Please see our manifesto for the 2022 council elections. We hope that all parties and all candidates will adopt these policies, to make Edinburgh the wonderfully walkable city it should be. Please help get walking and wheeling given the priority it needs by asking your councillor and candidates for their support!
Living Streets Edinburgh is the local group of the national charity that campaigns for everyday walking and wheeling. Edinburgh is essentially a wonderful city for walking, thanks to its size, history and geography. However, the pedestrian environment is often substandard and overlooked by policy makers. We want everyday walking to be accessible, attractive, convenient and quick.
All parties in the current council agreed in August 2020 that walking is “top of the sustainable movement hierarchy”. But in practice walking is often given inadequate priority and funding, despite it being the greenest and most universal way that people travel. We ask all candidates and political parties standing for election in May 2022 to support the following actions for the next council term:
Reduce motor traffic
- Reduce road space for motor vehicles, including supporting low traffic zones and reducing on-street parking spaces;
- provide better alternatives for people to travel by walking, cycling and public transport;
- adopt a tougher approach to enforcement of antisocial parking – including at bus stops, schools and in bus and cycle lanes;
- early and ‘zero tolerance’ enforcement of the pavement parking ban when it is introduced.
Improve pavements
- Introduce proper wider pavements in all ‘town centre’ locations, replacing the temporary ‘spaces for people’ measures;
- make pavements smooth and trip-free with a 20% increase in footway maintenance budgets;
- set a new budget to remove pavement clutter, and stop adding to it (for example through EV chargers);
- introduce at least 100 dropped kerbs (or continuous pavements) a year where they are missing.
Improve pedestrian crossings
- Review every signalled pedestrian crossing to reduce the time people have to wait to cross;
- increase the ‘green man time’ for pedestrians to a minimum of 10 seconds;
- increase the pedestrian crossing budget by 20% and support the widespread introduction of low cost crossings such as ‘informal zebras’.
Make roads safer
- Renew the council’s road safety plan with a vision zero approach – there should be no deaths or serious injuries from traffic collisions by 2030;
- increase enforcement of road traffic offences such as speeding and red light jumping, with a big increase in the use of speed cameras;
- introduce a safe travel plan for every school in the city which either removes traffic from the school gates or (where not possible) makes the pavement wider.
Use planning controls effectively
- Encourage car-free housing on brownfield sites;
- reject car-dependent applications including commercial ventures such as ‘drive through’s;
- ensure developers pay a fair contribution to improving pedestrian spaces through voluntary or ‘Section 75’ payments.
https://www.livingstreetsedinburgh.org.uk
November 2021