The future of several Edinburgh cycle lanes is at risk, with campaigners calling it a big week for safe cycling infrastructure in the Scottish capital, that after months of delay and deferral on a decision to make temporary bike lanes permanent which means next month’s deadline for a decision is now uncomfortably soon.
It is an ongoing saga, a committee having twice postponed a decision on making temporary cycle lanes in the east of Edinburgh permanent. The infrastructure in question was introduced during the pandemic, but with the Experimental Traffic Order (ETRO) set to expire on 28 October it is expected a meeting this Thursday (4 September) will be the final chance to secure approval to make the bike lanes permanent.
There have been warnings that if there is no approval, or enough time to process a permanent order, the current protective wands would have to be removed entirely.
It is a frustrating situation for cycling campaigners who feel, despite support overall from the council and its transport committee, the meetings of the TRO Sub-Committee (formed fairly recently and who take the final decision on traffic orders) have “kicked the can down the road” for months. Previous meetings in May and August saw no decision made, councillors having raised concerns about the cost of making cycle lanes permanent and the segregating bollards being a trip hazard.
Edinburgh cycle lane (credit: Google Maps)
Campaigners point out that a rolling programme of £2.5m over the next five years to upgrade materials has already been approved by the council’s Transport Committee, something they say should be more than enough for the committee to “overturn objections about the current materials in use, and preserve the essential segregated and safe routes in place and used by thousands across the city every day – in line with the council’s own City Mobility Plan”.
Currently, the lanes use wands/bollards that will be familiar to cyclists across the UK, the segregating wand attached to a base. While the safety of this design has been questioned in previous meetings, leading to the concerns about cost of upgrading the infrastructure to a design which is not viewed as a trip hazard, Edinburgh cycling campaigners Edi.Bike point out the council’s own stats show no injury claims as a result of rubber kerbs since 2023, with the majority occurring when the schemes were brand new.
There have been 28 claims for personal injury and three claims for vehicle damage relating to them since 2020. Eight of these claims relate to incidents that occurred in 2020, 17 to incidents in 2021, five to incidents in 2022 and one to an incident in 2023. No claims have been received for any incidents occurring since 2023. Eighty percent of claims therefore relate to the 2021-22 period when most of the units were being installed and there has only been one claim received for an incident occurring within the last three years.
As Edi.Bike also pointed out when penning an open letter to the committee, alongside fellow cycling campaign group Spokes and other Edinburgh cycling groups, the £2.5m rolling programme to upgrade materials used in such schemes “should be more than enough for the Sub-Committee to overturn objections about the current materials”.
Speaking to us this morning, Edi.Bike called it “astounding” that the committee is not taking into account the thousands of people who use and enjoy the cycling infrastructure, instead getting bogged down with statutory objections, of which “many are from angry motorists who perceive yielding a metre and a half of carriageway space an attack on their personal freedoms”.
“It’s astounding to me that there are thousands of people in Edinburgh using these successful and well established protected cycleways every day, with no idea that they’re not a permanent feature of the streetscape — only cycle activists and naysayers pay any attention to the legal orders underpinning them,” a spokesperson told us.
“The TRO Sub-Committee doesn’t consider notes of support from the families, visitors, children, care workers, delivery riders and many others who use these lanes to get their journeys completed safely. They only attend to statutory objections, of which some are from people with real concerns, but many are from angry motorists who perceive yielding a metre and a half of carriageway space an attack on their personal freedoms.
“In reality, every bike passing in the lanes could have been another car in front of you making congestion even worse, and is it not brilliant that folk have a choice not to do that and move differently? Of course the committee involved needs to consider each objection on its merits, and any safety issue in our streets should be taken seriously. But the council’s own data shows that while there were a small number of incidents attributed to the rubber cycle lane defenders when first introduced in 2021-2022, there was only a single claim in 2023 and nothing since; and what’s being asked of the Sub-Committee is to approve making waiting and loading restrictions permanent, not to reach outside of its statutory remit into the materials used.
“The council has already approved a significant budget for the replacement of these lane defenders with stone kerbs across the city — the Sub-Committee could easily accept that, or the outcomes of its own road safety audits, to overturn the generalised objections to the lane defenders.
“The rubber cycle lane defenders in question aren’t a temporary material, so there will be some places across the city that retain them for longer — for example in areas of lower footfall, or outside of our World Heritage Site where changes are sought on a more aesthetic basis. But they’re also approved in Scotland for use in the carriageway on a permanent basis, and both safety audits and the council’s own data about claims for vehicle damage or injury show they’re not a danger to the public.
“The only issues with them remain that folk don’t like the look of them, or feel that rising congestion due to the growth of the city is somehow attributable to protected cycleways — which monitoring data clearly shows is not the case.”
The ETRO expires on 28 October, making this week’s meeting perhaps the last chance to approve a permanent solution before the deadline passes and the current infrastructure risks removal. Fellow campaign group Spokes has argued the temporary cycle lanes have had no measurable negative impact on congestion, traffic flow, and have not caused a rise in injuries to pedestrians, cyclists or drivers.
The open letter also highlights that several of the cycle lanes in question pass schools, the infrastructure having made children’s journeys to school safer and more accessible.
Much will be decided at the latest committee meeting on Thursday, Edi.Bike summing up the mood — “it’s a big day for us up here”.