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Shortcut might right security blight

Dear Spurtle

Edinburgh Council continues to complain to Network Rail about their overblown response at Waverley Station to an imaginary security threat which is currently causing not just inconvenience to the public but also damage to traffic flow and thus the economic life of our city.

It is really time that the Council took a much firmer stance with Network Rail. May I suggest that this should take the form of threatening to reassert the pedestrian right of way over the station 
from Calton Road to Jeffrey Street which was provided until ‘temporary’ closure in the 1950s. The provision of this route was one of the conditions which allowed the station to be built in the first place, but it is probably only the Council that would have locus to legally enforce reopening were it so minded.

The potentially vast cost of reinstallation might well concentrate the corporate mind at Network Rail  and encourage them to drop their ‘Security Theatre’. If not, forcing reopening would be useful to pedestrians who currently have to go the long way round when the station is closed at night.

John Hein

(Montgomery Street)

[Map: Bartholomew, 1865]

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  8m. more on Calton Rd - Jeffrey St bridge here: neglecting duty & abusing word "temporary"!

 2m Yes was very sorry to see remains of that link removed in the reglazing works - love to see it reinstated! :-)