Hansard

I will try to move on a bit quicker.At the final meeting, we left some written comments with the management team. They thanked us for the comments and agreed to consider them and give us feedback. That has not happened over the past three and a half years, despite there being hundreds of objection letters and delegations.The local residents were clearly very disappointed and concerned about the planning authority and the sponsor. There are two roles here, and in questioning I would like to understand the roles of the advisers in the planning authority and the sponsors, and who made the decision not to follow the guidance in the development guidelines.In any event, as a result of what happened we took the exceptional step of carrying out a road safety audit—it was carried out by a lead road safety auditor. The report was commissioned to assess the requirement of the proposed development—Portobello high school—to undertake a road safety audit and identify potential road safety conflicts and problems that may have been raised by a road safety audit. The road safety audit is part of the evidence.The report makes three recommendations. It states:“Due to the significant material changes proposed to the existing road layout, it is our recommendation that a Stage 1 Road Safety Audit ... be commissioned to ensure that the full road safety impact of the scheme proposals can be assessed at this early stage...The importance and urgency of commissioning the Stage 1 Road Safety Audit cannot be overstated as likely mitigation measures to the problems identified in this report are likely to recommend significant alterations to the existing road layout in order to reduce or remove the adverse safety impact of the scheme”.11:00 The road safety auditor points out that there have been accidents, as I mentioned, and later in the report he identifies nine areas where the existing road network does not meet the standards, such as on the width of the footpath, visibility at junctions and turning movements for traffic. If the problems were to be addressed, the width of the main transport corridor would have to be cut down to make the network safe to meet the Government, the City of Edinburgh Council and other good standards. The result would be that the main corridor would not be four lanes wide and that therefore the whole corridor, in which there has been a large investment, would be at risk. As his third point, the auditor strongly recommends that, to demonstrate that, traffic modelling should be undertaken in accordance with the planning advice note.The road safety report identifies a number of problem areas, and I will quickly go through them. For the Hope Lane and Park Avenue location, the report states that“Lack of ... drop off zones increase the risk of informal parking”and uncertainty. That is not really covered in the transport appraisal; nor does that appraisal say where the traffic will go once the children have been dropped off. It is a poor-quality appraisal.The road safety report states that the shared cycleway and pedestrian footpath leading to the proposed safe toucan crossing is substandard, that the proposal for the footway and cycleway on the north side of Milton Road at Hope Lane is substandard, and that there is substandard visibility for traffic coming out of Hope Lane. Drivers looking to the left there—to the east—cannot see the road properly. Another problem is that there will be substandard access for services and deliveries to the proposed access on Park Avenue to the new school.The next problem that the report refers to is interesting, and it relates to the A1 adjacent to the proposed school. The intention is to have a 20mph speed limit on that section of the road during school-opening time. However, it is a well-known fact that people do not adhere to speed limits unless the road has been narrowed down and there is evidence of a need to reduce speed. For an open four-lane carriageway, speed limits on their own do not work; we must reduce the width of the carriageway and demonstrate that there are dangers there in order to get drivers to reduce their speed. Many sections of Milton Road are open road.The report indicates another problem with a substandard footpath, particularly the length between Park Avenue and Duddingston Park. The road safety auditor uses a very good photograph in the report that shows how narrow the footpath is there. Let us say that 25 per cent of pupils—350—might walk along that footpath four times a day. I would not like to be there at those times. There would be no room for local residents to use the footpath over particular half-hour periods. The report also states that there are substandard refuge and harbour areas for the signalised junctions, particularly on Duddingston Park. There are also no facilities for disabled people.I will try to be brief in my summary. The 1,400 pupils at the new school will use an existing road whose accident rate is twice the average. There will be further traffic delays on Milton Road because of traffic movements around the school and because of the pedestrian crossings, which will lengthen traffic queues back to the Milton Link. In addition, the council takes no cognisance of the known housing development in the south-east wedge of the green belt by East Lothian Council and Midlothian Council that will increase traffic on that section of Milton Road.We are concerned about where the pupils are going to be dropped off, and the local residents believe that the promoter has underestimated the number of pupils who are likely to be dropped off. The Scottish statistics suggest that the school run brings 21 per cent of pupils to school, but the figure that the council uses is 14 per cent. The Scottish statistics assume that pupils will walk up to 600m per day to school, whereas the council assumes that they will walk up to 2 miles. I do not think that in winter many pupils will walk 2 miles, which is more than twice the average in the Scottish statistics. That does not mean that all the others will come by car, but a proportion of them will. I believe that the figure will be much nearer 21 per cent than 14 per cent, which is the figure that the council uses.The independent safety auditor made the recommendations that I have already referred to, saying that there is a clear need to carry out a road safety audit if we have any care at all for the children who go to the school. Again, I highlight the figures on personal injury accidents, which demonstrate that there are twice the average number of accidents on the existing network, even before the new school comes in.In summary—this is probably the final statement that I am going to make—I say that the local residents strongly consider that the City of Edinburgh Council, both as a planning authority and as a promoter, has been irresponsible. I could use stronger words, but it has been irresponsible in not following its own procedures and refusing to carry out a safety audit. It has not taken seriously the road safety and traffic issues that are associated with the new school. The decision will inevitably affect the 1,400 pupils who attend the school each day and the local residents as well as the 1,800 drivers and their passengers and the public transport passengers who travel along the A1 strategic transport corridor every day. Thank you.