The new City Centre West to East Link (CCWEL)
The City Centre West to East Link runs between Roseburn and York Place at the east end of the city centre
It has cost £19 million and was first planned in 2014
The two-mile route is largely segregated from other traffic but is on roads in quieter streets in the West End
West sections complete are on Roseburn Terrace, West Coates, Haymarket Terrace, Roseberry Crescent, Grosvenor Crescent, Manor Place and Melville Street
East sections complete are on North St David Street (off St Andrew Square) and York Place
The George Street section connecting the two parts is expected to be built by 2025
The route links with cycleways at either end - Roseburn Path and Leith Walk
The City Centre West to East Link runs between Roseburn and York Place at the east end of the city centre
It has cost £19 million and was first planned in 2014
The two-mile route is largely segregated from other traffic but is on roads in quieter streets in the West End
West sections complete are on Roseburn Terrace, West Coates, Haymarket Terrace, Roseberry Crescent, Grosvenor Crescent, Manor Place and Melville Street
East sections complete are on North St David Street (off St Andrew Square) and York Place
The George Street section connecting the two parts is expected to be built by 2025
The route links with cycleways at either end - Roseburn Path and Leith Walk
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:05 I'm Alistair Dalton, Transport Correspondent of the Scotsman.
00:09 I'm on the new City Centre West East link, a long-awaited scheme for safe cycling across
00:17 Edinburgh City Centre from Roseburn in the west to York Place beside the top of Leith
00:24 Walk in the east.
00:26 It's an impressive addition to safe cycling in Edinburgh. You feel that you are segregated
00:32 and off the main drag of traffic, particularly between Roseburn and Haymarket where there's
00:41 a busy section of main road.
00:43 This scheme has taken ten years from first being approved by the City Council. It's going
00:49 to cost £19 million and it's actually not quite finished because there's a section between
00:54 Charlotte Square and St Andrew's Square along George Street which is still to be completed.
01:00 The scheme's taken so long because there was a lot of opposition, particularly to do with
01:05 some road closures and junction changes. There was a whole lot of bureaucracy that had to
01:10 get over and there was also staff cuts at City Council.
01:15 And the cycling campaign spokes who lobby for cycling in the Lothians talk about this
01:21 being an astonishing length and complexity of this scheme's history. But at the same
01:27 time they do acknowledge it's a very significant development, a massive step forward they say,
01:33 a substantial main road reallocation of space from cars to bikes.
01:37 So the idea of the scheme is in the west it will link with the Roseburn cycle path which
01:42 takes riders up towards the north and then through George Street there will be a separate
01:49 route south up the mound and towards the meadows and then in the east down Leith Walk where
01:56 a cycle path has been developed already.
01:59 The City Council are putting a lot of emphasis on the importance of this scheme, saying it's
02:05 the biggest piece of cycling and walking infrastructure that the city has seen yet and it should be
02:12 the first of many more miles of safe cycling across Edinburgh.
02:17 These cycle lanes will be needed because Edinburgh City Council has a very ambitious target of
02:24 reducing road traffic by 30% by 2030. That's even higher than the national target of 20%.
02:31 So they need to encourage a lot of people to stop driving and walk and cycle instead.
02:39 (upbeat music)
02:41 you