I'm going to focus mostly on the urbanist aspects of this. I was really impressed with the feedback they captured. A plurality of submissions were regarding Pedestrian and Cyclist prioritisation. Great to see. I had very high hopes reading this report.

Of these submissions the majority wanted to see vehicular access restricted more. And several submissions calling for full pedestrianisation of some streets. 2 submissions asked for the area to be shared space. Lets remember that.

Parking was also a significant part of the submissions 13%. Again a majority wanting to see less space dedicated to cars and more to people. Especially given that there are multiple car parks in this area to accommodate parking. 1 submission here asked for more loading bays.

The clear story this report shows is that people want this area to become more people centric and less about cars. But if you look at what has come out of this consultation, you'd be hard pressed to find anything beyond tokenistic gestures. Lets go over each section.

I'm going to focus mostly on the changes from the proposal at the non-statutory consultation. That's what this process was focused on. The feedback was given on them. But I will include drawings of the current layouts for context. It does improve on that but it could be much more

Starting with the centrepiece. The Milk Market itself. Not a huge amount has changed here. More details on the usage of the parking areas.

One loading/taxi area has been removed and one made bigger and defined as "Click and Collect" I'll point out that this will displace a TFI bike station and 6 bike racks(12 spaces) that are pretty heavily used on market days.

Cornmarket Row has had the oneway direction flipped. I guess this is "good" as it will mean that cars leaving Cruise's St Carpark won't cut up through here. Buuut I don't really see why this street or even Carr St along the Milk Market need through traffic at all.

Everywhere they service can be done alternate routes via High Street. This area seems like a perfect spot for a modal filter allowing walking/wheeling/cycling. While also maintaining local traffic on all of them.

Looking at Robert Street and Upper Denmark Street. This is all shared space BTW. Yes including that section outside the car park that is 2 lanes of traffic coming in and out.

So what else have they changed. They've re-added loading and parking to Robert St that wasn't in the original proposal people made submissions on. Ok, I'm sure that's a one off(foreshadowing). And it is less than what's there now I guess so it is an improvement.

I actually appreciate that this area didn't have loading in the old proposal and that's something that is important for the businesses in the area. But I think there are more creative solutions that are a bit more ambitious.

Before we go on, lets talk about shared spaces. The report mentions them as this panacea of pedestrian safety and comfort. But just look at O'Connell Street or along the Quays and you can see that is obviously not true.

When all the streets are shared. None of them are.

Shared spaces absolutely have a place in urban design. But only when there are extremely low volumes of slow moving traffic. Through traffic from a car park IS NOT the place for shared space.

Look at this nonsense vision for High Street. This is currently a pretty busy road. Do they really think calling it a shared space will actually make this a nice safe place to walk? No, it'll be just like O'Connell Street.

And notice that lots of bollards are needed to keep vehicles out of dedicated pedestrian areas on these "shared spaces". That's just a road with extra steps.

To make a true shared space with pedestrian priority, safety and comfort. Real changes to a traffic layout have to be made. Through traffic has to be eliminated. And please notice I don't say all traffic. Local access traffic at low speeds is fine.

Instead of putting 50 bollards along Cornmarket Row, Carr St and Robert Street. Just put a few on the junction in between. Suddenly you've cut all the unneeded through traffic while maintaining access for local access and loading. Like this example in London.

Anyway, moving on to High Street. Ah, more Loading/Parking... It's a good time to point out, it says Loading/Parking. But all these Loading/Parking zones I'm showing are only loading zones from 6am-11am Mon-Fri so they are really mostly parking.

Just a reminder the majority of submissions on parking were asking for an even bigger reduction of on-street parking. Their own report says that the multistory car parks have an excess of 400 spaces on any given day. LSMATS also calls for a reduction of on-street parking.

But all over on-street parking has been re-added. Under the guise of loading bays. The City Centre Transport Plan from @moranjohna1 is due soon. I'm hoping to see some interesting stuff in there regarding on-street parking and how loading bays will work going forward.

Back Lane is to be pedestrianised. I mean sure, it's welcome and should be but it feels tokenistic as this was likely to be pedestrianised anyway with the Wickham to Clare St Active Travel scheme route selected.

Going to Lower Denmark St. Again it's "shared space" again with through traffic. Again with some of that being 2 lanes of carpark entry/exit traffic. Although it's not clear from this drawing it's mentioned in the report.

A current zebra crossing has been replaced by a "courtesy crossing". A crossing is a hilarious concept on a "shared space" to begin with. There's several of these crossings dotted around these "shared spaces" which shows they are not truly shared at all.

Not much to say about Cruise's St. There's some vague plans for a couple of small canopies, but I don't think this is what people asking for them envisaged. That's for a future proposal anyway.

Ellen St. They've marked parking on the north side of the street as not their remit now, presumably part of Opera project.

But they have added another loading zone. It looks like this doesn't become parking but remains a set down area. It does however reduce the width of the footpath to 1.4m, well below the minimum recommended width by national guidelines. And what they mention in their own report.

And despite being marked for a street section view elsewhere in the drawings they don't actually represent that loading bay so the width looks fine but is not representative. The one on the left is the Opera side. Why do they need 2 loading bays directly opposite anyway?

Finally another section of Ellen Street and good lord that's a lot of on street parking that was added. Do I need to check the feedback again? Ok, to be fair they reduced this to a one way street which given the layout round the Milk Market makes sense.