Monthly Archives: September 2017

LSE Group – Annual Public Meeting 2017

News, Public Event

Thursday 28 September at 7pm
Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Street EH1 2JL

You are invited to attend the 2017 Public Meeting of Living Streets Edinburgh, the local voluntary arm of the national charity campaigning for ‘everyday walking’. We’ve had a busy year, raising the profile of walking in the city, and engaging with Councillors and officers of the City of Edinburgh Council on a wide range of public realm issues.

Come along to catch up on our news, to hear from the new Convenor of the Council’s Transport and Environment Committee, and to feed in your ideas to workshop sessions on walking route campaign priorities for the city centre and localities across Edinburgh during 2017-18.

AGENDA:

18.40 Registration; tea, coffee and biscuits

19.00 Welcome and update from David Spaven, Convenor of Living Streets Edinburgh Group

19.10 Keynote address by Cllr Lesley Macinnes, Convenor, Transport and Environment Committee, CEC

19.30 Question time

19.45 The national perspective from Stuart Hay, Director of Living Streets Scotland

19.55 Workshop sessions:

  • Topic 1: Identifying strategic walking routes in the city centre and key pinch points / barriers
  • Topic 2: Identifying strategic walking routes in localities across the city and key pinch points / barriers

20.20 Swop workshop sessions

20.45 Sum-up

21.00 Meeting closes.

Edinburgh’s Street Design Guidance – key standards for clear pavements

Council Policy, News

In 2015, the City of Edinburgh Council adopted new Street Design Guidance. This sets out the standards and requirements for how the city’s streets are to be designed, maintained and managed. Fundamental to the Guidance is ‘walkability’ – wider pavements, less street clutter, less dominant traffic. “Everyone who manages, maintains, alters or reconstructs streets, including urban paths, will be expected to comply with the Guidance” (p8).

The Living Streets Edinburgh Group has prepared this briefing paper to help anyone wanting to campaign for a more walkable Edinburgh, by setting out some key requirements contained in the Guidance. For full details, see http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/info/20089/roads_and_pavements/906/edinburgh_street_design

 

Pavement widths

The Council classifies all Edinburgh streets: for example as “Retail/High Street”, “High Density Residential”, “Low Density Residential“ etc. It further classifies streets as ‘Strategic’, ‘Secondary’ or ‘Local’.

A minimum, and desirable, width applies for each different type of street. However, no pavement on any street should be less than 2 metres wide. Some key standards are:

Retail/High streets:
“absolute minimum 2.5m (only allowed in short sections), general min 3m, desirable min 4m or wider”

High density residential (Strategic and secondary):
“absolute min. 2m (only allowed in short sections), general minimum 2.5m, desirable min 3m or wider”

All streets:
“absolute minimum of 2m (only allowed in short sections), general min of at least 2.5 m or wider.”

 

“Clear Walking Zone”

 This is the space on a pavement that must be kept clear of *any* obstructions (lamp posts, A-boards, bins, bus shelters, signage poles, etc):

All streets: 1.5 metres minimum Clear Walking Zone

 

This document is available as a downloadable PDF here – Living-Streets-Edinburgh-Street-Design-Clear-Pavements