Edinburgh publishes draft 10 year City Mobility Plan

Edinburgh’s Draft City Mobility Plan (CMP) has been published, and it sets out a 10 year vision for mobility and transport in the city, reinforcing the Council’s ambition of making Edinburgh carbon neutral by 2030 and responding to evolving demands.

The draft plan is said to rethink the way people, goods and services move around the city and is aligned to the forthcoming City Plan 2030, the Council’s second Local Development Plan, which aims to transform the city’s development to sustainably manage Edinburgh’s growth.

Council Leader, Adam McVey, said: “We’re already making great strides towards reducing carbon emissions in Edinburgh but, if we are to achieve our 2030 target, now is the time to be even bolder and more ambitious. The City Mobility Plan offers a radical, 10 year plan to transform transport in the Capital, achieving the kind of change we need by expanding use of bus, tram, rail, walking and cycling to provide the best quality of life for everyone.

“What’s crucial to any strategy, however, is buy-in of our residents and those who travel into the Capital to work and visit. Everyone needs to play their part and I look forward to engaging with the public as we progress a finalised City Mobility Plan, alongside the development of the City Plan 2030.”

City Mobility Plan priorities and actions

New policy measures focusing on public transport provision, improved cycling, walking and electric vehicle infrastructure and reducing the volume of polluting traffic in the city have reportedly drawn on feedback gathered during public engagement carried out in 2018. If approved by committee, a public consultation will be carried out on the draft CMP, in parallel with the City Plan 2030 (pending its approval by Planning Committee), before a finalised plan is brought back to the Transport and Environment Committee later in 2020.

In addition to the City Plan 2030, the CMP is interlinked with a range of local and national initiatives aiming to bolster environmentally-friendly travel and manage population growth and development sustainably. These include Edinburgh’s City Centre Transformation (CCT) Strategy, the update of the National Transport Strategy (NTS) and the emerging Edinburgh and South East Scotland Region (ESESR) Growth Framework.

The plan also seeks to tackle the varied transport and mobility challenges posed by significant congestion, carbon dioxide emissions generated by traffic, pockets of poor air quality and areas of lacking public transport provision, amongst other issues.

A three-stage approach outlines a package of measures to be implemented during the lifespan of the plan, building on progress made by the Council in recent years to develop and promote sustainable and accessible transport. The first phase will incorporate several projects already underway in Edinburgh, such as the construction of the tram route to Newhaven, the delivery of a Low Emissions Zone and the City Centre Transformation programme, which aims to revamp the way in which people move around the city centre.