Dunfermline Weekly 🎁 22 December 2024
Merry Christmas! Self-driving bus withdrawal, polling place review, Kingdom FM merger, and more
🧑🎄 Wonderful winter holidays to you all - however you choose to celebrate.
☂️ Unsurprisingly, we’re in for a warm and wet Christmas, with temperatures expected to be near record high for this time of the year, around 10-13 degrees.
🔥 A fire broke out at the Lochhead Landfill north of Dunfermline in small hours on Monday. Thankfully there were no injuries and damage, and the fire was extinguished relatively quickly, with fire service sticking around to ensure it doesn’t reignite. It is suspected that the initial spark came from a discarded lithium battery, with disposable vapes and mobile phones cited as a “constant problem”.
🕥 The Dunfermline City Chambers tower clock has been broken for at least two years despite repeated pledges from the council and complaints from residents.
🦭 An underweight seal pup was found in Burntisland by passersby. While it is common for seal pups to show up on beaches and coasts at this time of the year, this one was found to be extremely underweight and was taken in by the SSPCA.
📻 Kingdom FM is getting absorbed into the larger Original 106 radio station for all of Fife and Tayside. Some of the programming will remain localised, such as news and traffic reporting. Kingdom FM Breakfast will be now shared with Tayside, but not Aberdeen, where Original 106 will retain its other breakfast program.
🏠 Avant Homes is trying to postpone having to build a bridge across Brankholm Burn in Rosyth, adjacent to the development they took over in the area. They claim that the main road leading to the crossing will not be ready in time.
🗳️ Fife Council is reviewing polling districts and places across the whole area. The consultation is open until 14 February. A sizeable document listing all districts and polling places was published, but only a small number of locations is facing actual changes.
A number of polling places is to be formally moved, primarily for accessibility reasons - they are listed on page 17, and have already been used. Some other moves are proposals with more limited testing (page 21), primarily focused on reducing usage of schools as polling stations.
There are several proposed merges (page 19), some of which are already geographically overlapping, and for quite a few this would involve change of polling place as well.
🏦 The former registrar’s building on Abbot St, across the street from Carnegie Library, is being proposed for residential conversion. The long unused building was most recently bought by a private investor around 2020 who is has now applied to convert it into six apartments.
♻️ Bin collections on 25 and 26 December will be picked up next weekend, 28 and 29 December instead. There is more advice on the council website, including Christmas tree disposal and information on recycling centre opening days.
🚌 Stagecoach service for the festive season is limited as always:
24 December - school holiday timetable, late journeys cancelled
Christmas Day - no service
Boxing Day - special limited timetable
27 December - Saturday timetable
🚂 ScotRail has its own reduced timetable:
24 December - services as normal until 7pm, various times set for last trains
Christmas Day - no service
Boxing Day - reduced timetable
🤖 The AB1 driverless bus service, connecting Ferrytoll with Edinburgh Park, will end in February. It is the world’s first autonomous bus trial on a real route. However the passenger numbers have been too low for its continuous viability. The service will have operated for less than two years when it ends next year.
🚌 Today’s the last Sunday of free bus travel within Dunfermline Zone on Stagecoach services.