Edinburgh's Spaces for People scheme may be rebranded as Travelling Safely but it's still... problematic – John McLellan

Lots of readers will remember that until 1990 a Snickers bar was a Marathon, but how many will have heard of Cadabra, Backrub, or Confinity?
Some Spaces for People projects will become permanent under the 'Travelling Safely' scheme (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)Some Spaces for People projects will become permanent under the 'Travelling Safely' scheme (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)
Some Spaces for People projects will become permanent under the 'Travelling Safely' scheme (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)

Some might guess they were another chocolate bar, some sort of sciatica treatment and a cheap perfume.

But no, they are none other than the long-forgotten launch names for Amazon, Google and Paypal which slipped into corporate history when Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Elon Musk decided they needed a rebrand.

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It’s unlikely those who masterminded the city council’s Spaces for People programme can look forward to second careers as philanthropic squillionaires with their own spaceships, but there are plenty of Edinburgh people who think they were wired to the Moon when they devised the city-wide roads upheaval by throwing the temporary SfP programme together with plans for low-traffic neighbourhoods, city centre transformation and more controlled parking zones.

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'Travelling Safely' re-brand for Edinburgh's controversial 'Spaces for People' s...

But like those fledgling enterprises, the council’s masterminds have decided that what Spaces for People needs most is not so much a re-think but a re-brand and so “Travelling Safely” has been born, which has one advantage because no-one sets out to travel unsafely, apart from the late Evel Knievel. Even the likes of Jeff Bezos hurtling into the stratosphere at over 2,000mph strapped to a tube of liquid hydrogen and oxygen expect to come back in one piece.

Not that the rationale has been spelt out in a paper to today’s transport and environment committee but, being generous, a practical explanation for changing the name is because it signals the switch from temporary emergency Covid traffic measures to permanent changes.

It’s therefore to be expected that Travelling Safely will be much better planned because it should come with proper consultation and due legal process, unlike the headlong rush to install wands and rubber lane dividers in which legitimate local concerns were seemingly regarded by the SNP-Labour administration as impediments to grasping a golden opportunity for a transport revolution.

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But leopards, spots and all that, the detailed list of projects which accompanies the report to the committee shows how many of these schemes the council intends to retain under experimental traffic orders. Now residents know what’s to be permanent, attitudes could harden.

It’s effectively an 18-month programme to get people used to more restrictions as the “Travelling Safely” brand embeds itself. Some might call it attrition, but meanwhile the city remains disfigured by unkempt and unwanted (by a clear majority of those who responded to the subsequent consultations) barriers, bollards and planters.

As we now know from the council’s internal audit, there isn’t an acceptable understanding of the costs involved in the future management of these projects, either to remove, adapt or retain, yet councillors are expected to give a red-rated scheme the green light.

Travelling Safely, Travelling Light or Travelling Wilburys, the renaming doesn’t change either the substance, intent or execution of the programme and there is a familiar, somewhat crude but appropriate saying for what’s going on.

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To paraphrase politely, you can’t polish what dogs leave in the street, but you can roll it in glitter. And today will see heaps of the spangly stuff as the council administration attempts to re-set the debate. Travelling Safely might look all sparkly, but there will still be the unmistakeable whiff of Spaces for People.

John McLellan is a Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston

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