Cutting potholes budget to fund North Bridge repairs - your views online

Council officials want to cut the city’s potholes budget to help pay for yet another increase in the cost of the structural repairs to North Bridge.

The long-running North Bridge refurbishment project is now forecast to cost another £24 million on top of the £62m budget already approved for the work.

Danny Boyle: They should bring in a congestion charge. The profits could be used to improve the roads and cycle paths.

Vic Stewart: This is why they have lots of roadworks at the same time – to justify the congestion charge. Maybe cyclists should be taxed to assist.

​The bill for the structural repairs to North Bridge has increased

Janet Adams: Who is going to pay to drive on roads that have more craters than the Moon, and still a very big chance of a hefty garage bil? Also there’s no guarantees where the council would spend any monies that they received.

Geoffrey Sampson: Last summer I drove 1,300 miles down south from Fife, as far as Ilfracombe, around Bristol, across to London, Cambridge and back to Fife. I cannot ever remember complaining about any of the roads in England and I am usually quick to pick up on the condition of roads. But I can honestly say the roads in Scotland and in particular eroded traffic calming speed bumps are a disgrace. My wife was walking across a road in the dark and tripped in a pothole, luckily no lasting damage. The infrastructure in Scotland is sadly broken and I cannot see how we are going to recover from the state the country is in without investing a lot of money.

Kacey Milne: Surely it is also negligence not to carry out a refurbishment of a bridge in over 100 years. How do these councillors keep their jobs? I wouldn’t trust them to look after a plant, never mind a city. I also find it hard to believe there is a pothole budget given that they never seem to repair any.

Mihai Miron: I’m from Romania and the roads are much better there. I’m a driving instructor and have had pupils from every corner of the world and the one thing in common is they say is that their roads are better – including Moldova, the poorest country in Europe.

Kyle Arnold: Funny. Councillor Scott Arthur said just days ago that the active travel budget for the next ten years was close to a £1 billion. We could cut some of that back.

Scott Brown: The active travel budget includes road repairs and resurfacing works. The folk not happy about new cycle lanes on the roads forget those very roads then get resurfaced.

Dougie Turner: Dundee Street and Fountainbridge have cycle lanes. By your reasoming they should have been resurfaced. So why are they like the surface of the Moon?

Jackie Hamilton: So North Bridge is nother example of a major project overspend. Seems the norm for Edinburgh Council and the Scottish Government.

Charlie Robertson: Is this increase in the cost so they can take the trams over it?

Iain Fisher: Whenever I see the words “confident” and “not likely to exceed” I know they are just making stuff up. Maybe they should stop repeated heavy buses from using the bridge and keep it for lighter cars in the future to save on maintenance.

William Kay: So there have been buses for over 100 years yet it’s only now they are damaging the roads. How does that work? There used to be tons more buses in the ’50s and ’60s than there are now but I guess few are old enough to remember this.

Famous faces

We asked readers to tell us who was the most famous person they had met in Edinburgh.

Sheile Lawrie: Sean Connery when I worked in Boots in Corstorphine. I couldn’t believe it – he was so handsome I also got his autograph. That was 1965.

Lorraine Blyth: The most endearing person I’ve bumped in to has to be Andy Robin and his bear Hercules when I was about eight years old.

Catriona Bell: Nelson Mandela coming out of the Balmoral Hotel and driving past us.

Richard Hotel: Sir Ian McKellen in a very nice restaurant in Stockbridge before he played Hamlet for the Edinburgh Festival in 2022.

Allison Hilson: Sir C liff Richard while I was on work experience with high school in a hotel (their personnel department). I was sent to the restaurant for milk so I could “accidentally” bump into him.