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SCOTTISH TOURISM: AN ENVIRONMENTAL BUSINESS
Tourism and Environment Spring Conference, March 1999
Transport and Tourism
Dr G McL Hazel
Director of City Development, The City of Edinburgh Council
Two key aims expressed by the new City of Edinburgh Council when it came into existence in April 1996 were "to promote a healthy and sustainable environment" and "to develop the local economy". The Council’s Economic Development Strategy, published shortly afterwards, includes a goal for Edinburgh to be recognised internationally as a city which has successfully balanced economic growth with quality of life and environment.
The city’s tourist role is one of the factors that makes this balanced approach essential. With 2 million tourists and 7 to 11 million day trippers per year, the economic impact of tourism in Edinburgh has been estimated at over £750 million annually. Tourism is very big business for the city, and around 10% of the workforce is employed in tourist related activities. But tourism is also a very competitive business, and in spite of the significance of its tourism offer, reinforced by the designation of the city centre as a World Heritage Site, Edinburgh cannot afford to be complacent, and needs to act to ensure it remains competitive with other tourist destinations, and to ensure that its unique qualities are responsibly cared for and available for the benefit of future generations.
The Danish urban designer Jan Gehl points out that one of the strongest trends in European city planning and urban regeneration over the past 20 years has been the extensive improvements to the pedestrian environment. The signal must be: "Your are welcome in our city. We want you to promenade at leisure and enjoy the city spaces, the views, the presence of other people and all the commercial attractions a fine city can offer". The quality of the historical and tourist environment is becoming increasingly important to the visitor.
In order to ensure that this quality is achieved, careful use of public space is needed: there is a delicate balance between space for activities - including public space for the informal aspects - and space needed to provide accessibility to those activities. If the balance is wrong, the city's economy and environment will be damaged. Over the last forty years or so, more and more city space has been used inefficiently to try and cope with growing car use. Buildings, pedestrian and other public spaces have been replaced by car space, and low density, car based suburbs, business and retail "parks", have taken over former countryside.
These trends have occurred in Edinburgh as elsewhere, and the amount of traffic has been identified as a weakness in tourism as well as more general economic terms. Surveys of tourists and visitors show 60% agreeing that there is too much traffic in areas of the city. In recognition of this, the Council has now embarked on a radical approach to escape from the vicious circle of increasing dependence on the car and the growing imbalance in the use of space. The aim is to restore the role of the city as a place where people come first. Failing to do this will put at risk not only the tourist role of the city, but its wider appeal to business and its inhabitants. The maintenance and development of the city’s other major economic sectors is increasingly dependent on mobile workers who will be attracted by the quality of life offered by the city as well as by economic opportunities.
Cities exist in order to promote the interchange of goods, labour, ideas, culture through a vast range of activities, both formal and informal. A sustainable, prosperous city will be one that facilitates this interchange by making it easy for people to meet, by design and by chance. The informal, chance element of city life is often forgotten - yet this is probably the key to a city's success, creating the quality of life that attracts people to the city. Street cafes and benches in public squares symbolise that lifestyle.
The means of transport used by visitors reinforces the importance of pedestrian space:
around 70% of visitors get around the city principally on foot. 13% of British visitors and just 8% of overseas visitors use a car, even though a much larger proportion - 47% of British visitors and 16% of overseas visitors arrive in the city by car.
There has been very rapid growth in car ownership in Edinburgh. Between 1981 and 1991, the number of cars per 1000 people grew by 47%, compared to a UK average of 29% - albeit from a lower base. Around 600 buses and 18,000 cars each bring about the same number of people (20,000) to work in the city centre each morning. But the number of bus journeys made citywide declined from 177m in 1980 to 135m in 1992, a reduction of almost 25%.
Commuting from outside the city boundary has more than doubled over the last 20 years, as the city has increasingly dominated the regional jobs market. In 1993, there were 250,000 jobs based in the city. By 2005, 300,000 jobs are forecast, with only a small population increase from 450,000 to 457,000.
As in many cities, the trend towards out-of-town or edge-of-town business and retail development, and low density housing has been very pronounced over the last 10 to 15 years. There are continuing pressures for new development, and there is concern that the fragmentation of the local authority structure will result in a more favourable attitude by authorities outside the city to development designed to attract Edinburgh's residents. By its nature, such development is primarily car-based.
Conventional wisdom is that the growth of traffic is an inevitable sign of economic growth - that the two are inextricably linked. Yet only a small proportion of traffic is essential to the functioning of the economy. In general, the external costs imposed by excessive levels of traffic, cars in particular, outweigh the benefits gained by the users. Society as a whole loses out. There are a number of reasons for this:
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Traffic is a major cause of pollution - both globally and at local level. Ill-health due to pollution appears to be increasing, affecting healthcare costs and productivity.·
Car traffic takes up increasing urban space, reducing the scope for all the people-based activities that are an essential part of city life. Space is also reduced for other types of movement - walking, cycling, and public transport.·
Congestion causes delays that cost business money. Nationally, the CBI has calculated the cost of congestion nationally at over £15 billion per annum. People and goods spend large amounts of time in traffic jams.·
Car dependency reduces the opportunities for anyone without access to a car to gain access to jobs, education, services and leisure facilities. It also effectively reduces the labour pool and skill levels available to employers.Business parks and shopping centres springing up around the edge of cities are also seen by some as a measure of economic health. But the same difficulties arise:
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They cause additional traffic, reinforcing all the impacts just described above. A study of a new shopping centre on the western edge of Edinburgh showed that it had generated up to an additional 200,000 car-kilometres every day. This added approximately 30 tons per day to local CO2 emissions - 5% of daily CO2 emissions by all traffic in Edinburgh.·
They detract from existing business and shopping centres. The same study showed that the city centre lost 4.4% of its comparison shopping market share. Perhaps even more importantly, a nearby neighbourhood shopping centre lost 80% of its convenience turnover, causing considerable difficulties for local residents.Excessive traffic also has significant social impacts. At one level, it is a major cause of premature death and injury. It can cause a breakdown of neighbourhood communities, as people retreat away from the perceived danger of the street into their own homes. It can result in increasing polarisation in society between people with access to a car, and those without.
The underlying principle of the Council’s approach for dealing with these problems 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.
Reducing vehicular traffic reduces the problem at source, rather than treating the symptoms. It has been considered unrealistic in the past - the growth in car use was seen as inexorable. But perhaps this approach is now becoming more acceptable. A recent survey in Edinburgh found that 82% of residents felt ‘the increase in car use is a serious problem in Edinburgh’. Only 14% agreed that ‘capacity for cars on the roads should be increased’, while 73% disagreed with the statement ‘there is no real alternative to the car for transport’. 60% agreed that ‘more money should be spent on improving public transport, even if it means slightly higher local taxes’.
The Council is taking a holistic view of land use, transport, the environment and the local economy. Edinburgh was one of the first local authorities to set clear targets for stabilising and reducing car use (see table below), aimed at ensuring that all policies were working towards clearly defined objectives for maximising accessibility rather than movement per se.
Edinburgh’s modal share targets (city residents)
|
|
1991 |
2000 |
2010 |
|
Car |
48% |
46% |
34% |
|
Public transport |
34% |
34% |
39% |
|
Cycle |
2% |
4% |
10% |
|
Walk |
16% |
16% |
17% |
To achieve these objectives, the Council is pursuing a wide range of different types of action:
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Investment in better public transport infrastructure, and in new approaches to transport to bridge the gap between car and conventional public transport.·
"Demand management" measures - carrots and sticks to reduce car travel at source, particularly at the workplace.·
Encouragement of lifestyle and technological alternatives to car travel such as teleworking and teleshopping, delivery services, and importantly the enhancement of local centres as the focus of communities.·
Increasing public awareness of transport issues - decisions on whether or not to use a car are in the end made by individuals, not the local authority.Of these, the first is probably of most relevance in relation to tourism, and the city centre is the focus for actions to achieve a better balance in the use of space. Two major initiatives have been undertaken, in the historic Royal Mile and in the core shopping area of Princes Street and George Street and these are outlined in more detail below.
Royal Mile
The first phase of environmental improvements to the Royal Mile was completed in 1996 at a cost of £4.5m. This focused on the High Street, between George IV Bridge and Jeffrey Street, and consisted of reducing the width of the carriageway while widening pavements and improving their surface, and creating "special areas" for pedestrians - in particular at Hunter Sqaure.
Before and After studies in the Royal Mile have demonstrated the importance of the linkage between environmental quality and visitor and tourist perceptions, and has an impact on economic activity. The studies indicated that:
Further work based on these results estimated that the improvements increased annual spending by visitors in Edinburgh by around £26 million, with a similar spin-off for the wider Scottish economy.
Princes Street
During the day on a typical Saturday, 70,000 pedestrians use the central part of Princes Street, compared to under 10,000 cars. Jan Gehl suggests that even this high level of pedestrian activity is considerably below what would be expected for a city of the nature of Edinburgh, and that overcrowding, difficulty and frequency of road crossings, pollution and noise all contribute to constraining the use of the street by pedestrians. Surveys of pedestrians, local as well as visitors and tourists, reinforce this conclusion.
As a first step to improving pedestrian conditions in the city’s prime shopping area, a scheme to remove all traffic except for buses, taxis and cycles from the eastbound direction in Princes Street, and to remove through traffic from George Street, was initially brought into operation in June 1996. This has now been made permanent. The scheme included a small widening of the pavements, with a particular improvement at the bottleneck at the east end of Princes Street, the closing off of Castle Street and the provision of a cycle lane.
Initial studies of the impact are encouraging:
In addition, there has recently been pressure from traders in George Street to take further action to improve the quality of the environment in that street.
This paper has highlighted some of the measures being undertaken by the the City of Edinburgh Council to try to match economic performance and environmental quality and thereby to ensure the continuing central role of the city. Two elements are crucial:
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The de-linking of economic growth and traffic growth by concentrating on accessibility to activities rather than movement of vehicles;·
The re-allocation of space from inefficient transport modes to efficient and environmentally friendly transport, and most importantly, to non-transport uses.Edinburgh is a major tourist destination. We believe that the approach to its future development outlined in this paper will keep it in that position.
02/03/99
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