Council ignores consultation - happy to forego £500k revenue because cars

Consultations - mixed bag. Not infrequently seem like a box-ticking exercise when it's clear a decision has already been taken and won't be changed in detail, never mind in whole.  Sometimes there also seems to be active "busing protestors in" / rent-a-crowd by the usual suspects.

We've had recent consultations in Edinburgh on retaining covid #1-period active travel measures. I think there were some efforts to distinguish "residents" from other responses - and certainly to pull out business vs. personal responses.  I've also heard allegations that some people (indeed councillors) were doing their utmost to lobby against / bring in contrary opinions.

However it was, the result was that - except for "school streets" interventions (and even then only a little over half in favour) the responses were overwhelmingly "throw them in the bin". There was some council havering, then they brough in some "focus groups" instead. Finally the council then pretty much ignored the results. (Exception - removing much of the "safer walking" stuff - which just happened to be along busy roads and removed some parking...).

Now I'm glad that they had some spine and have said "this is important and you hate us now but you'll thank us tomorrow". Not bending to the "we support this kind of thing (honest) but just not here / now" lobby. However it does seem like business as usual. For decades previously they've happily ignored objections to dangerous tram track layouts (until they got sued too often), to adding additional capacity for motor vehicles etc. Also I think some of the boos in this case were because the "infra" was inadequate, incomplete and occasionally bad - which is largely true.

You gotta love a bit of democracy