We’ve reported recently that in order for the worksite between Picardy Place and York Place to be extended to allow more work to take place that the current terminus at York Place will be closing from early February and in this article we see the progress which has been made so far in this area.
Its only been a few weeks since this worksite entered the second of three phases and in that time the work has led to pretty major traffic delays through the area – none more so than for Lothian Buses services. Some bus routes were diverted from 17th January (the date the works were extended from) but within just a day or two further routes had to be diverted at short notice for some of the day as there were severe delays for eastbound traffic. After around a week of these continued delays the decision was taken by Lothian Buses to remove all northbound and eastbound services from York Place for the duration of the works.
And the reason for all those delays and disruption is seen in this photo which is looking eastbound across the Picardy Place tramstop site. The pole in the centre holds up the end of the current overhead and trams to Leith will run away from the camera. The excavator on the left is in the middle of the York Place/Broughton Street junction. The Playhouse Theatre can be seen in the distance with the four flagpoles and roughly along the line of lampposts on the right there was, until the 1960s, a block of tenements where Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) was born in 1859. (Photograph by Roy Calderwood, 28th January 2022)