City Mobility Plan must have targets

City Mobility Plan must have targets

Edinburgh is a growing city which, in normal times, has a congestion problem.

If the city continues to grow, we need to think how people, goods and services can move efficiently; the growing number of people commuting into Edinburgh and how we deal with the climate emergency and air pollution.

Key to solving all issues is “modal shift” – getting a greater proportion of people using more sustainable modes of transport. Paramount to this is investing in public transport and to ensure new developments are better connected to shops etc.

The council’s City Mobility Plan sets out how this could be done (February 12). This plan sets out what’s needed to deliver a more sustainable, integrated, efficient, safe and inclusive transport system over the next decade. It is, however, largely unfunded – the report describes the funding situation as “challenging”. Let me be clear, the council will need funding from the Scottish government to deliver this vision.

A second concern is the detail of what the council hopes to achieve. Normally, SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) are the starting point for any plan. Councillors are being asked, however, to agree the Plan without any targets for modal shift in place. We are being told “mode share targets will be set out in a Technical Note to support the monitoring of this Plan”.

The plan is not perfect and will evolve in response to funding and other pressures, but it is a good starting point those of us who want people, goods and services to be able to move around our capital efficiently and sustainably.

People will oppose this plan, but they need to explain how they’d solve Edinburgh’s future transport problems.

Cllr Scott Arthur, City Chambers, Edinburgh.

Future fears for independent nation

I fear greatly for my children and grandchildren if they have at some point to live in a separated Scotland.

It is not that I think a broken-off Scotland would not survive, it probably could, but it is the poverty-inducing price that will have to be paid and that pay back austerity period could be painful in the extreme and take decades. Brexit would be a stroll in comparison.

And what about pensions and benefits and financing Scotland’s public sector when they have shut out and raised borders with the UK?

Could it turn out like Greece where teachers and public service workers and pensions and benefits were simply not paid when the cash ran out and no-one would lend to them?

This is the opposite of scare mongering and is an appeal to common sense and consideration for others. These fears are very real and I believe justifiable. Not all of us are blind zealots and are capable of thinking things through. Those who are not worried should be.

Alexander McKay, New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh.

Whistleblower’s tale of concern

I read your article with interest and incredulity (“A sheriff is considering whether a report into fraud allegations made by a council whistleblower nearly two decades ago should be handed over to him by local authority chiefs”, News February 12)

I cannot comprehend how the learned former council lawyer, Mr Maclean, did not have ‘back up’ for his work that mysteriously got wiped from council computers. How he he had no notes on a meeting he held with John Travers and then had no recall of his discussions. A fishy tale indeed, with a smell more pungent than a delayed truck of prawns from the Hebrides going to Spain!

Keith Smith, Priestfield Gardens, Edinburgh.

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