Response to Actions to Deliver Edinburgh’s City Mobility Plan

The University’s Estate Department responded to the City of Edinburgh’s Actions to Deliver Edinburgh’s City Mobility plan consultation, which was a follow-up to the 2020 consultation. The format of this response was a letter to the Placemaking & Mobility Strategy & Development Manager.

Ruth White
Placemaking & Mobility Strategy & Development Manager
Placemaking and Mobility
Sustainable Development PLACE
The City of Edinburgh Council
Waverley Court, Business Unit G3,
4 East Market Street,
Edinburgh EH8 8BG

06 July 2023

Dear Ruth

Actions to Deliver Edinburgh’s City Mobility Plan – University of Edinburgh Response to Consultation

I write on behalf of the University of Edinburgh in relation to the Consultation on the Actions to deliver City Mobility Plan.

We have carefully reviewed the suite of Actions Plans, and overall we have found them to be clear, coherent and aligned. We recognise the very real and present challenges the Council faces in delivering these ambitious and essential actions that will bring about a lower traffic, more liveable and more sustainable city.

We have recently adopted an Integrated Transport Plan (2023-30) to improve connectivity to and between our campuses and residencies with the intent of increasing the proportion of students and staff using sustainable transport options. The Plan is aligned with the targets of the City Mobility Plan, including the adoption of the mode share targets to support the 30% reduction in car KMs by 2030. It includes a range of actions covering: walking & wheeling; cycling; public transport; private motorised vehicles; and fleet management. Our actions complement or entirely rely upon the delivery of actions within the City Mobility Plan, and we will continue to work collaboratively with the City of Edinburgh Council, Transport for Edinburgh, Lothian Buses and other partners for their effective implementation.

Our comments on the individual Action Plans:

Active Travel

We regard many of the projects included in the Active Travel Action Plan as essential to
improve walking, wheeling and cycling connectivity to and between our campuses, notably:

• The Cameron Toll – BioQuarter active travel route: critical for the development of the BioQuarter site and targets to reduce car mode share. We would like to see the route extended to King’s Buildings to connect with QR6 and the proposed Marchmont-King’s Buildings route.
• Marchmont – King’s Buildings: important improvements to connect King’s Buildings with an area densely populated by our students and staff.
• Meadows to George Street: connecting the City Centre West to East Link with the Meadows is a key enabler to increasing the proportion of active travel amongst our students and staff commuting to our Central Area and King’s Buildings.
• Gilmerton / Newcraighall to Cameron Toll and the city: this is of particular relevance to our Peffermill site, and to students and staff commuters.
• Travelling safely Experimental Traffic Regulation Orders schemes: we regard these schemes, in particular S1-3 and S7, as important improvements to the active travel connectivity of our campuses and intend to offer our full support for their continuation when the statutory consultation opens shortly.

We warmly welcome the proposals for behaviour change actions and the recognition of the further and higher education sector as key partners to enable the delivery of actions to encourage more young people to adopt active travel behaviours. We remain supportive of the city continuing to investigate options to deliver a city-wide public cycle hire scheme. The former scheme was very popular amongst our students and staff, and we are grateful for the ongoing opportunity to provide an electric cycle hire
scheme at some of our student residencies using the former Edinburgh Cycle Hire Scheme eBikes.

Public Transport

We agree that public transport has a key role to play to meet the net zero target. It is critical that reduced journey times and improved network coverage is achieved through the development of a mass rapid transit plan for the city and region. The delivery of a North / South mass rapid transport solution linking to BioQuarter is critical to the expansion of the site. We note that there is limited reference to the delivery of orbital public transport routes which are essential in connecting outlying employment areas such as BioQuarter, King’s Buildings, Western General and Easter Bush to residential areas of the city. The inclusion of light rail in the Young Persons Free Bus Travel scheme is important to ensure our young people can take full advantage of the expanding tram network. The scheme has been of great benefit to our eligible students and staff, as evidenced in bus passenger growth on routes connecting with our campuses. It is unfortunate that 50% of our students are not eligible as they are older than 21 years. We strongly urge that work to improve the affordability of public transport ticketing includes flexible reduced-cost ticketing for full time students.

The inclusion of light rail in the Young Persons Free Bus Travel scheme is important to ensure our young people can take full advantage of the expanding tram network. The scheme has been of great benefit to our eligible students and staff, as evidenced in bus passenger growth on routes connecting with our campuses. It is unfortunate that 50% of our students are not eligible as they are older than 21 years. We strongly urge that work to improve the affordability of public transport ticketing includes flexible reduced-cost ticketing for full time students.

Parking

We note that the Parking Action Plan did not include any information on the City Mobility Plan’s inclusion of a Workplace Parking Levy (WPL) for the city. In response to the CMP consultation in 2020 we expressed our concern that the WPL may be delivered before practical and sustainable transport alternatives have been implemented. We hope that the absence of further details at this time reflects the Council has taken a similar view for the time being.

Air Quality

The University has significant research expertise in the field of air quality and health. We support the implementation of the Low Emission Zone and the alignment of this with the City Centre Transformation area. As an anchor institution with significant research expertise in the field of air quality and its impact on health, we can offer support to communicate the wide ranging health and wellbeing benefits of improving air quality.

Operationally, we share actions to electrify our fleet, improve EV charging facilities and we plan to introduce an EV salary sacrifice scheme for our staff. We also recognise we can pay a role in supporting the electrification of public bus fleets and will continue to collaborate with Lothian Buses and the Council as plans evolve.

Road Safety

We broadly support the Road Safety Action Plan. The safety of vulnerable road users, notably cyclists, is a concern consistently expressed and identified as a barrier to more of our students and staff taking up cycling. We support the action to provide safe, segregated infrastructure where appropriate and the wider network is suitable for safe cycling. In most cases the strategic road network provides the most direct and convenient routes to and between our campuses, yet this is where the majority of road collisions are occurring. We strongly agree that safe, segregated infrastructure is focused on the strategic road network.

Our Future Streets Framework

It is clear that significant work is ongoing to develop the Circulation Plan and Future Streets Framework, and that the focus of this consultation is on encouraging feedback on how and when to prioritise different road users combined with the delivery of the five action plans in a range of differing contexts. We welcome the thematic approach of: i) aiming to deliver a much more people-friendly city centre; ii) Delivering high quality public transport and active travel networks, with an early focus on strategic corridors; and iii) Delivering liveable neighbourhoods. Clearly the compromises necessary to deliver benefits for the local and wider community will be challenging to manage with communities and stakeholders. We would like to see that the Council undertakes Equality Impact Assessments for all of the
Action Plans consulted on, and for the detailed projects that follow.

The University operates across 930,000 square metres of educational and residential estate and maintaining an estate as large as this creates complex operational challenges. We recognise we will need to flex and compromise, particularly in the City Centre Transformation Zone. It is however important to state that to continue our day to day operations, we will require vehicular access to be maintained to service our circa 550 properties on a 24/7 basis.

The University is supportive of the City’s vision, and we look forward to further consultation on the emerging Circulation Plan and detailed design proposals, and continued dialogue to ensure the City and University Strategies align.

Yours sincerely

Damien Toner
Director of Estates