The good practice in Edinburgh ends abruptly here. What on Earth is going through the minds of people who allow this? Note the children taking advantage of the queuing traffic to cross the road. There are people trying to live in this vile, polluted environment. What is causing the queue, which extends far to the left, is heavy traffic approaching the multi-lane junction in the middle of a local centre that you can just see in the distance. This is a monumental barrier to sustainable transport, and it had me scouring the A-Z to find a less hostile alternative. There wasn't one, so it was time to put my helmet on and ride down the middle of the lane, heading for the Water of Leith path. I found it intensely unpleasant, and most people wouldn't do it. You might think this is an important A road. It isn't. It isn't even a B road. When a road this minor has traffic this bad a city is dangerously ill with car sickness. The junction in the distance is with Leith Walk, a road that has become infamous. Leith Walk is an A road (the A900), but in a Dutch context it would take you into the city centre but no further, so it would be quiet. In Edinburgh it allows you to drive straight through the city centre via the awful junction outside Waverley Station. Leith Walk is infamous because the shops along its length lost huge amounts of their income (and some went under) whilst the road was dug up in preparation for the tram. Unfortunately the tram was built in the usual British style (expensively over-engineed but badly constructed), and the hopelessly overrunning project was abandoned. So Leith Walk is back to being a bloated monstrosity rammed with private motor vehicles. Local cycle campaigners look at the width and wonder why there's no #spaceforcycling. In a more civilised country there would be.
