Yay! Princes Street has been re-opened. But caveated by a big 'hmmmmm' with regard to cycling provision.
I was never a fan of the old cycle lane, which kept you at the left, having buses pulling in front of you to disgorge at the bus stops also located there. I could never really understand why they didn't put a lane against the central dividing reservation.
Of course that's not really possible now because the tram lines are there. And that might explain why the re-opened street has NO cycle lanes. Yep, the main straight wide busy commuter route road in the city has no cycling provision. Actually, I tell a lie, there are a few ASLs with cycle reservoirs. So it doesn't appear that they ran out of time to put in the lanes. Equally strangely one (just one) of the reservoirs is tarmacced in red (which I was under the impression they'd decided to stop doing, the red being a threat to World Heritage status in a way that the new giant pillars in the centre of the street for the tram power lines aren't...).
Another very odd bit of street furniture is found at the bottom of the Mound as you're heading to cross Princes Street. You're no longer allowed to turn left onto the street, which isn't really the odd thing. Rather it's the 'Cyclists Dismount' sign, just before you get to another ASL/cycle reservoir. The implication is that you're not allowed to ride you bike on Princes Street at all, even to go across it, and must walk. But then why the reservoir? It's just... Out of place...
And then there's the short section of Princes Street west of the National Gallery on which the inside lane in both directions has been cobbled. Deliberately so given they weren't there before. It's something of a 'feature'. So in overtaking stationary buses (of which there are many, as anyone who has travelled on Princes Street in rush hour will know) not only do you have to make sure that your wheels don't get trapped in the lines themselves (the gap is easily wide enough for a road bike tyre) but you'll find yourself on some rather uneven looking cobbles. It should make for some excitement, especially in the wet.
As before I tihnk I'll just keep avoiding riding on Princes Street, whcih may be the intention (as with Sir Harry Lauder Road the interchanges were deliberately engineered to discourage cycling (got that from the horse's mouth) rather than going down the more difficult route of a traffic order such as exists for the bypass).
I realise this will all sound like cycling whingeing, but if you take into account the council promising on numerous occasions to turn Edinburgh into a 'model cycling city' and signing up to remarkably high aspirations for cycle use by 2020, those nice words never seem to match up on the ground. And this is just one more example.
