Well it looks like the council have actually got some brains - They have been redoing the lining around the city bypass at hermiston gate to improve the traffic flow.

The bypass has now been put to one lane and the slip road merges with the bypass as a running lane. This should make this junction a lot easier.....

The council doing something useful? Are you sure you don't want the Dreams thread over in Sabritsit Unleashed! ?

It's a good move. Are you sure it's the Council that have done that? It's not their road.

Indeed the A720 is the responsibility of Transport Scotland - though there is a little ambiguity about the section north between the M8 and A8, the Transport Scotland Map omits that bit, but both Traffic Scotland's map and BEARS winter maintenance maps include it.

Any of the roads maintenance folks know who actually looks after that bit?

The A720 is a trunk road between Old Craighall and Hermiston, but the grid reference given on the official list (3175967197) is North of the roundabout.
It looks like the trunk road ends at the point where the nodes are marked in lane 1 here. So all of Hermiston junction including all the slip roads are trunk, but the road leading North from the junction is not.

According to the Scottish Government, Edinburgh CC look after the A720 between the A8 and M8; with the rest being Trunk.

I'm going to have to ask a really stupid question, but has this work been done on the roundabout or the main A720 carriageway?

Or on the A720 curved link arms that travel parallel to the main carraigeway?

It seems it is actually half way between the A8 and M8 that the trunk road ends - Transport Scotland maintain up to the point where all the slip roads merge.

Only been through the new markings once coming from Gogar but from what I saw:

Mainly on the Main carriageway. Just before the slip onto the A720 from the Hermiston roadabout joins the eastbound carriageway, they've used hatched areas to create a chicane that funnels traffic coming from Gogar into lane 2.

On the slip road where there are two lanes joining the A720 (pre-existing), the right hand lane merges into lane 2. The left hand lane continues a bit further on and becomes lane 1 of the A720. Sort of similar to the A92/M90 free flow at M90 J2A southbound (but without the lane drop). Hopefully the attached extremely crude picture explains things better.

Lewis, as crude as it was it was perfectly clear. I just wasn't sure exactly where the OP was referring as I don't know the road too well.

I shan't make any comment regarding design or traffic flows as I've never experienced the road (or at least I don't think I have) at that point. Hopefully it works well though, sometimes a simple change can work wonders!

I always wondered why they didn;t do that style layout in the first place. Going northbound they have 3 merges like that so would have thought they would have done the same there. Will be interesting to see how it works.

That layout is better; but the whole junction layout is an obvious example of plans changing and cheap shortcuts being implemented rather than actually doing something properly...

The Edinburgh area has always fascinated me in terms of the road layout appears to be a mix of schemes and no real thought...

The plans that i found years ago would have been a much better solution - the motorway ring in the city - even if it was downgraded and done a a high quality route it would still have made a difference and would have enabled rapid cross city movements. As it is we have to struggle with a network that cant cope with the traffic let alone the addittion of a tram system.

The Hermiston Gate improvement works - Ive been using it all this week and it has made a difference - Before the M8 was extended to the city bypass the main traffic flow would have been from the Gyle down the bypass - with the M8 link open you have a significant shift in traffic flows and you can see to the north of the M8 junction the traffic has tailed off. there is a significant movement between the bypass and the M8.

its just a pity they didnt make the M8 run direct to the bypass and become the bypass itself round Edinburgh. The roads into edinburgh are poor and its a pity that the opportunity wasnt taken to improve this with some decent realignments and new builds. The corridor that was reserved for the M8 into Edinburgh could have been turned into a surface street giving a decent run in.

To be fair, even doing it at rush-hour the run into Edinburgh isn't too bad. The A71 is fairly high quality (although bus laned) and moves reasonably and the WAR is decent too.

I used to drive to Merchiston from M8 and had very little to complain about really.

Access to Edinburgh is pretty good from the West, the A90 is also a good quality road much of the way into the centre. From the East and South it's pretty poor. The A1 doesn't really get any further than Milton Link before becoming a jammed up city street, the A7 and A701 are slow going from Cameron Toll and the A702 is really slow all the way from the bypass in my experience.

Arthur's Seat screws up entry from the east. I rarely venture into Edinburgh city centre though these days, there is nothing much of interest if you're not a tourist.

I did a training course in Edinburgh city centre, took the train in from Livingston and it was grand.

Drove in via the M8 / Western Approach Road, and it was probably as quick. Just the parking cost.

Took some pictures of the new junction layout a few weeks ago.

Spent some time watching the traffic. Saw some crazy things and some very near accidents. From the attached photo you can see how bunched the outside lane is. When the traffic is released from Hermiston Gate traffic lights you also get a large bunch of slow moving traffic coming up from the roundabout in the outdie lane. 2 very bunched lanes of traffic trying to merge.

The smart thing to do here is to drive up the inside lane as very little traffic seems to use it.

The craziest thing I saw was a car in the outside lane crossing the 2 sets of hatching to drive along the inside lane.

(Photo taken from the Union Canal bridge)

Plonker in the Micra needs a lesson on what a solid white line means...