Roads to nowhere

I’d heard a lot over the past few months about the problems the construction of Edinburgh’s new tram system were causing retailers on Princes Street, but a visit to the Scottish capital at the weekend confirmed just how bad the situation is.

Investing in public transport and new infrastructure is of course vital and you can’t do it without causing some degree of disruption.

But while I’m no engineer, one of the friends I was in Edinburgh with is and he just couldn’t understand why putting some rails on an existing road would be causing quite so much chaos for such a long time.

Apparently there is a row between the council and contractors which has held things up, but that still doesn’t explain why the work couldn’t be done in stages - one part of the street at a time maybe, or one side of the road at a time.

Instead there is just one very narrow pavement in front of the shops and on Friday and Saturday you didn’t need any sophisticated customer counting equipment to work out that shopper traffic was very low for what is supposed to be Scotland’s number one shopping street. The prospect of walking down there was deeply unappealing.

The Princes Street works will apparently be over by Christmas but there will be more big works to be done elsewhere in ther country, notably in London with Crossrail. So here’s a plea. Let’s have a bit more consultation when retailers are going to be affected by major works, and lets keep the disruption down to a minimum. And when it is occuring, lets have some marketing, led by local councils, to remind shoppers that the shops are still open, and maybe some competitions or events to maintain people’s interest.

Otherwise the danger is that by the time the work is finished, shoppers may have found an alternative shopping location which they’re quite happy to stick with.