Traffic & Parking Consultation 25^th May

In Porty Town Hall, Edinburgh Council is hold­ing a Traffic & Parking Consultation on Wednesday 25^th May 7 – 9pm.

If you live on Marlborough St, Bellfield S, Regent St, Straiton Place or Bath St — you are invited to have your say about how the Council should deal with the park­ing con­ges­tion on these streets.

On a per­son­al note: We have a car and live on Marlborough Street. Here are some sug­ges­tions to help solve the traffic and park­ing problems:

PARKING ON ONE SIDE OF THE STREET ONLY:

This street (like Bath Street) have park­ing on only one side (instead of be­ing impass­able for ped­es­tri­ans by cars park­ing on the pave­ments). This would dis­cour­age us (and maybe oth­ers?) from own­ing cars since cars in a city like Edinburgh are (for most of us) all about con­veni­ence, and not being able to park here would be migh­tily inconvenient!

ON-STREET COVERED CYCLE RACKS:

Instead, some of the remain­ing park­ing spaces should be con­ver­ted into covered cycle racks so that using bicycles can be made more con­veni­ent (or simply made pos­sible!) for those of us in tene­ments (and those in houses). These need not be indi­vidu­al cubicles as used on many sta­tions (which take up too much room per bike) but a covered rack where bikes can be locked up and have the worst of the rain kept off them.

MAKING STREET USE FAIRER:

Those who con­tinue to park on the street could con­trib­ute to com­munity trans­port ini­ti­at­ives through com­munity per­mits that can help pay for such cycle park­ing shel­ters and help make the city car club cheap­er for those who decide to relin­quish their cars, or for those who don’t have a car but need to use one. This could be a pop­u­lar and innov­at­ive approach and would be far more pop­u­lar, help­ful and tar­geted on help­ing solve our trans­port issues, than people pay­ing for Council park­ing permits.

Alongside the excel­lent bus ser­vice, per­haps this will help us to kick the car habit and make our streets safer and bet­ter places to be.

Any oth­er thoughts out there? It could be use­ful to have a range of sug­ges­tions, rather than just com­plaints, to bring to the meeting!