For much of the 20th century, the car was king in Edinburgh, with drivers enjoying almost total freedom to go where they pleased.
The motor car's free reign of the capital meant you could park pretty much wherever you liked too - including on the North Bridge and both sides of Princes Street.
As long as there was a free space, shoppers could park their cars right outside any of the major shops or department stores on Princes Street.
READ MORE - Ryanair 'sorry' after telling Edinburgh passenger 'Scotland's not a country'
Writing on the Lost Edinburgh group on Facebook, one group member recalled having their second ever driving lesson along Princes Street on a quiet Saturday morning. Practically unthinkable today.
In terms of convenience, the city centre was something of a "car utopia" for motorists, with few traffic-calming measures in place and free on-street parking guaranteed.
The first parking meters
It wasn't until 1958 that Britain began to charge for parking, the first meters being introduced to the bustling Mayfair district of London.
Parking meters arrived in Edinburgh in 1962. A short film available online on the National Library of Scotland website records the moment the new parking meters were installed around George Street and Queen Street.
Sign up to our Edinburgh Live nostalgia newsletters for more local history and heritage content straight to your inbox
Concerns over Edinburgh's new "Venner" parking meters, were even raised in the House of Commons, with one MP describing them as "ugly" and airing concerns that "they will spoil the architectural beauty" of the capital.
Naturally, the introduction of parking meters required enforcement. Edinburgh's first parking attendants were every bit as unpopular as their modern counterparts.
Traffic lights were fairly uncommon in those days too. On Princes Street, the busiest junctions, at Lothian Road, the Mound and North Bridge, were policed by traffic wardens wearing their trademark "hi-viz" white sleeves.
The car boom
As car ownership boomed in the 1950s and 1960s, city authorities responded by drawing up grand schemes to alleviate congestion and create an Edinburgh that better catered for motorists.
Among the proposals, was a radical plan to widen the carriageways along the city's main thoroughfare and even transform part of Princes Street Gardens to create a spacious new arterial route.
An inner ring road was also proposed that would have involved the demolition of significant chunks of the Old and New Towns.
Luckily, thanks largely to the efforts of heritage campaigners, neither the ring road or the car-friendly transformation of Princes Street would go ahead.
No longer king
On-street parking on Princes Street, meanwhile, continued unabated for the next decade until it was finally phased out in the 1980s. Other measures enacted around this time included the pedestrianisation of certain shopping areas in the city centre, such as Rose Street.
There was much uproar from the city's motoring community, who argued that the new traffic measures would have a disastrous impact on the local economy, but to no avail. The days of the car being king in the centre of Edinburgh were coming to an end.
In the late 1990s, a new ban was introduced that restricted cars to driving down just one side of Princes Street. Driving along the remaining side of Princes Street was stopped a few short years later.
Today, only buses, taxis and emergency vehicles are permitted to drive along all but a small stretch of the world famous thoroughfare.
