🤝 Round-up; June 2026 Transport & Environment Committee
The City of Edinburgh Council's Transport and Environment Committee ('TEC') met on Thursday, 18th June 2026 and this is our usual report on the outcomes and discussions. Rather than the whole committee agenda, we focus on items related to cycling and road safety.
For background reading, links are included to our agenda review last week.
🌐 Meeting Page & Agenda | PDFs: 📑 Full Agenda Reports Pack | 💼 Business Bulletin | 📋 Work Programme | 📺 Webcast
📋 Work programme
📺 View the Webcast from 1h 20m
Committee can ask questions regarding the committee's Work Programme [PDF] and Councillor Booth (Green group) asked about the timetabling of a final report on the Trams to Newhaven project which is slated for September TEC; specifically asking that being aware of numerous unresolved snagging items, whether Officers are confident these will be resolved prior to that report.
Officers response was that there is continuing work on the snags, with a hard landscape squad starting this Monday 22nd rectifying majority of 'amber' items on the list, and that works should all be done by the time the festival embargo on roadworks begins, but will otherwise be completed by the September report. The response included a tantalising mention of the neglected space at Elm Row, where works to complete a revised layout have stalled, rumoured to be the result of a traffic order error.
A follow-up from Cllr Booth highlighted that the contractor's liability for snagging items on the scheme expired in 2025.
💼 Business Bulletin
📄 Business Bulletin [PDF] »
The Business Bulletin is home to less significant items that don't warrant a full report, or further updates on more significant past reports.
🚲 A modal filter for Royal Park Terrace
🎤 Deputation
📺 View the Webcast from 0h 20m
Residents from Spring Gardens and Royal Park Terrace return once again to the committee to give deputation, having visited in January of this year and made the case for a single modal filter on their streets to prevent it from being used as an alternative to main artery London Road, particularly on weekends when Holyrood Park is closed to through-traffic.
Traffic surveys in 2025 showed that this residential road deals with 1,800 vehicle movements per weekday, which is already high for the comparatively low number of residents on the street; and this more than doubles on a Saturday to 4,000, with only slightly less (3,500) on a Sunday during Historic & Environment Scotland's closures of the park roads under their control.
Residents report traffic moving through at dangerous speeds, as well as parked vehicles belonging to residents being frequently clipped by through-traffic. They expressed concern at whether the project being assessed against the City Mobility Plan Capital Investment Programme was appropriate, as it seems at least on the surface to be for major projects with significant financial costs - and mentioned that by comparison, a single modal filter costs significantly less than the majority of the projects listed there.
In questions to the residents' deputation, Councillors enquired about residents opinion on the best placement for a filter; and the potential route for funding and implementation through the Local Traffic Improvement Programme ('LTIP'). Residents mentioned that they had been working with local Councillors on a potential application for LTIP, but they noted that there has never been a modal filter funded by the programme, nor any measures that have needed traffic modelling and analysis prior to implementation.
On this item, it has to be said that — foreshadowing an incredibly poor decision on the Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Route — placing such a heavy focus on traffic flow, rather than a timely intervention when local residents raise safety issues says an awful lot about who's really at the top of the transport hierarchy in Edinburgh.
💬 Discussion and Questions for Officers
📺 View the Webcast from 1h 33m
In questioning Officers later in the session, Councillors asked why it was felt that the City Mobility Plan Capital Investment Programme ('CMP CIP') was the correct route, rather than another scheme like LTIP.
The answer from Officers is regarding how their workload was being managed prior to the CMP CIP, which is an organised, scored and prioritised list of projects across the next ten years. This also has an annual review, so is considered something of a rolling and living target rather than a fixed list; officers described the landscape prior to the exercise as having had "lots and lots of projects all over the place, and too many to deal with" - as well as part of the objective of prioritising interventions and publishing the programme being an "attempt at channeling all our decision-making to this committee" and provide greater transparency on the workload for the various teams involved in delivering these projects.
On Royal Park Terrace, the point about the relative cost was noted as being just one of the elements of scoring for CMP CIP, and that a low cost would not disadvantage the measure in the scoring exercise.
Officers were asked directly whether there was anything about the proposal that could prevent modal filters going through LTIP. On paper, while the request from the residents falls exactly within what LTIP is intended for — to mitigate impact of traffic on local communities — one could paraphrase Officers general response here as being that the proximity of this location to Holyrood Park is considered 'strategic', more or less because the roads through the park are not within the council team's control but are under the purview of Historic & Environment Scotland who have previously consulted on removing through-traffic in the park altogether.
(This was carefully talked around indirectly at committee, but in trying to summarise - that seems to be what's giving pause, with Officers keen to take care "where there are close relationships with wider traffic management proposals.")
From 📺 1h 42m Cllr Aston returned with a follow-up question on timescales, pointing out that from the original motion / deputation in January 2026 asking for intervention to the proposed inclusion in a report coming in September, "that's nine months already for just to see how it fits into the framework of a ten-year programme" - and that this is a long time if another route isn't found to implement the measures being asked for. Returning to LTIP, Cllr Aston noted that the deputation had mentioned no intervention of this type requiring traffic analysis has made it through LTIP and asked whether it is feasible through LTIP if applied for.
Officers once again pushed back - "this is not a simple ask from an officer perspective... and it may have implications" given its City Centre context, but that there is no presumption in the LTIP process against measures like modal filters which can be a very simple and effective intervention. This was tempered by a point from Gareth Barwell that a modal filter involves a prohibition of motor vehicles, and for traffic regulation orders there has to be analysis effectively by law, due to potential environmental impact.
"It's a fair challenge, we want to find a way to do these things quicker — this council has written many times before about the TRO process and how we can streamline it — but the law as it is means we do have to give due regard to it and follow that process."
🗳️ Items for Decision
💰 7.2 'People and Place 2026-27 Grant Award' for Thistle Cycles
📄 Report [PDF] »
Moved without discussion. Congratulations to Thistle Foundation on their grant award!
🌳 7.3 'Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Connection - Update'
📄 Report [PDF] »
📝 Written Deputations [PDF, page 10 onwards] »
🎤 Deputations
📺 View the Webcast from:
0h 30m - Braid Estates Safety First (want filters removed)
0h 37m - Midmar Residents Group (want filters removed)
0h 44m - St Peter's and Canaan Lane Primary School (want filters retained)
0h 50m - Braid Estates Livable Streets (want filters retained)
⚠️ At this point in the sorry tale of the Greenbank to Meadows Quiet Route, it's becoming increasingly difficult to play to the (ideally more impartial) 'journalist' part of 'citizen journalist'. So let's not beat about the bush here and call it how we see it - consider that fair warning.
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🚲 Filters at Bruntsfield Links (James Gillespies Primary School, Whitehouse Loan), Strathearn Road, Canaan Lane and Braid Rd have been made permanent (after much campaigning), with a new filter at Clinton Rd coming (Canaan Lane will be covered by a temporary order while it goes through the statutory process to give it permanent status);
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💬 In the Braid Estate, 'contentious' and 'controversial' (can you detect sarcasm?) filters at Hermitage Gardens and Braid Avenue where both meet Cluny Drive were the main subject of Thursday's discussions, where there were four deputations and a lot of worrying about alignment of divisive 'sides', which are best described as:
"The parent councils of five local Primary schools, concerned parents, active travel lobbying groups and local residents, aligned with the goals of the quiet route and wider policies the council itself claims to have in favour of the protection of vulnerable road users who have now been using a council-designed 'quiet route' for over five years"
vs.
"A gaggle of wealthy, retired (time-rich) and organised NIMBYs who miss the convenience of driving down Braid Avenue and whose lawyers put the sh*ts up CEC's legal department; people for whom the remaining 'Spaces for People'-era interventions are not a lifeline but a mere inconvenience, and perhaps more viscerally a visible reminder of a time when their freedoms truly were impinged on by something far more terrible than having to drive two blocks further when leaving the house."
🧐 Guess which side the Administration backed? Are you scared of lawyers too?
🥀 Of course it's not the safety of children and vulnerable road users that won out, this is Edinburgh. The Labour administration took a position on 'drawing a line' under the whole saga, which of course is done not by correcting leaks in the traffic filtering system but by ripping filters out entirely in favour of twelve months of monitoring — and more importantly unrestricted driving — before thinking about whether or not to intervene again. Because hey - it might not be theirs to deal with, by then...
🔖 Don't worry though, leaflets will be circulated to raise awareness before the roads are knowingly made less safe, assumedly with a page about Walking and cycling through the Braid Estate that just reads "Sucks to be you, buy a car".
🧠 The Lib Dems spent the session on grave chin-stroking whataboutery around abstract legal risks, studiously avoiding discussing the inherent road dangers for kids commuting to school in the area in spite of having been one of the strongest voices in the room after Thomas Wong was killed cycling to school in 2024. But why would they speak up? The debacle of the quiet route having been turned into a neverendum on 'options' was a direct result of their interference back in 2023, options doomed to fail because of the now-censured and conflicted conduct of one of their own local Councillors.
Edinburgh's Liberal Democrats are like a brainworm for progressive council policy on sustainable transport, albeit one that refuses to fully take control of its lumbering host because it's actually got quite a comfortable salary from a side gig as a children's TV host. All of the directional influence, none of the responsibility - nor the moral exoskeleton required to care.
🖍️ The Conservative group decided the right thing to focus on was not the management of traffic in the immediate locality and the danger it poses but whether a theoretical, unscoped and unfunded park and ride facility for the A702 corridor was a good idea in the eyes of the groups giving deputation. The fact the different groups were unanimous in agreement is more a reflection of how utterly removed from the matter at hand this question was, though it admittedly could make a difference if paired with a nice bit of congestion charging reducing inbound journeys from Midlothian. But hey - it did serve as a useful way to participate in the discussion and be seen to be taking it seriously without actually taking it seriously.
Also good to see a bit of deliberate misunderstanding from the Tories on Spokes' written deputation referring to the A702 corridor as "hostile" for cycling. This of course refers to the northern section beyond Braidburn Valley park parallel to the quiet route being discussed, where protected cycleways and bus lanes give way to... zero cycling provision for the rest of the route. But oooh, why have we put these cycleways in on Comiston Rd only for these oiks to call them hostile?
Sadly Spokes' resources group have recently had to abandon their 'Join the dots and colour in' deputation versions for younger readers and the hard of thinking, else such confusion could have been avoided.
🤔 This might all seem a bit bile-ridden and disrespectful. The councillors and officers our team have met are professional, courteous, inclusive and passionate public servants, trying to do their best for the city. Perhaps keep this in mind - if it were your own family's safety at risk on this 'quiet route', perhaps you'd have as strong a take on this as we do.
Unfortunately, en masse and particularly where Labour align themselves with the Lib Dems and Tories on matters relating to vulnerable road users, the actions of this particular brain trust tend to fall well beyond the possibility of respectful coverage from anyone paying attention that understands what's actually at stake.
This Council could get out of its own way and deliver a network of safe and protected cycle infrastructure — yes, including filtered streets! — following in the fairly recent footsteps of Paris, London and now Glasgow too, realising lower rates of injury and death on the roads, eased congestion, improved public health and air quality, reduced carbon emissions and significant return on investment with associated local economic benefits.
Instead, it's spending yet more time and money deliberately reintroducing through-traffic on one of the north-south arteries in its own City Mobility Plan's Primary Cycling Network in the face of pleas (and evidence) from FIVE schools, concerned parents and local residents.
Fearty political pandering has no place when protections for users supposedly at the top of the 'sustainable transport hierarchy' - especially schoolchildren - are at risk. To Councillors, that hierarchy might just be another policy diagram on a bit of paper; to those of us moving by those modes, we have to live with the consequences of your inability to deliver it.
🚸 We heard from representatives from the parent councils of five different primary schools on the route, as well as a strong deputation from residents within the estate in support, making calm, coherent and compelling pleas for the continuation of the filters - citing council policies and programmes, evidence of speed reduction and safety improvements, and the use of the route by children walking and cycling to school who stand to be in significantly more danger from through-traffic with the reestablishment of known rat-runs through the area if filters are taken out. What we saw at committee were residents and parents taking the time to organise and back the City of Edinburgh Council on its own stated priorities and policies, which based on current progress read more like a fairy story than an instruction manual.
🎤 The two verbal deputations in support simply must be watched (44m onwards)- there can be no clearer argument made and all involved made a fantastic case - extremely strong work and we're very grateful to those groups for their efforts.
There are, of course, a handful of reasonable criticisms of measures in the area, which the anti-filter groups will ocassionaly accidentally ricochet off of as they ramble away; there are a couple of routes where through-traffic to work around existing filter alignments has increased traffic on inner streets.
Such groups then call for the removal of the filters by way of cause, ignoring that this may initially relieve their streets but will induce more traffic to the area in general — which has seen a 43% reduction since the scheme began — and that there are simple tweaks and additions to be made to remove these rat-runs and the traffic they enable. These were presented to TEC as an amendment by the Green group, and based on measures actually drawn up by Officers to mitigate such issues in the first place.
Green group councillors Ben Parker and Chas Booth made a commendable effort at committee, under at times quite barbed comments and scrutiny from council colleagues, given that they seemed to be - along with the SNP - the only adults in the room more concerned with the welfare of residents than the council's corporate backside.
If you take just one thing away from reading all of this — other than a righteous ferocity — it's that there are progressive parties who understand we need to rebalance allocated space and safety on our roads by managing car traffic, who go to bat for us at committee every time and put this stuff in their manifestos, and in other cities where they hold the balance of local democratic power they are already delivering for cyclists, wheelers and walkers in ways this adminstration can time and again only make paper promises about.
"Councillors will be judged on deeds - not words." — Kirsty Lewin, Infrasisters, March 2024
Use your vote in the 2027 council election wisely.
🔎 Items for Scrutiny
🚋 8.1 Trams consultation and market research report
📄 Report [PDF] »
🌐 Supporting documents (list of 16) [Webpage, PDF Links] »
🥄 This time round, we've run out of spoons.
You'll need to round this one up for yourselves; the Webcast features this item from 4h 25m.
Thanks for reading.
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