For too long now Lesley McInness and Adam McVey have been running rough shod over the residents of the city without listening or communicating with them. 

The latest nonsensical acts being the reduction in road space on main arterial routes throughout the city under the guise of COVID 19 emergency safety measures! 

Their single objective is to banish vehicles from the city and by their actions they are bringing the city to a standstill. The pollution being caused by the congestion must be increasing. The congestion that is 100% caused by their actions. This latest debacle with the £5 million emergency COVID fund was right up their street. They have forced through road closures, lane closures, cycle and foot path widening with no analysis of the users of each respective area.  While it is all very well wanting to “encourage” people to use greener methods of transport closing off main arterial routes into and out of the city isn’t encouraging people, it’s their way of trying to force peoples’ hands. Clearly they don’t understand the definition of “encourage”.  

The alternatives available at this point in time are just not feasible or viable for the majority of current road users. This would have been easily apparent had they carried out appropriate analysis.

We are encouraged to use local businesses especially post lockdown however, trying to get to these in certain areas is more of an ordeal than 3 months of lockdown was. Morningside Road is now just a conga line of traffic, Comiston Rd, Pentland Terrace and Buckstone Terrace are no better and have been compounded by the ridiculous “spaces for people” amendments to the road layout, not to mention a disabled and city car club space so far out into the traffic it is a disaster waiting to happen. Ferry Rd has been reduced to 1 lane in each direction with wide cycle and footpaths created. In the last 8 wks of travelling down that road, during and outwith rush hour, I’ve seen 6 cyclists using them! Even outwith rush hour these routes are now totally congested. Quite how emergency vehicles are meant to get through, especially in Morningside is beyond me! 

Blythly going ahead with these changes without appropriate assessments and analysis of the types of vehicle using them, or indeed seeking to determine if there is an alternative the current users can utilise is, obviously going to cause major problems. Reducing the available usable road space just compounds the issue! 

The emergency COVID 19 funding would have been better spent getting schools deep cleaned every night or every couple of nights. After all, the Virus is more prevalent indoors than outdoors. They could have used the bollards to create one way systems into and out of school playgrounds so that parents are not meeting/passing each other face to face when dropping their kids off!