There is no demand for buses on the Seafield Road East corridor. When the 89 ran along there in the early nineties it was carrying fresh air beyond Leith Links and the only reason why it ran that way was because, at the time, the service terminated outside Marine Garage. As OTW says, anyone going along there will use their cars.
Honestly comparing a service that ran almost 30 years ago to now seems abit unfair, especially with growing businesses and housing to take into factor, yes the car
market is strong but obviously not everyone drives.
the problem is there hasn’t been a proper service linking Portobello to Seafield in forever and not via Seafield Road East but Fillyside, the 69 was a strange concept that was never going to work and the 129 in the later years ran too infrequently, I know the 12 ran down there back till 2008? And the 129 withdrew in 2015, so that’s been over 4 years without a proper link which as I stated above if done properly can work!
I still stand by my comment on how a link from Ocean Terminal to East Lothian would work, either the 106 or 140, honestly the one thing I hear from all this is the Seafield aspect with traffic, and I can’t comment or even defend that, it’s traffic, it happens. but it still seems unfair that the residents of Fillyside and Seafield don’t have a proper service linking the two areas, I know the saying use it or lose it does apply, and the 69 was withdrawn because the route planning was just silly, but y’know have an hourly service down that corridor and see if it picks up and if it proves to be popular then demand should pick up.
If Lothian are good for one thing it’s improving on old services and making them
better than you can imagine, I mentioned the 18 as an example, back in 2016 it was an hourly service that finished early providing direct links along the southern corridor, and now in 2019 it’s been extended twice, runs twice an hour, runs as late as midnight, double decker, and runs on weekends! It’s amazing that it’s taken Lothian the course of 3 years to take a service that folk didn’t imagine would do well due to it being withdrawn in the past, and now turned into one of its most popular routes, honestly if Lothian can do that with the 18, what’s to say they can’t make a service for the Seafield area on the same level? but one step st s time.
Sorry got a little carried away but you get the point!