Business call to visit Edinburgh after Covid - Your views online

Businesses urge return to city centre two years on from start of lockdown

There were people about in Cockburn Street, but not in the numbers typical before the pandemic

Jackie Duffy

Have they tried coming into the city centre from the south side? Every road has some form of road works and I imagine other parts of the town are the same!

Linda Hawkes

The SNP have made a mess of the city centre and it's not going to get any better.

Helio Bastet

You can’t shut businesses down and lock people down repeatedly without medium and long-term consequences. It isn’t like pressing pause then play on a DVD.

Kevin Somerville

And nobody talks about the fact that people won't come from other parts of the UK because of the mask mandate remaining.

Brian Hamilton

Outdoor sales areas should be allowed to stay till the end off the year to give business a chance to recover from the last two years. But at the end of the year they should be removed.

Alan Brown

Are you joking? The roads are a shambles and there's 39 closed units on Princes Street. Who in their right mind would be struggling into town? The council's anti-car measures have killed it. Even the buses are becoming unworkable. Don't hold your breath waiting for the hordes of promised cyclists coming in to rescue the city centre economy, either! "it seemed more like a quiet Sunday morning" - this is exactly what the council wanted - loads more spaces for people, and no-one actually visiting to spend money!

Oliver Crane

Which means a resurgence of tat.

Sarah Clark

Some of that is due to the council making it impossible to access these street and business.

Jimmy Dobson

More woe on the way as well, as Nicola's coalition government lets the minority members make the rules about travel in our city centres.

David Black

Return to the city centre? Aye right. I was in the city centre yesterday for the first time in months, what a bloody dump it is. Outwith the road/pavement works the amount of broken paving slabs, clearly blocked pavement drainage ( in fact one stretch has been cemented over), signage either broken or missing and of course the litter. It'll be another few months till I return which means I'll not be spending.

Heatheř Andersoň

I don't know which streets they have been looking at but whenever I've been in town it HAS been busy!

Dave Flynn

People are currently enduring the worst cost of living crisis in modern British history. I'm afraid soaring energy bills take precedence over a spot of retail therapy in the Airbnb infested centre of Edinburgh.

Bus lane fines

Edinburgh City Council was among the highest earning cities in the UK when it came issuing bus lane fines in 2020/21 with £1million.

William Hatton

They can use some of it to repair the potholes then. They use motorists as cash cows.

Craigie Watson

Just imagine... they'd have made nothing if drivers had followed the rules. That would have shown them!

Katarzyna Głąbicka

They achieved almost perfection in taking money from drivers for the most idiotic reasons or restrictions that literally discriminate against one group of people just because they are drivers.

Willie Walker KT

Just think, if you enforced parking in bus lanes it could have been £3 million. Try Dalry Road and at Chesser.

Laird Ronald Simpson

Disgraceful, just to earn money. Robin Hood was a saint compared to this lot.

Chris Poon

But they still won't investigate harassment reports, fix roads or collect bins on time.

Mark Smith

One of the most terrible at road maintenance after being broken up from the old Lothian Highways. Shocking disrepair and underfunded maintenance.

Ally Preston

It's not like the bus lanes aren't clearly marked.

Dean Thomson

Great…then they’ll have plenty of money to pay for my repair bills at the garage from the massive craters on their roads. Maybury Road is horrendous.

Stewart Adam

And then the buses don't use them!

Mark Fairbairn

Strategically placed potholes to get you in the bus lane!

Lowry Kenneth

And they still can't fix the roads.

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