Dr George McL Hazel

Director of City Development, The City of Edinburgh Council, UK

The City of Edinburgh Council has built up a reputation in the field of sustainable urban transport and is now considered to be the local authority at the cutting edge of policy and technical development. This is based on a holistic approach to managing transport in the city with initiatives under way aimed at reducing traffic levels while providing high levels of accessibility. In the future, more radical measures will be needed applying the "stick" as well as the "carrot". The political sensitivity of such measures implies a close engagement with business and the general public to achieve consensus.

A combination of factors is bringing about an agenda for radical change away from dependence on the car. Environmental issues are predominant in driving this change, but concerns about congestion, the economic health of cities, road safety, personal health and social exclusion are also very significant. In the UK, a period of several years of prevarication and tortured debate eventually resulted in a radical Integrated Transport White Paper from government in July 1998, which reflects the new agenda and introduces new opportunities to bring about the necessary change.

Within the UK, Edinburgh has for some years been perceived as being at the forefront of the development of new approaches to urban transport policy. The underlying principle of the Council’s approach is to recognise that for Edinburgh, a first class economy and a first class environment must go hand in hand. The key is to provide a better environment, and better accessibility for all residents, businesses and visitors to the activities they want or need to undertake - neither of these can be achieved by a laissez-faire attitude to car traffic. The balance in the way city space is used must be restored.

The City of Edinburgh Council’s moving FORWARD transport strategy has been seminal in this respect. This strategy, forming the basis of the Council’s transport investment programme was produced in 1994, with targets for 2000 and 2010, and a 5 year Action Plan. Most of the projects included in the Action Plan are now in place, or planned to start in the course of this year (see Appendix).

Although many of the measures implemented through the moving FORWARD Action Plan have only been in place for one or two years, travel trends now appear to be moving in the right direction, and will go most of the way to meeting the targets for 2000. One area of particular concern is in relation to child casualties, and action in this area will need to be reinforced.

The ambitious targets for 2010 will need much more radical measures if they are to be achieved. The last few years have seen very rapid development in the city. Problems will worsen over the next 10-15 years if new measures are not taken. We need to examine what type of transport measures will have a real impact on these trends, and we need to examine how new investment can be funded against a background of continuing decline in public funding.

The targets for 2000 included in moving FORWARD were:

There are broadly four types of action that can be adopted to bring about change in travel behaviour and travel patterns:

• Re-allocation and prioritisation of road space
• Integrating planning of transport and the use of land, buildings and public space
• Encouraging more environmentally friendly travel
• Fiscal and regulatory change

Any one of these on their own will not be enough. Edinburgh - and other British cities - have made use of the first three, in various ways. However, without the fourth "stick" measure of fiscal and regulatory instruments, it appears unlikely that targets for urban traffic reduction will be achieved in any city.

Over a number of years, various measures have been taken in Edinburgh to try and improve the allocation of roadspace between different users and between movement and environmental and interaction space. In the historic Royal Mile, pavements have been substantially widened, leaving space for cafe tables and street performers. The impact has been an estimated increase in spending in Edinburgh, mainly by tourists, of £26m per annum.

In Princes Street, car traffic was removed from the eastbound direction in 1996, leaving buses, cycles and for some sections taxis. This change also allowed some widening of pavements to provide additional space for pedestrians. Surveys of pedestrians indicated an 18%-34% increase in spend after even these limited alterations. In the westbound direction, car traffic was limited to one lane for most of its length in 1994, with a two lane wide bus lane in the section containing the city’s busiest bus stops. Studies are being carried out to examine how car traffic can be further reduced.

In the streets of the "first New Town" parallel to Princes Street, traffic management measures have been taken to exclude through car traffic. However there is a large volume of on-street parking in this area, together with substantial delivery and loading activity. As a result, these streets remain busy and at times congested. To provide greater priority for pedestrians crossing the main streets in this area, zebra crossings have been re-introduced into the city. Here and elsewhere in the city, signal-controlled crossings are set to respond instantly to pedestrian demand.

Roadspace for buses - Greenways

In cities such as Edinburgh with limited rail-based infrastructure, the roadspace available available for motorised traffic must be used efficiently - and this means removing buses from the general traffic congestion. This is the rationale for the Council’s "Greenways" scheme, which allocates significant capacity specifically for the use of buses through extensive and well enforced bus priority on major radial routes. The first routes, on the A8 between the Maybury junction and the city centre and between the city centre and Leith came into operation in August 1997, and a second batch of three corridors came into operation in 1998.

Greenways have had a dramatic impact on bus travel, with journeys along Leith Walk being up to 12% quicker, 24% quicker on sections of the A8 giving an 8 minutes saving. Reliability has improved by 10% (Leith Walk) to 24% (A8). The main bus company in the city reported an extra 250,000 passenger trips in the first six months of Greenways. After 40 years of declining bus patronage, bus passenger numbers overall went up for the first time in 1998 by 3/4 million.

"The City of Edinburgh Rapid Transit" (CERT)

For many years, Edinburgh has aspired to a metro system, and extensive planning was carried out in the 1980’s. However, the cost eventually proved prohibitive, and a guided busway system has been promoted as a feasible short term alternative. CERT is a dedicated bus system linking the city centre with a major new development area ("Edinburgh Park") and the airport. There is approximately 6 miles of dedicated track.

However, the system has the advantage that bus services can fan out from this trunk route to serve a wide range of origins and destinations.

The Council won major government funding for CERT, on the basis of the development of a public/private partnership. A private consortium will build and operate the scheme, gaining a sufficient injection of public capital at the front end to make it self-financing thereafter. The total package that is to be funded includes:

• The CERT guided busway
• Edinburgh Park Rail Station
• Park & Ride - Ingliston (at least 1000 car parking spaces)
• Park & Ride - Hermiston (at least 400 spaces) and linked road improvements

The total cost of this package is approximately £60m, with around £22m input of public funding.

City Car Club

A City Car Club is a form of shared car ownership, developed in Germany, providing access to a car where this is needed without the need for individual ownership. Because users pay as they drive, the relative costs of using alternative means of transport reflect their real costs much more closely. This considerably increases the attractiveness of public transport, walking and cycling. As a result, the mileage travelled by car by former car owners who sell their car to join clubs typically reduces by nearly 50%. A car club car typically replaces 5 to 10 individually owned vehicles.

An Edinburgh scheme has been developed based on a high-tech system for managing the use of the vehicles, to be run as a commercial venture by a car hire company. Members of the club will be able to book the use of a car 24 hours a day at short notice. A central reservation centre schedules the vehicles and controls an immobiliser in each vehicle that is released at the booking time. GPS positioning allows cars that are delayed or in the wrong position to be identified. The cars are located at reserved parking spaces and members are provided with an electronic key fob that gives access to the vehicle. The target is to have the Edinburgh scheme operating in Spring 1999.

Car-free residential areas

A car-free housing provides an alternative housing market choice not currently available, in which residents undertake not to own cars. Non car ownership is rewarded by higher environmental quality, lower costs of housing (because of less need for road and parking space) and the elimination of road traffic danger. Cars could be available in a City Car Club for use by residents when required. Outline planning consent was granted in 1995 for a car free housing area of 120 flats of mixed tenure in the Gorgie area of Edinburgh. This area lends itself to this type of development - it is a relatively high density inner suburb with good local shopping and public transport links to the city centre and other employment centres. Construction started in Autumn 1998, and the development will be complete in 2000.

A sustainable suburb

The "South-East Wedge" is a significant expansion of the City to meet future housing and business location needs. The new development, covering 1370 hectares, will have 4,800 new homes and up to 12,000 jobs. Currently largely within the city’s Green Belt, the basis for developing this area is that it will not be simply another car-based low density suburb, but that it will combine the best characteristics of an urban area with large amounts of open space, and contribute to sustainability goals. A key objective is to ensure that car travel is significantly less than might traditionally be expected from such a location.

The development will focus on an effective public transport network linking the area to the existing built-up area and the city centre, with higher than normal development densities along the corridor. A comprehensive cycle network will also serve the area. Neighbourhood centres, and a new town centre for the area will provide retail and employment opportunities in a mixed-use environment.

Achieving the Council’s targets for 2010 will be difficult. It will require the comprehensive application of all the tools at the disposal of transport planners. In particular it will need the application of the fourth category of measure identified above: fiscal and regulatory change. The most radical proposal in the UK government’s recent Transport White Paper is the introduction of enabling powers for local authorities to introduce charges for road use in urban areas and/or apply levies to privately owned workplace parking space. The application of charges on road users could:

a) Relate the cost to the user of individual journeys more closely to the costs imposed (internal and external) - the stick;

b) Provide the funds that will be essential for upgrading the alternative choices to the motor car - the carrot.

Experiences elsewhere in Europe have shown that there are huge hurdles to the successful introduction of this type of measure. These are not the technological hurdles on which so much effort has been focused over recent years, but political ones. In western Europe, charges on motorists to enter an urban area have been successfully introduced only in Norway. There have been high profile failures in Stockholm and in the Netherlands. The lessons of Stockholm in particular have been well documented and provide a useful case study ("Stockholm spent 20 years and $1billion before thinking again": Living with the car, The Economist, December 1997).

Research into the development of road user charging so far has reached a very powerful conclusion: "Urban road pricing can be accepted only if there are very strong advantages to be supported by a majority of citizens. This will only happen if there are important improvements to the quality of life and to the level of service of the town’s transport system." (Marc Ellenberg, Urban Road Pricing in European Cities: The Way Forward, PTRC/AET Sept 1998).

The City of Edinburgh Council has therefore been focusing on developing consensus. Over the last six months, discussions have taken place with a range of business and other interests in the city; and a "Citizen Jury" exercise has been carried out with a randomly selected group of private citizens.

Interviews were held with over sixty people from various backgrounds. Twenty-eight business people were interviewed from the financial, media, retail, property, engineering, small business, legal, tourism, motoring and freight haulage sectors. Eleven Councillors were interviewed and nineteen officials from both central and local government. Lastly three senior academics and representatives from two environmental/amenity groups were also interviewed.

The outcome of these discussions clearly highlighted common issues and concerns. Everyone interviewed regarded transport in the Edinburgh area as a key issue that had to be addressed and they were more than willing to play their part in any ensuing discussions. The major points that emerged were as follows:

• Something must be done to combat congestion and the City of Edinburgh Council should take the lead. The status quo is not an option.
• There needs to be an exciting vision for transport in the future.
• This vision needs to emerge from open, transparent and inclusive consultation and collaboration with all sectors of the city community.
• An urban road-user charging option should be developed, provided certain caveats are met, in order to provide answers to all the questions that need to be asked before such a system was implemented.

The caveats were that:

As part of the statutory assessment of air quality within the City of Edinburgh required under Air Quality Management legislation, the Council is undertaking a range of public consultation. As one strand of this, a Citizen Jury project was developed in conjunction with the Institute of Ecology and Resource Management of the University of Edinburgh during January of this year.

The Jury clearly identified transport as the most significant source of air pollution in Edinburgh, and the need to influence the use of public transport as a fundamental means of reducing the level of pollutants. There were six recommendations:

1. There should be a toll charge (road pricing) to enter the city boundaries, provided the income is ring-fenced to enable substantial public transport improvements. (12-1 majority). This should include public information on how the income is spent.
1. There should be improvements to and encouragement to use bus services, especially in relation to joint ticketing and speed of service.
1. There should be greater public information and communication on the need to increase public transport use for air quality reasons.
1. Park and Ride facilities should be a key element of the above.
1. Trial the use of Greenways by heavy goods vehicles.
1. There should be detailed long-term reviews of the Greenways (3 yearly).

On the basis of these discussions, the Council is preparing a work programme that has as its ultimate goal the achievement of a visionary, world class transport system for the city funded through road user charges, adopting innovative approaches to financial engineering to ensure at least some benefits are gained before the imposition of the new charges.

The main issue facing local and national governments in tackling the issues of transport is not so much about finding the right tools and technology - but more about how to tackle "difficult politics". How are politicians going to be persuaded that the high political risk involved in making a decision to impose measures to restrain car use is justified? At present it is seen as a vote-loser.

Until there is a reasonable consensus coming from the public and the business community, politicians will continue to take this view. The key task for transport planners will be to translate the professional view of the benefits that can be achieved for society from these measures into a language and a context that is understood and can be accepted by the public, and to demonstrate how they contribute to key objectives of sustainability, social inclusion and economic competitiveness.

Most importantly, understanding of the implications of a continuation of present trends reinforces acceptance that "the status quo is not an option", and that the unconstrained use of cars in our cities - and most of all in city centres - can no longer be socially acceptable. Any use is a privilege to be used carefully, rather than a right.

Can this transformation be achieved? I believe the answer is "yes". But only if it has supporting it: Leadership - both political and professional; Understanding; Partnership, and Commitment.

Appendix Progress on the moving FORWARD ACTION PLAN