The City of Edinburgh Council is consulting on guidance for Developer Contributions to infrastructure under the ‘City Plan 2030’. (Here, until 17 September: https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/developer-contributions-sup-guidance/ )
Developer Contributions are funds secured from developers to pay for facilities needed because of the development; such as improved transport, school buildings etc. They can cover the cost of new services needed to serve the development.
EBUG also sent written comments to the Council. The main points are:
EBUG has commented previously on Developer Contributions:
https://edinburghbususers.group/missed-opportunity-to-improve-city-buses
https://edinburghbususers.group/cammo-meadows-planning-for-public-transport
In summary, we believe that in recent years, the City of Edinburgh Council has missed opportunities to use the planning process to improve bus services, via Section 75 and direct developer action.
It appears to us that broadly, a lot of work has been put into these issues with respect to major development areas such as West Edinburgh and Granton. What is not clear are mechanisms for small and medium-sized developments. In these situations, what is often needed is a relatively small scale intervention such as upgrading bus stops and on-street Bustracker displays. The Council has generally excellent guidance on these in PT1, PT2 and PT3 here https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/download/13723/edinburgh-street-design-guidance (though we disagree with the occasional references to 400m between bus stops). It would be reasonable to require all bus stops serving a development to comply with this guidance.
We note the references to ‘Mobility Hubs’. We have been critical of these, for example in our response to the Council’s Public Transport Action Plan https://edinburghbususers.group/comments-on-the-city-of-edinburgh-councils-draft-public-transport-action-plan#more-8442 ‘We understand the nature and benefits of Interchanges, but the Mobility Hub concept seems to be an overdeveloped, overcomplicated, and expensive case of Interchange suffering from Scope Creep. What is needed are clearly sign-posted and easily navigated interchanges throughout the on-street PT network’