Transport and Travel

Edinburgh’s Transport Choices

Consultation Results

	Consultation Results – the Highlights
	Citizens’ Panel Results
	Postal Results
	Options Results
	What’s Happening Now?
	Your Comments

Edinburgh’s Transport Choices gave the people of Edinburgh an opportunity to comment on the Council’s Interim Local Transport Strategy. This strategy details the Council’s policies and future projects across the full range of transport issues. It is also needed so that the Council can bid for Government money for transport initiatives. It updated existing Council transport policy and incorporates national aims and objectives.

At the end of 1999, we consulted with the people of Edinburgh to find out their views about the future strategies for transport in the city. You can see a summary of Edinburgh’s Transport Choices and download the Interim Local Transport Strategy here.

During the extensive consultation process, we:

circulated 230,000 ‘Edinburgh’s Transport Choices’ leaflets; 19,000 questionnaires were returned, plus 500 letters.
circulated 1,900 Citizens’ Panel questionnaires; 1,150 returned.
sent 800 organisations about the strategy; 86 people, representing 77 organisations, attended seminars. 47 Community Councillors, representing 24 Community Councils, attended a special session with the Council.
organised two public meetings, attended by 260 people
sent 220 organisations the full Interim Transport Strategy and a detailed questionnaire.

Consultation Results – the Highlights

Some of main results are shown below. You can view more detailed reports, which were considered by the Council’s Transportation Committee on 14 February and 10 April, in the Council Information Centre, 12 St Giles Street, Edinburgh.

Citizens’ Panel Results

	Strongly agree /agree %	Neither %	Disagree/strongly disagree %
More money on alternatives to the car	88	7	5
More money on rail	79	16	5
20mph residential	78	8	14
20mph shopping & other streets	73	13	14
More short stay parking for local shops	72	18	10
More bus lanes	50	22	28

Citizen’s Panel: Percentage of responses which gave priority to each LTS objective

	High	Medium	Low
Reduce accidents	79	17	4
Encourage public transport, walking, cycling	71	24	3
Maintain roads and pavements in good condition	61	34	5
Reduce environmental damage	58	34	7
Accessibility for disabled people and on low incomes	55	34	8
Minimise need for/amount of car use	48	37	11
Reduce impact of cars on streets	40	40	15
None/don’t know excluded	did not exceed 5%

Citizens’ Panel

	Strongly support %	Support %	Neither %	Oppose %	Strongly oppose %
Option 1: Road user charges, significant improvements	40	25	10	14	12
Option 2: Workplace parking charges, limited improvements	18	48	15	11	7
Option 3: No new charges	7	19	25	33	16

Postal Results: Responses from the Edinburgh’s Transport Choices Leaflet

	Support %	Oppose %	Don’t know %
Option 1 Road user charges, significant improvements	62	32	6
Option 2 Workplace parking charges, limited improvements	53	38	10
Option 3 No new charges	28	64	8

Citizens’ Panel Compared To Leaflet Response

	Strongly agree /agree %	Neither %	Disagree/strongly disagree %
More money on alternatives to the car	88 (79)	7 ( 7)	5 (14)
More money on rail	79 (76)	16 (10)	5 (14)
20mph residential	78 (73)	8 ( 5)	14 (22)
20mph shopping & other streets	73 (62)	13 ( 9)	14 (29)
More short stay parking for local shops	72	18	10
More bus lanes	50 (47)	22 (12)	28 (40)

Figures in brackets are leaflet response. Other responses cannot be compared because questions were not asked in a comparable way.

Percentage of Respondents who chose option 1, 2 or 3 as their first choice

	Leaflet	Citizen’s Panel
Option 1: Road user charges, significant improvements	58%	56%
Option 2: Workplace parking charges, limited improvements	22%	29%
Option 3: No new charges	15%	16%
Supported none	5%	N/A

NB In the case of the leaflet, 779 responses (about 4%) whose preference was unclear have been discounted

What’s Happening Now?

Work continues on developing the Local Transport Strategy, ready for submission of the 'final' version to the Scottish Executive later this year (though of course updated versions have to be submitted every three years). As the 'Edinburgh's Transport Strategy' leaflet makes clear, the amount of funding available will determine which elements of the Local Transport Strategy can be implemented.

While the Local Transport Strategy forms the basis of the Council's transport strategy, therefore, the search for new sources of funding continues as a self-contained programme of work, known as the 'New Transport Initiative'.

New Transport Initiative

Phase 1 of the New Transport Initiative was completed in April 2000. This concluded:

road user charging provides overall economic benefits (by reducing congestion)
there is substantial public acceptance for an investment package based on charging
a low charge (say £1) is likely to have minimal impact on business
a simple city centre charge of around of £1 would generate tens of £million per year
it should be possible to establish mechanisms to get up-front funding

The Council agreed, on 4 May, to proceed with Phase 2. The preconditions for road user charging remain:

the revenue must be spent only on transport
the money raised must be additional to, not in place of, existing funding
transparent accounting for income and expenditure
there must be significant investment in public transport from the outset

Phase 2 Progamme

Year Action

2000	initial development of a charging and investment package for Scottish Executive approval in principle
2001	develop detailed proposals, consult on the charging scheme and proposed transport projects
2002	consideration for Scottish Executive approval in detail. Some ‘up-front’ projects start
2003	further improvements in place. Charging starts mid 2003

Resources and Partnership

Phase 2 is expected to cost £4m.

The City of Edinburgh Council is in partnership with:

Scottish Executive
SESTRAN: South East Scotland Transport Partnership (local authorities)
Scottish Enterprise
Private sector
European Union ‘PROGRESS’ project. Participating cities are Edinburgh, Bristol, Rome, Genoa, Trondheim, Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Helsinki.

A report on the New Transport Initiative was presented to the Council’s Transport Committee in 12 April 2000. You can see a copy of this document in our libraries or in the Council Information Centre, 12 St Giles Street, Edinburgh.

Download the report in Word format

Download the report in PDF format

To read the document in PDF format you’ll need Acrobat Reader which you can download for free.

More Information

You can view a more detailed report of the results in the Council Information Centre, 12 St Giles Street, Edinburgh.

The Full Local Transport Strategy, which is submitted to the Scottish Executive, will be available in the late Autumn. Please revisit Capinfo then.

If you need to contact us, please email us on transport.strategy@edinburgh.gov.uk.