Sign of the times

Marcus Hunt (Letters, 7 April) writes about the increasing clutter of signage in Edinburgh city centre, and asks whether “the protectors of Edinburgh’s heritage” care about it.

Evidently they don’t, given the wide selection of redundant signs just a few minutes from my own front door in the so-called “World Heritage Site”.

Some choice examples: a succession of big yellow “diversion” signs in the neighbourhood still confuses drivers unnecessarily nearly four weeks after the associated roadworks have been completed.

Another local sign advertises a “new” one-way system that has been in place for at least three years; and yet another yellow panel warns of the permanent closure of a nearby street – “with effect from October 2006”.

Meanwhile, tourists visiting the very heart of the city must be bemused by the signs in St Andrew Square advertising a tram line which runs all the way to Newhaven, and which “will deliver a new transport choice to Edinburgh’s streets by 2011”.

So the council would seem to have no effective system for the removal of its own redundant signage, while guardian bodies like Edinburgh World Heritage seem more interested these days in promoting sight-seeing city bus tours than in pesky details like street clutter.

David Jackson Young

India Street

Edinburgh