'The entire bypass is an absolute joke during rush hour' - Readers' views

Readers were keen to have their say on Edinburgh Southern Conservative candidate Miles Briggs’ call for plans to upgrade the notorious Sheriffhall roundabout to be a priority. The £120 million scheme, which includes a flyover, was halted in February last year for a review agreed as part of the SNP's Holyrood budget deal with the Greens.
The Sheriffhall Roundabout is a notorious pinch point on the Edinburgh City BypassThe Sheriffhall Roundabout is a notorious pinch point on the Edinburgh City Bypass
The Sheriffhall Roundabout is a notorious pinch point on the Edinburgh City Bypass

Chris Mackie: This doesn’t just affect people of Edinburgh City and East/Midlothian council areas. It’s the main route south and one of the main routes north for anyone travelling in the east of Scotland. A flyover should have been built a decade ago and realistically the road needs upgraded to motorway standards from Hermiston right through to Musselburgh. At the western end it also probably should be linked up to the M8, removing the need for thousands of cars a day to navigate the roundabout at Hermiston and the many bumps and near misses there are as people realise they are in the wrong lanes for Calders/Bypass. I’m just waiting on the central reservation being replaced with floating parking spaces.

Graham Meighan: I agree they need to upgrade Sheriffhall but the simple fact of the matter is that the roads are too busy nowadays and more people could do with using public transport, although I agree it isn’t for everyone and if you’ve invested a lot of money in a car you’ll want to use it

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Alex Aitchison: It is great when everyone is locked down, but appart from that the entire bypass is an absolute joke during rush hour. It is in need of a serious upgrade – two lanes is not enough for the amount of traffic going through.

Derek Thorburn: Like the road from Corstorphine to the airport and out past Cramond towards the bridges, the the bypass is 30-40 years out of date.

Callum Anderson: As I understand it, it would be prohibitively expensive to upgrade to three lanes on the city bypass due to the support structures on the raised sections, I was told they never planned forward for expansion and some sections (ie the Baberton Junction) are going to be a bottleneck even if you upgraded to three lanes everywhere else. How about bringing back the circular rail line, but expanding it out to the Gyle? You could get a direct train from Musselburgh or Sherriffhall directly to the Gyle.

David Shewan: I've got a good idea, why don't we wait until the Covid restrictions are over and we get back to normality, when all routes to the Sheriffhall are fully loaded, then close half of the bypass to make the necessary upgrade!

Arran Hunteer: We need a bypass for the bypass.

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Kathy Alberti: The Scottish Government and the Scottish Office have always missed the point about Sheriffhall. It isn't “the Edinburgh City Bypass problem”, it is a problem for the whole North East of Scotland. This is the main route from England to Scotland for the whole of Eastern Scotland. The only one, as the A68 filters in o it too. The hold-ups on the bypass don't only effect Edinburgh commuters with all the added pollution, inconvenience and economic impact that causes. It effects the whole North East economy with thousands of lorries travelling north or south having no other route and stuck in interminable queues, which result in interminable queues for those of us who live east and west of the bypass. So this is a national issues and, like the dualing of the A9, should have been treated as such. The government should examine the economic impact on Scotland on all of these queues and hold-ups which I'm sure will show that spending a couple of billion on the bypass to install a flyover at Sheriffhall and a third lane for at least the Gilmerton to Baberton section plus a brand new relief road for Straiton to stop congestion that lasts from 6am to 7pm every single day, would be small change. It isn't just the Edinburgh City Bypass, it is the commercial priority route for East Scotland.

John Christie: The Green Party don’t want an upgrade and the SNP need the Greens’ votes to get their policies through. So don’t get excited about an upgrade, because it’s never going to happen.

William Kay: Maybe we could have a new railway line or two or a metro parallel with the bypass with a station at every radial road. There would be enough people in cars to fill a train every three minutes along there during normal conditions. Never mind. It's Edinburgh. Perish the thought. They'd be put into the file marked vanity project. So instead they just widen the roads and encourage even more traffic because that's what happens when you “improve” roads.

Keith Stewardson: Take away the roundabout. It could be managed with slip roads.​

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