Inquirer writer inspires push for ambitious car-free day to mark Le Tour in the capital
Councillors will this week look at the possibility of staging a Car Free Day in Edinburgh to coincide with the Tour de France’s Grand Départ next July - inspired by a series of articles in the Edinburgh Inquirer.
The Scottish Greens Councillor for Portobello & Craigmillar, Lorenzo Martinico, has a motion before the full council on Thursday, and award-winning active travel engineer Corey Boyle has been invited to speak to the meeting following his “Building a Cycling City” series in The Inquirer.
In his series Corey challenged the “unthinking accommodation of the motor car” at the expense of other transport and called for action reclaim the space of our streets for communities. In his final of three articles, he explained how he believed solutions creating better business, health and happiness outcomes could be achieved, starting with car-free days.
The motion calls for a report to go to the Transport and Environment Committee within three months “setting out the feasibility, costs and likely impacts of marking car-free day in a more substantial way, including, but not limited to, exploring the potential to close one or more arterial city-centre roads and Town Centres for the duration of the day, including consideration of using one or more streets that have been proposed for future partial or complete pedestrianisation in the City Mobility Plan, and including exploring the feasibility of this coinciding with the Grand Depart on 2 July 2027 as the first of an annual car-free day in subsequent years.”
Giving the streets back to the people
The motion also notes “the series of articles in the Edinburgh Inquirer by award-winning civil engineer Corey Boyle recently, including the suggestion that Edinburgh should undertake a more substantial approach to Car Free Day, and that this should be held to coincide with the Grand Depart of the Tour de France.”
Corey said: “Car Free Days have many guises. Ciclovías in Bogotá, CicLAvia in Los Angeles, Paulista Aberta in São Paulo, Muévete en Bici in Mexico City and Open Streets across the world. Held weekly, monthly, or annually in over 400 cities and towns worldwide, in rich or poor nations, they share one thing in common: they close the streets to private cars and give them back to their residents.
“Brussels, once ranked Europe’s most congested city, now hosts Europe’s largest car-free zone, closing over 160 km² across the entire Brussels-Capital Region to private cars on its annual car-free day. A new campaign aims to extend it to four days each year, with 2027 set to cover two.
“Data there show that if daily traffic levels were reduced to car-free-day levels, child asthma cases would fall by up to 34% in the busiest areas. On the day itself, streets are filled with families and children, street markets, live music, and people enjoying a peaceful, fresh-aired city, with public transport free.”
Space for kids to play
Councillor Martinico told us: “Like many young people, I am very worried about the impact that the Climate and Biodiversity crisis will have on our ability to live healthy and peaceful lives.
“So I am calling for a day where we reimagine our streets being opened up to different usage: remove bulky car traffic, and they can become a space for kids to play, to share a meal with our neighbours, and maybe one day to grow some food.”
Ahead of the motion to the council, Cllr Martinico called on Edinburgh residents to write to their local councillors asking them to support the move and give the city’s streets back to the people.
‘If you told me a year ago our staff would need bodycams to feel safe in the centre of Edinburgh, I’d have scoffed’
Shopkeepers tell of the impact of abuse from masked youths on Princes Street
by David Forsth
“The shoplifters are really brazen. They just come in, take things and walk out and when we approach them, they’re not bothered.” The words of Holly, a city centre store manager.
Holly does not run a shop in Edinburgh, but rather in Nottingham and she was speaking to the Nottingham Post two years ago about a problem that was becoming so intense that Nottinghamshire Police launched Operation Reclaim in partnership with local authorities and other partners, including business organisations and transport authorities.
New powers were given to police, including just last month the ability to enforce restrictions on wearing face-coverings, notably balaclavas. In the past few weeks Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner Gary Godden has welcomed a reduction of more than 40% in youth antisocial behaviour, with “encouraging” signs already from the “balaclava ban”.
Retailers and business organisations here believe there are lessons to be learned from Nottingham to tackle a problem they say is escalating fast.
Consider the words of John, a store manager at the east end of Princes Street, on the trouble his staff face on a daily basis from aggressive gangs of school-age youngsters, for whom consequences appear limited: “If you’d told me even a year ago that our staff would need to wear bodycams to feel safe and discourage anti-social behaviour in the centre of Edinburgh, I’d have scoffed. But that’s how bad it has become.”
Intimidating
He told the Inquirer that on two recent occasions he has had to usher customers out of the rear door, as they were intimidated by a gang of youths loitering outside the shop shouting and behaving aggressively: “Some of these gangs are almost feral. They are incredibly abusive, taunt staff that they can’t be touched. They aren’t just about stealing either, sometimes it simply appears to be driven by angry, anti-social behaviour and a desire to be aggressive and intimidating.
“We’ve had to change the way we staff the store, especially from 3.30-7.30pm when the schools are out, ensuring that at the worst times we have sufficient people in the shop to make sure we can look after each other. In turn, the cost of that simply adds to the difficult trading environment retail is experiencing.
