The A700 road is a short but important link skirting Edinburgh City Centre between the
A8 and
A7 roads.
Route
The road begins at the West End junction at the terminus of the A8 and heads south then east comprising the streets of Lothian Road, Earl Grey Street, Brougham Street, Brougham Place, Melville Drive, Summerhall Place and West Preston Street. It ends at a crossroads where it meets the A7 and
A701 roads.
The major junction along its route is at
Tollcross where it meets
Lauriston Place, West Tollcross and the Home Street
A702 road
The A702 is a major road in Scotland, that runs from Edinburgh to St. John's Town of Dalry in Dumfries and Galloway. It is the last section of the route from London via the West Midlands and North West England to Edinburgh, which follows the ...
. It
overlaps for the length of Earl Grey Street with the A702, which diverges to the west on
Fountainbridge
Fountainbridge ( gd, Drochaid an Fhuarain) is an area of Edinburgh, Scotland, a short distance west of the city centre, adjoining Tollcross with East Fountainbridge and West Port to the east, Polwarth to the west and south, Dalry and Haymar ...
.
The northern section of the road is a designated a
Red Route
On United Kingdom roads, the term red route may refer to a stretch of road with painted red lines signifying that vehicles cannot stop there, or to a road which has historically high accident rates.
Painted lines
Red routes are major roads wit ...
on which no stopping of vehicles is permitted in order to maintain traffic flow.
History
The Melville Drive section is flanked to the north by
The Meadows, a large public park established in the 18th century. At each end of Melville Drive is a pair of stone pillars topped by a lion and a
unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.
In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...
. The pair at the eastern end were built in 1881, gifted by the publishing and printing company of
Thomas Nelson; the pair at the western end were built around 1886 by
Sir James Gowans.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:7-0700
Transport in Edinburgh
Roads in Scotland