Getting around Edinburgh without a car
Transport · 7 min read · Reviewed
Edinburgh is a small city pretending to be a large one. The built-up area is compact, the centre is dense, and a great many journeys people expect to make by vehicle turn out to be a twenty-minute walk.
What fills the gaps is a bus network that is genuinely among the best in the UK — municipally owned, frequent, and covering the city comprehensively rather than only the profitable corridors. The tram adds one high-capacity spine and the rail lines reach the Lothian towns.
This guide covers what each layer is for, what it costs, and where the network stops working.
The buses do most of the work
Lothian Buses is council-owned and runs the great majority of services in the city. Frequencies on the main corridors are high enough that timetables are largely irrelevant, coverage extends well beyond the bypass, and the night network is genuinely useful rather than nominal.
Fares are flat rather than distance-based, which is unusual in Britain and means a long journey costs the same as a short one. Contactless capping means you cannot easily overpay in a day, and a season ticket is cheaper still if you travel most days.
The practical consequence is that bus quality is not a strong argument between areas in Edinburgh the way it is in most English cities. Almost everywhere in the city is well served, so the real variable is journey time rather than availability.
One tram line, and what it changed
The tram runs from the airport through the west of the city, along Princes Street, down Leith Walk and on to Newhaven since the extension opened. It is one line, and it is the busiest transport corridor in the city.
The Newhaven extension is the part that matters for where to live. It converted Leith Walk, Leith and the shore from bus-dependent to tram-served, and it is a substantial part of why that whole corridor has repriced over the last few years.
For everyone not on that axis the tram is mostly an airport service. It is excellent for that — a fixed, frequent, luggage-friendly run into the centre — and largely irrelevant to a daily commute.
Lothian's flat fare and daily cap make the city unusually cheap to move around in. The bus is rarely the reason to choose one Edinburgh area over another; the walk at each end usually is.
| Area | 1-bed | 2-bed | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bathgate | £650 | £825 | £470 |
| Penicuik | £800 | £1,025 | £520 |
| Corstorphine | £925 | £1,200 | £590 |
| Leith | £1,075 | £1,400 | £640 |
| New Town | £1,350 | £1,800 | £720 |
Rail, and the Lothian towns
ScotRail's Lothian services are what make Musselburgh, Dalkeith's neighbours, Linlithgow and Livingston work as places to live. Waverley and Haymarket are both central, and journey times from the nearer towns are short enough to compete with a cross-city bus.
The Borders Railway reopened the line south through Midlothian, which changed the position of Newtongrange and Galashiels considerably and pulled the southern edge of the region into commuting range.
The gap is orbital travel. Like most British networks this one is radial, so getting from one outer suburb to another without going through the centre is slow — and that is where a car starts to earn its keep.
Walking, cycling and the hills
The centre is small enough that walking beats everything for a large share of journeys. From the New Town you can reach most of the Old Town, Stockbridge, Bruntsfield and the West End on foot in under half an hour, and the buses are often no faster in traffic.
Cycling is good on the off-road network and mixed on the roads. The city has an extensive set of former railway paths — the Innocent Railway, the North Edinburgh path network — which make several cross-city routes genuinely pleasant and traffic-free.
The hills are real and they are not evenly distributed. Anything involving the Old Town, Arthur's Seat or the climb up to Morningside is harder work than the map suggests, and the wind off the Forth in winter is a factor people underestimate exactly once.
Common questions
Do I need a car in Edinburgh?
Almost certainly not inside the bypass. The bus network is comprehensive and flat-fared, the centre is walkable, and parking is scarce and expensive in most of the areas people want to live in. A car becomes useful for orbital journeys between outer suburbs, and for the Lothian villages that the rail lines miss.
Is the Edinburgh tram worth living near?
On the Leith Walk and Newhaven section, yes — it is a genuine high-frequency commuting spine and the corridor has repriced accordingly. Elsewhere it is mainly an excellent airport link, which is worth something but not usually worth a rent premium.
How much does public transport cost in Edinburgh?
Lothian Buses charges a flat fare regardless of distance, with a daily cap on contactless, and season tickets that reduce it further for regular travel. It is one of the cheaper city networks in Britain to use daily, and the flat fare means living further out costs no more in fares.