How Edinburgh can get rid of its disgraceful and dangerous pothole menace

Edinburgh Council should use money raised from the tourist tax to rid the city of its thousands of potholes

Given Edinburgh is Scotland’s capital – and a city that attracts millions of tourists every year – the state of its roads is an absolute disgrace. We may live in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, yet the city’s worst roads look like they have been transplanted from one of the poorest.

Staggeringly, there were more than 20,000 potholes in the city last year, with nearly one in three of its roads in need of some kind of repair work. The council has now estimated that it would cost nearly £86 million to ensure all its roads are “generally in a good state of repair”.

Given the council’s budget for roadworks and surface treatment is just £12m for this financial year, it seems clear that Edinburgh will have to put up with this blight for a long time to come – unless something changes.

Edinburgh's streets have become littered with potholes of various sizes in recent years (Picture: Jane Barlow) | PA

Pothole threat to Tour de France

Potholes and poorly maintained roads are a serious problem for all road users, not just motorists, with people trying to cross the road, particularly elderly pensioners, and cyclists among those at risk.

In two years’ time, Edinburgh will host the ‘Grand Départ’ of the Tour de France and the eyes of cycling fans all over the world will be fixed on the city’s streets. This may be bad enough for Scotland’s international reputation, but if one of the cyclists were to crash because of a pothole, the resulting furore would be considerable.

A cynical way to stop this from happening would be to fix the streets on the Tour’s route, but that would simply highlight the lack of action elsewhere. Smooth streets for Tour de France cyclists, bone-shaking, axle-shattering misery for Edinburgh’s own citizens.

However, this is a solution. From July next year, Edinburgh will impose a five per cent ‘tourist tax’ that is expected to raise £50m a year, with the money to be spent on infrastructure improvements.

We suggest fixing the city’s streets would be far and away the most popular infrastructure improvement. And if visitors effectively paid for Edinburgh to get rid of its pothole menace, then complaints about over-tourism would diminish markedly.

Can we fix it? Yes we can. So let’s do it!