consultation the wider public’s views are ignored.
Councillors seeking to support the trial raised bus delays and said Lothian Buses report congestion as the greatest inhibitor to timely journeys and encouraging bus use.
As a bus user I know this. But the facts suggest that congestion is all at junctions and not on stretches of bus lane outside local shops. A recent document given to councillors listed the top 70 bus delays and only one is on the route of the trial. It only makes number 45 in the hit parade.
The wider Scottish bus industry also complains that delays are caused by cycle lanes and 20mph on main routes – things the council created. It is also clear elsewhere on London Road that this scheme is creating further congestion.
The bottom line is that people’s livelihoods are at stake. The council was receptive to that when trams were unable to reach trendy Leith businesses after the Princes Street fire.
When the issue is of the council’s own making and is affecting more traditional small businesses, it seems that mercy is limited.