Council is to maintain the controversial closure of Edinburgh road

Since April, the council has used the £5m it received from the Scottish government to introduce various road closures and temporary traffic measures using emergency coronavirus powers.

Some of these measures have proved incredibly controversial, with several sparking community campaigns against them.

One such measure, the closure of Braid Road, which runs perpendicular to the A702/Comiston Road, is set to be continued as the council unveiled a new raft of Spaces for People schemes.

Colinton and Fairmilehead councillor, Jason Rust, who chairs the Conservative group on the council, said, “The council has acted in an extremely underhand way since the initial closure of Braid Road.

“There was contrary to suggestion, no police advice to close the road and its closure seems to have been predicated on an ever changing rationale.

“The closure is causing massive practical inconvenience to local residents who were never properly consulted and the complete intransigence of the council in keeping the road closed is completely unacceptable.”

At a virtual press conference organised by local authority on Friday November 6, council officers were asked to justify the continued closure of the road.

Dave Sinclair, the council’s local transport and environment manager, said: “We’ve been very carefully watching the traffic flows, the potentially displaced traffic flows, on Comiston Road and we’ve had plus ten or eleven percent on those alternative routes, and we think that’s well within the boundaries of acceptability.

“In global terms we’ve lost about 30 per cent traffic for both of those roads.

“It’s one of the only routes in the city where traffic is just above the levels where they were before, and we can understand why with potential displacement.

“We’re recommending under the next part of the next collective schemes that Braid Road remains closed - what that does is protects all of the Cluny and Midmar estates, and it phases directly into that safe route for pedestrians and cyclists that runs through Woodburn Terrace up past the St Peter’s School hub and up to the James Gillespie’s High School area.

“We recognise there will be a point where that road maybe needs to reopen, and if that happens there will immediately be intrusive traffic flowing back into that Midmar and Cluny block.

“If we try to maintain the rationale of having safe spaces for people to walk and cycle we’d have to implement a lot of traffic calming.”

When asked what the consequences of reopening the road immediately would be, Mr Sinclair said: “It’s an incredibly busy route. Braid Road on a typical morning has a strong, city-bound flow through the residential area, and again likewise in the evening there’s a reverse flow, so it’s an incredibly busy route.

“There are some real conflict points on that route, and if you’re encouraging people to use safe spaces to walk and cycle, there’s a mini roundabout at the end of Braidburn Terrace where it meets Braid Road, which is a really nasty junction at the best of times.

“Essentially, you reintroduce intrusive traffic to a residential area and one of the key aims of this is to try and avoid that.”

Joseph Anderson, Local Democracy Reporting Service

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