00:00 [Music]
00:05 I'm Alistair Dalton, Transport Correspondent of the Scotsman.
00:09 I'm on the new City Centre West East link, a long-awaited scheme for safe cycling across
00:17 Edinburgh City Centre from Roseburn in the west to York Place beside the top of Leith
00:24 Walk in the east.
00:26 It's an impressive addition to safe cycling in Edinburgh. You feel that you are segregated
00:32 and off the main drag of traffic, particularly between Roseburn and Haymarket where there's
00:41 a busy section of main road.
00:43 This scheme has taken ten years from first being approved by the City Council. It's going
00:49 to cost £19 million and it's actually not quite finished because there's a section between
00:54 Charlotte Square and St Andrew's Square along George Street which is still to be completed.
01:00 The scheme's taken so long because there was a lot of opposition, particularly to do with
01:05 some road closures and junction changes. There was a whole lot of bureaucracy that had to
01:10 get over and there was also staff cuts at City Council.
01:15 And the cycling campaign spokes who lobby for cycling in the Lothians talk about this
01:21 being an astonishing length and complexity of this scheme's history. But at the same
01:27 time they do acknowledge it's a very significant development, a massive step forward they say,
01:33 a substantial main road reallocation of space from cars to bikes.
01:37 So the idea of the scheme is in the west it will link with the Roseburn cycle path which
01:42 takes riders up towards the north and then through George Street there will be a separate
01:49 route south up the mound and towards the meadows and then in the east down Leith Walk where
01:56 a cycle path has been developed already.
01:59 The City Council are putting a lot of emphasis on the importance of this scheme, saying it's
02:05 the biggest piece of cycling and walking infrastructure that the city has seen yet and it should be
02:12 the first of many more miles of safe cycling across Edinburgh.
02:17 These cycle lanes will be needed because Edinburgh City Council has a very ambitious target of
02:24 reducing road traffic by 30% by 2030. That's even higher than the national target of 20%.
02:31 So they need to encourage a lot of people to stop driving and walk and cycle instead.
02:39 (upbeat music)
02:41 you
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