Hansard

Thank you for the opportunity to do that, convener. I have lived in Park Avenue for more than 30 years. I have a family of four children. I have enjoyed the Portobello park and all its facilities. It started with the children learning to ride their bikes in a safe environment and then moved on to them playing all sorts of sports in the park. Like many others, I am latterly a family dog walker. I am a chartered civil engineer and have more than 40 years’ experience.I will refer to the documents that I have submitted. I have also provided a map, which the clerk has. He will circulate it to everybody so that I can make my points with a bit more clarity.As regards the existing conditions, the A199 at Milton Road is a greenway and district distributor road. It is a strategic transport route for all users in and out of the city of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian and the trunk roads from the south—the A1 and the A68. It is a four-lane carriageway but, during the morning and pm peaks, it acts as a single carriageway, as there are bus lanes in operation during those periods.Every morning, particularly when the schools are operating—there is a fall-off in traffic when the schools are on holiday—during the am peak, which is generally from 7.30 until 9 o’clock, the westbound or citybound traffic is constantly queued back from the Duddingston Park traffic lights, as shown on the diagram. I hope that you can see that. The traffic is queued back from the traffic signals, well past the access to the new school, and regularly past Hope Lane. That is a distance of around 600m. During really bad conditions—wet weather and the like—the queue sometimes goes back as far as the Milton Link, which is shown on the diagram, running from the yellow of the Harry Lauder Road. That is the main link where all the hubs of traffic come in from the south. A lot of them distribute down the Harry Lauder Road. On occasions, the traffic gets close back to that point, and it is blocked off by the traffic signals. The congestion is quite significant.In the evening peak—which is arguably when the bus lanes are in place, which might be after the school is closed—the traffic is queued back in the present situation, often as far as Park Avenue and back to Duddingston Park. That distance is about 1km.The consequences of the morning peak, in particular, include frustration for drivers. That causes a significant number of drivers to take evasive action, of three types. One of those is to abuse the bus lanes, which happens regularly. In these circumstances, the people who abuse the bus lanes drive at some speed, because they do not want to be there for long. Those who are citybound, in particular, either duck into Bailie Place, which is shown on the diagram, on the south side of Milton Road, opposite the entrance to where the new school will be, or they try to get as far as the Duddingston Park crossroads. Another option that drivers pursue is to rat-run down Hope Lane and Park Avenue, which are shown as rat run 1 and 2. They go down there to avoid the main drag and the long queues there, and they fight their way back through Duddingston Road, going back on the main road at Jock’s Lodge and the likes.The other, longer, rat run that drivers use is through Magdalene. It is predicted that the queues are going to be long, as drivers regularly use that route. On the diagram, that is the green line to the south of Milton Road. Drivers go past Brunstane primary school and come on to Duddingston Park South. They can then cut their way back on towards Jock’s Lodge.The proposed development of Portobello high school—which, with 1,400 pupils, is the second-largest school in Scotland—with direct vehicular access and pedestrian access on to Milton Road will generate significant additional car and pedestrian trips. Right in the middle of the length of road where cars queue back in the morning, it is intended to have direct access from the school on to this transport corridor. That will generate significant vehicular and pedestrian movements.Those turning movements and pedestrian crossing delays would occur particularly at the am peak and would cause queues and delays on Milton Road. I would anticipate that queues will regularly go back to Milton Link. The reasons for that include right turning, which brings about real conflicts in road safety terms.At the moment, there are two pedestrian crossing locations. One is at the top of Hope Lane. That is not used regularly. The traffic does not get stopped on many occasions for people to use that. The other one is at the Duddingston Park crossroads. It is used relatively regularly, but probably not through every phase.10:45 If the school is built on Portobello park, the new toucan or pelican crossing will be called upon all the time, because it will be used regularly by people coming off buses from Joppa and the likes—I apologise at this point, as the location of the access to the school is not where it is shown on the diagram but to the other side of Bailie Place; the diagram shows the original proposals, I think, before the site was revisited. The transport appraisal says that there will be a call for the pedestrian crossings every minute. The capacity of the road will be significantly reduced as a result of the new school, with the turning movements and the pedestrians making the crossing both at the new toucan crossing at Hope Lane, which will be in regular use, and at the crossing at Duddingston Park, which will have an increased use—albeit that it is regularly called upon at the moment.The result is to cause traffic congestion in the morning peak. That includes buses from the east and south heading into the city centre. The route is a quality bus corridor. It is one of the main links into Edinburgh. If Milton Link got snarled up, that would be a serious point for the city of Edinburgh and commuters coming in and out. There is a strategic park and ride at Newcraighall, and people come in from there to use the corridor. Buses use the corridor, too. The bus lanes are not continuous from Milton Link all the way to Duddingston Park—there are locations where they are not in force—so the buses would get clogged up, too.I am pretty sure that the Scottish ministers provided 100 per cent funding for quality bus corridors, and this is a quality bus corridor. Money went into that. Any devaluing of the approach, which will inevitably happen, will be a result of the devaluing of the corridor.I will move on to the accidents that currently take place on Milton Road. I ask you to refer to the table that is included in my evidence. The length of the road that I am talking about is as I have already described, running from the Duddingston Park crossroads to Hope Lane. That covers the frontage and main movements along the corridor that the school fronts on to. The statistics are for personal injury accidents—in other words, people who have been hospitalised. There are numerous other damage-only accidents, which are not recorded. They cannot be used for comparators of road accident types, as they are not all reported to the police.Over the period between January 2009 and September 2013, there were 13 personal injury accidents on that stretch of road. That is a significant number of personal injury accidents over a relatively short length of road. Personal injury accidents are generally measured in accidents per 100 million vehicle kilometres. Taking into account the number of accidents on this length of road, the accident rate is 67 accidents per 100 million vehicle kilometres.According to table 5 of the central Government document that sets out the statistics on this matter—I have copies of the table that the committee can see—the average accident rate for A-class local authority roads, of which the A199 is clearly one, in the Lothian and Borders Police area is 33 per 100 million vehicle kilometres. That means that the accident rate on this section of road is twice the average accident rate—and that is before a new school with direct access is parachuted into the area and before 1,400 more people start making two or even four movements a day along that corridor. Another statistic that might interest you is that the average accident rate for the A9 between Perth and Inverness is, I would say, less than a third of the accident rate on this stretch of road.We have raised this issue—although not these particular statistics—with the council on a number of occasions. Mr MacIntyre says that he has taken certain decisions, but we have supplied information to the council and have received no real feedback and had no discussion about them.It is clear that a number of safety conflicts already exist on this section of the strategic transport corridor. As I have said, although the accident rate is already twice the average rate for this type of road, the proposal is to build a new school with direct access from it. We have to think about all the turning movements that will be made, the schoolchildren walking along these and adjacent corridors, cars rat running, people doing turn-offs and so on. The new school will generate additional traffic, with 1,400 pedestrian movements at least twice and even four times a day, which will inevitably cause additional conflicts and significantly increase the risk to the 1,400 pupils going to the proposed new school at least twice a day, the local residents, the 18,000 drivers and their passengers and the public transport passengers who use this strategic transport corridor.These road safety and traffic congestion issues were first raised by the local residents at a meeting in August 2010. The meeting was chaired by a member of the City of Edinburgh Council project management team and was attended by a transport appraisal consultant from AECOM. The local residents did not believe that the proposed new school, with its direct junction on to Milton Road, could be built safely. They believed that they would be at risk, as would the 18,000 drivers and their passengers who use the road every day. At that meeting, it was recommended that the council carry out a road safety audit as recommended in section 11.3 of the council’s document “Movement and Development: Traffic and Transport Design Guide for Developments in the City of Edinburgh”.At the same meeting, residents shared their concerns about the existing westbound traffic queues that go past Park Avenue and into Hope Lane. People cannot get out on to those roads safely in the morning, and the concern was that any new proposals would increase the congestion on the network. In the circumstances, they recommended that the council undertake a traffic simulation model as recommended in paragraph 20 of planning advice note 75.What would the traffic simulation model do? It would clearly demonstrate whether Milton Road, which is a strategic transport corridor, and the surrounding road network would operate safely without unacceptable congestion as a result of the increased traffic of the proposed school.In addition, at that meeting the issue of the safe drop-off locations for pupils on the local road network was raised, bearing in mind that dropping off pupils on Milton Road would be prohibited because bus lanes are in operation. The question was: where were the drop-off areas to be?