Please see below the City of Edinburgh Council's communication released today, and forwarded by Cllr Ashley Graczyk (Sighthill/Gorgie Ward), in relation to proposed enabling works associated with the Roseburn to Union Canal project scheduled in the New Year:
The Roseburn to Union Canal project is a multi-million pound scheme that will transform the quality of walking and cycling connections from the North Edinburgh Path Network (NEPN) and QuietRoutes 8 and 9 (west Edinburgh) to the Union Canal, and onwards to the Meadows and Southside, as well as southwest Edinburgh and National Cycle Network route 75 (NCN75).
On 6 August 2020 the Policy and Sustainability Committee approved the undertaking of further work, including a package of enabling works comprising of site clearance, ground investigation and excavations to locate existing underground services. These works are necessary to complete the design of the proposals and to procure delivery and are being undertaken to validate the design and establish ground conditions.
Since then, work has progressed to finalise the design and to submit a planning application, which is scheduled to be considered by the Planning Committee on 17 February 2021.
Works will commence on-site on the package of enabling works in January 2021 and this is due to be completed by early April 2021. The project is essentially divided into three separate sections – Sauchiebank, Duff Street and Dalry Park and the proposed enabling works will be undertaken across all of these.
The works require the felling of 61 trees to gain access to the areas to be investigated. The outcomes of the ground investigation works, which include trial pits and boreholes to establish soil conditions and properties, are expected to be available by mid-April 2021. Investigations will also be undertaken to establish whether there are any ground contamination issues.
Further trial pits are being undertaken to confirm the locations and depths of underground utilities apparatus and to identify any potential issues that may arise from this. The removal of Japanese Knotweed, identified previously, will be undertaken later as part of the main works.
The project programme is being constantly reviewed to reflect progress on these issues. At present the high level programme for delivery stipulates that the main works will commence in mid-October 2021 and will be completed in mid October 2022, subject to planning approval.
Non-statutory public and key stakeholder consultations undertaken during the development of the proposals identified strong support from the vast majority of respondents. In addition, many respondents emphasised the importance of retaining the green space and biodiversity and, in response, the project team made various changes to the proposals, including developing tree protection and replanting strategies and designing landscape proposals to increase the biodiversity of the route.
As a result of the significant public interest in this project we intend to keep local elected members and the local community informed of any developments and key milestones in the delivery of this project. A maildrop to commercial and residential properties situated adjacent to the project area has also been issued in addition to this letter to local ward councillors and the local community will also be informed of the enabling works through social media.
There will require to be a degree of temporary traffic management to facilitate the Contractor’s site accommodation, general access to the site and trial pit excavations to pavements.
These are programmed as follows:
Russell Road 11/01/21 – 01/04/21
West Approach Road 14/01/21- 26/02/21
Dalry Road 08/02/21- 29/03/21 We hope that this correspondence fully updates you on the current position.
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