The City of Edinburgh Council's Transport and Environment Committee ('TEC') meets this Thursday, 2nd April 2026; we've banged our heads against the papier-mâché fortress of diplomatic paperwork until we established a big enough hole to peer through and round up what's on the table for cycling and safer streets in the city this time round.
🌐 Meeting Page & Agenda | PDFs: 📑 Full Agenda Reports Pack | 💼 Business Bulletin | 📋 Work Programme
📄 Business Bulletin [PDF] »
The Business Bulletin is home to more minor items that don't warrant a full report, or further updates on more significant past reports. This time round, there's just one item that caught our attention:
The business bulletin includes, on page 1, an update on Continental Crossing Legislation - also known as 'side road zebras'. A recent update to the highway code mandates drivers and cyclists turning into a side road must give way to pedestrians crossing or about to cross; but this suffers from a lack of widespread awareness and/or behaviour change, dealt with elsewhere in Europe with painted crossings indicating vehicles must give way to pedestrians. Implementing zebra crossings in the UK has historically required flashing 'Belisha beacons'; and are more expensive to implement as a result with the electrical works that are required - and this requirement would need to be dropped to do this at scale here.
Recent precedent elsewhere in the UK has come about in Wales;
On 11 March 2026, the Traffic Signs (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations and General Directions 2026 came into force. These allow for a continental style zebra crossing to be placed across a minor road in Wales in the vicinity of a junction with a major road, where the speed limit for both roads is 20mph or lower.
The Transport Committee previously agreed to hold off on its own study regarding side road zebras while it checked in with the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Transport regarding the legislation needed to enact them. While this study won't go ahead, the response (PDF, page 85) does indicate some possible forward movement on this rather than a dead end.
📄 Report [PDF] | 📑 Appendices [PDF]
This follows up on the Council's approved transport budget and breaks it out into proposed allocations of funding for TEC to consider, including:
📈 An additional (more than historically typical, though same as last year) £12.5m of funding to improve road conditions and continue to raise the overall 'Road Condition Index' ('RCI') in the city, trying to get the roads back to less of a 'lunar landscape' state. The measure "shows the percentage of roads that should be considered for maintenance intervention" when assessed (more information here) and the report states "Edinburgh’s RCI has increased slightly in 2025/26 to 31.6%, compared with 29.8% in 2024/25. However, this is still an improved situation compared with the 2022/24 figure of 34.3% in 2022/24".
🚲 In terms of looking out for pedestrian and cycle infrastructure along the way, “where there are alignments between the carriageway investment programme and investment in active travel, officers will work together to decide the most efficient way to deliver these schemes in tandem, or at the very least in a way that ensures that best value is being achieved.” We've already seen a little of this happening, with planned works for the long-awaited Meadows to Union Canal link factored in during public realm and resurfacing works coordination around the refurbishment of the King's Theatre to ensure it all ties together;
Improvements ahead of the Tour de France Grand Depart in 2027:
“The start of the Tour de France will take place in Edinburgh on 2 July 2027. Surveys have been carried out on parts of the proposed route and Craigmillar Park, which had already been identified as needing full resurfacing will be prioritised and delivered in 2026/27 at an estimated cost of £1.90m. This work was originally planned to be phased over several financial years and expediting the project will provide savings on materials, labour and traffic management requirements as well as limiting network disruption to one financial year. Further, small-scale carriageway repairs will also have to be carried out in 2027/28 on other parts of the route. The scope of this work has still to be determined and will be reported to this committee once finalised.”
📄 Report [PDF] »
Considerations of Tourist Coach movements around the city, current parking and waiting areas, and potential new locations to replace private car parking with coach stands in this report. Appendix 4 [PDF] consists of a presentation-style slide deck on the key considerations.
'Items for Scrutiny' are reports that are expected to pass without requiring debate, so may not be discussed at TEC unless Councillors have questions on them and ask for them to be discussed at the start of proceedings.
📄 Report [PDF] »
This report includes an annual update on both the wider Road Safety programme, and the specifics of the Local Traffic Improvement ('LTI') programme that reports back to the Transport Committee on their roster of small projects and interventions across the city.
For those unfamiliar with Local Traffic Improvement projects:
"The LTI programme is intended to improve local access for people walking and cycling in our communities and consider the introduction of small traffic schemes to mitigate or eliminate the impact of intrusive road traffic in residential areas. The approach proposed for the LTI programme focuses on making use of a factored and ranked criteria to consider local interventions and small projects across the city." — City of Edinburgh Council
In terms of Road Safety progress made in the past year:
"Of the 155 projects proposed in the Road Safety programme for 2025/26, it is expected that 83% of the 129 of projects requiring physical interventions will be delivered before the end of March 2026. 32 further Road Safety projects, including 26 parking restriction projects, are progressing through the Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) process."
More detail on Road Safety projects is available in Appendix 1 [PDF].
The LTI programme marches on too:
"The 17 projects are progressing well with consultation and outline designs in place for 10 projects, TROs are being prepared for a further four projects, two projects are out to tender and four due to be complete by the end of March 2026."
More detail on the current LTI projects is available in Appendix 2 [PDF].
📄 Report [PDF] »
This report is in response to a motion at TEC back in August 2025, calling for:
"...improvements that could be made to communications for residents around road and pavement improvement schemes using the Council's website and by other means with the aim to –
- Provide comprehensive information on the timings of significant road and pavement improvement schemes, grouped by local area;
- Allow residents to sign up for email or other alerts to be provided with revised timing changes of works;
- Allow community councils to sign up to receive the weekly list of road works."
The Council's answer to this in the report is a mix of including more widely offering their existing communication channels, such as weekly road reports, to more Community Councils; and also looking at how they can make information more accessible and available on the Council website.
📄 Motion [PDF] »
This motion appears to ask for clarity around the legal requirements of Road Safety Audits (RSAs) when they are carried out regarding a potential Traffic Regulation Order (TRO), and for the reasoning behind them not being brought for consideration to the TRO Sub-committee who decide on making orders permanent.
On the surface, a perfectly reasonable ask. But given the party originating this motion routinely prefer to stand and wag fingers than to support safer streets using proven methods — successful in so many places elsewhere in Europe — one can't but help side-eyeing this proposal as nothing more than grasping for more paperwork to get opponents of modern transport projects worked up about.
If you find your thrills elsewhere and have never read a Road Safety Audit; they generally also feature the Council's published response, written by officers with a deep understanding and familiarity with the proposals, area for intervention and design methodology - quite often (and where appropriate) downplaying or rebutting the safety issues raised - or explaining how plans will be adjusted.
To politicise RSA content and broaden the scope of what committees consider only provides ammunition to those on the TRO Sub-committee who like to pepper any potential glimmer of progress with the wide buckshot of FUD and weapons-grade concern trolling. If officers put forward E/TROs in spite of issues raised in an independent safety audit, the correct course of action is to trust the professional work of council officers in considering, mitigating or setting aside audit concerns — and focus on the objections, which are within the remit of the TRO process.
📄 Motion [PDF] »
We wrote up the background to this five-year saga previously.
As written up very well in The Edinburgh Reporter, this Thursday 2nd will see a Green group motion (strangely ruled 'not urgent' at full council) come instead to the Transport committee, to try and head off a 'running down of the clock' on the existing measures in place.
What was once a busy rat-run through residential streets from Bruntsfield through and beyond Morningside was severed by the modal filters introduced in 2021 onwards.
This created a safe 'back route' for walking and cycling from the Links to the Braids wholly avoiding the narrow and congested streets of Bruntsfield and Morningside, starting from a traffic haven outside of James Gillespies Primary — that has made a huge difference to the safety of school drop-offs and pick-ups for parents and children there. But even with multiple schools on the route - including a new primary school at Canaan lane that opened after they were introduced - we are still yet to see whether the Labour administration will make good on their numerous promises in the media to turn the tables on car dominance in the city by backing active travel measures like Greenbank to Meadows, that remove non-local vehicle movements and calm local driving in equal measure.
With measures in place for half a decade now, the sorry history of pandering to a vocal minority of motorists, new layout proposals drafted by Councillors with vested interests, and treating consultation as a literal referendum on the potential options, leave a real mess to be cleared up.
But when we look at the effects — of demonstrably quieter, safer streets for active journeys to schools, shops and workplaces with no significant detriment to boundary roads and other routes; and of 4,000 fewer car movements through the residential streets of the Braid estate daily — there is a real positive legacy to this project in spite of its manufactured 'controversies'.
Rumours abound on the way forward - including the possibility that Labour proposes throwing the whole corridor away and returning it to the noise, air pollution and road danger that through-traffic brings with it.
One thing is for certain though. Time is running out for the legal order that covers the quiet route, and Thursday's TEC will show us whether the Administration have the mettle to say 'this is better, and it's here to stay'.
The Transport & Enviroment Committee will meet this Thursday, 2nd April 2026, and we'll have a round-up in our subsequent issues.