In an article published in the Edinburgh Evening News under the catchy headline “Edinburgh tram designs criticised after new figures show number of cyclists who fell off their bikes last year due to the tracks”, the newspaper have criticised the trams in the Scottish capital with a freedom of information act request revealing that during 2019 more 30 cyclists were injured having fallen off their bikes “due to the tramlines”.
The heavily critical article on the safety of the trams also reported that since the line opened in 2014 there have been collisions between trams and other road vehicles an average of just under once a month. The article doesn’t draw all parallels with either other tramways – taking Manchester Metrolink as an example there seem to be several collisions a month on an admittedly larger system – or other roads around the capital to see whether this is typical of busy roads. It also doesn’t say how serious these collision are, with many likely to be just minor scrapes as cars, taxis and buses misjudge the space they need to pass the trams.
On the subject of cyclists and the “more than 30” (the exact number isn’t mentioned) is an increase of the average 27 per year seen in a survey undertaken between 2009 and 2016. The article states that September was the most “dangerous” with six cyclists falling “foul of the notoriously slippy tracks.”. July and August saw five with January, February, March, April and June seeing just one reported incident. Again, the severity of the incidents is not mentioned and it seems that if the report is to be believed in all cases it was the sole fault of the design of the tramway.
There is no doubt that the number of incidents with cyclists is a serious issue for Edinburgh Trams but the Council have made attempts to rectify some of the problems but the evidence provided doesn’t show whether these continued incidents are purely down to poor design or if other factors may also be involved.
* The full article can be viewed on the Edinburgh Evening News website, including quotes from cycling campaigners, local politicians and Edinburgh Trams themselves.
How many overall cycling accidents have happened in the city of Edinburgh in that period? Merely to catalogue people falling off the bikes only on tramlines and not elsewhere looks suspiciously like reportage from an anti-tram perspective. Let’s see all the figures and give them a proper statistical analysis before any conclusions can be drawn.
The other possibility, given that there are on-street trams elsewhere in the UK, is that the cyclists in Edinburgh dont exercise sufficient care…..