York Place reopened to traffic on Friday (4 months ahead of schedule), and residents in parallel streets to the north are now keener than ever for things to return to the way they were before diversions.
Parking arrangements – ‘including all temporary traffic signal arrangements, parking layouts and road priority changes’ will be restored in the New Town during September (weather permitting) – confirms Alasdair Sim, Edinburgh Trams’ Interface Manager.
At the New Town and Broughton Community Council meeting on 2 September, Sim reiterated that the Council is committed to repairing those areas of Albany Street which have recently been damaged or patched due to increased traffic flows. This work, he has since clarified, will be funded from the Capital Programme and will start early in 2014. No precise date has yet been decided.
In the meantime, parking bays are already being repainted, which, says one resident, ‘would seem somewhat of a waste of tax payer’s money if the whole thing is about to be comprehensively resurfaced’.
On a separate but related note, locals along the former East End diversion corridor are taking a leaf from the book of Randolph Crescent residents in the West by listing structural damage to their properties caused by the sudden increase in traffic. Anecdotal reports of serious new cracks in buildings on Albany Street, Abercromby Place and Heriot Row are quite common, but the challenge now will be to compile sufficient evidence and present it to a standard and format which Council officials will find persuasive.
Haymarket and the West End are expected to reopen later in the autumn, with trams operating by summer 2014 and the project coming in on (the revised) budget of £776m.
The photos on this page were taken last weekend, when Queen Street and York Place did not yet resemble the city centre's principal east–west traffic artery.
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@thespurtle Albany St noticeably quieter since weekend but still quite a bit busier than pre-diversions, can at least x the st again easily!