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Councillors are claiming for taxi fares when they have free bus passes and a survey reveals which city areas are safest

New figures have revealed councillors claimed for nearly 3,000 in taxi bills last year, despite some of them having free bus passes

Using the excuse that taxis are quicker than buses is rather lame. It would appear these people do not have the ability to pre-plan their journey and therefore take into consideration the travelling time on the bus compared to a taxi.

Hong Kong Fooey

"She insisted that buses would not get her around the city to meetings quickly enough" – yeah, but she thinks it's okay to try and force everyone else on to their sub-standard public transport service.

fresian

2694.89 divided by 58 is 46.46 so the total taxi bill is less than a single bus fare per councillor per week.

AlanW

Very few other organisations would allow travelling expenses to be claimed between home and place of work (in this case the council) and to claim that a taxi is needed when pushed for time suggests that a (cheap) alarm clock is needed.

Busy bus user

If Cllrs or staff have to attend meetings and events which don't get them home until late in the evening then I've no objections to costs. If I had to work late I would at least expect my employer to offer me a taxi.

Also if you add up the time spent by a cllr e.g. depending on the time of day a 20 min journey can take over an hour on a bus, what's a cllr's hourly rate? Probably more than a 10 taxi fair.

Mai P

The extent of the divide between how safe people feel in their neighbourhoods has been revealed by a survey of Capital residents.

I have no idea why the Inch was chosen to spotlight these findings but it's certainly not a close knit community and there certainly ARE gangs roaming around. Admittedly, these are mostly just cheeky wee laddies but there's also a big cocaine influx there too.

Vanderbrock

I've lived in Leith for 10 years and apart from 1 incident in Henderson street about 4 years ago (by a lad I've since found didn't even live in the area) I've never had any problems. Stay away from Kirkgate and Foot of the Walk between 11pm and 2am on a Saturday and you won't have issues 99% of the time. I've had more problems further up Leith Walk and around the city centre. However having said that, some more resources around the problem areas would be nice. Police down at The Shore is great but they're really needed elsewhere.

James Collins