10% of promenade complete - 90% to go.

Greener Leith was amongst the throng who turned up to witness the official 'opening celebration' for the first 1.6km of Waterfront Promenade on Wednesday. As we nibbled on our free scones we were able to survey the new viewpoint that allows passers by to tarry a while, and look out over to Cramond Island. As the photo above shows, it would perhaps be quite a nice place to watch the day go by. Even if you had to pay for your own scone.

It may surprise some of our readers that we weren't there just for the scones and the view. Greener Leith is not the only organisation to voice concern that the promenade is not predicted to be finished until some time after 2030. So, scones finished, we embarked upon a little reconaisance bike ride with representatives from Sustrans, The City of Edinburgh Council, and SPOKES to see if we could work out a low traffic route between Granton and Portobello, through Leith. It didn't take us long to find places that are not exactly bike friendly:

In fact this photo was taken at the 'other end' of the new promenade path, about one kilometre from the grand opening. It is unfortunate that even the new path is let down by poor access at the eastern end. We are assured that the shortcomings of this entrance will be remedied very soon when the next section of promenade is built.

Sadly, there are greater problems to solve in putting together a safe, useful and appealing coastal route, including the route along Lower Granton Road (where the Duke of Buccleaugh owns potentially useful bits of land), and into Ocean Terminal. From Ocean Terminal, we did come to some agreement however, that the route that Greener Leith proposed some time ago would be the best one to work on developing (with a few tweaks).

We're really pleased that Sustrans, and the local council cycling officer has agreed to help us work to develop this alternative route over the coming years, and we're going to be working together to cost up various route improvements - and then try and get funding for them. Now that Forth Ports have just announced that they're to put their redevelopment plans for the docks 'on-hold' for the moment (it would seem biomass power stations offer greater financial returns at present) the case for investing in a viable low traffic route accross Leith is now even stronger.

If we got scones after the first 1km were built - imagine the celebration when the it really is finished!

Comments

[Flowers]

Nice blog with a nice picture. Your blog is interesting. It was nice going through it. Keep it up the good work. Cheers :)