Bring trams plan to a halt

Published on Tuesday 23 May 2006 11:41

Should the council put a stop to the tram scheme for once and for all?

THERE was clear excitement at the prospect of a hi-tech, revolutionary and ground-breaking tram system in Edinburgh to solve congestion problems, underpin the redevelopment of vast tracts of land and be environmentally friendly - an excitement that has now clearly turned to despair.

The council, along with its specialist company Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (TIE) remains defiant it will deliver a tram transport system for the 21st century, but after recent events, including the departure of the project director, Ian Kendall and escalating costs, alarm bells are ringing around the City Chambers.

The first two tram Bills were approved by Scottish ministers in March and the next step would normally be final design and implementation. That's not going to happen in this case, with three loops becoming one straight line.

Funding is not in place for the full scheme and timescales are now doubling, with completion not expected until 2020, incurring further inflationary costs. Remember more than 60 million has already been spent on the project and not a line has been laid, with inflation adding to the cost of the project year after year.

TIE initially proposed five tram schemes across the city, but has now settled on one route from Ocean Terminal to Edinburgh Airport, expected to be up and running by 2010 and costing 450m. It would normally be common sense to link these two hubs, but the total failure of the council to integrate the proposed route with planned developments has become patently clear.

How much development has already taken place in north Edinburgh with the expectation of Tram Line One looping along the shore from Leith to Granton, to Haymarket and back along Princes Street and Leith Walk?

What about the expectations of National Grid Property and Forth Ports who have committed effort and money to the redevelopment of land along the shore, aiming to regenerate a long-forgotten area and provide much-needed accommodation for a rapidly-expanding population? What about the developers who have committed to these areas?

The tram link is needed to enable access to an area with an already congested road system, with few options to improve links in and out. Both these stakeholders "donated" land to enable the tram link to be implemented and have also been subjected to developer contributions to the tram systems, because their projects lie within a certain distance of the proposed routes and were therefore supposed to benefit.

However, in its wisdom the council has opted for the most ambitious of projects, raising expectations, incurring massive costs and digging a hole for itself. This is not even mentioning the millions spent on the failed, and now reversed, traffic management measures in the city centre.

Why we have a funding gap, despite a Scottish Executive bailout of 115m in November 2005, is an easy question to answer.

If you ask motorists to vote for congestion charging that will cost them an extra 10 a week to drive in and out of the city centre, you might as well ask turkeys to vote for Christmas. If the council believed this was the correct way forward, it should have provided the leadership necessary to implement it.

There is also a delicious irony in that in order to cross-fund improved public transport, the authorities depend on as many of us continuing to use our cars as we do at present, although they expect us to pay for the pleasure.

With the expectations of improved public transport funded by the congestion toll collapsing, we now have a funding gap for the tram system, leading to a severe trimming of the original proposal.

However, the council still wants us to get to the airport by tram. But we already have a public transport choice on that route - Greenways bus, taxi and, following the lodging of the recent parliamentary Bill, we may be able to take the high-speed rail link to a new station buried beneath the runways and costing an estimated 650m.

Do we really need a bus, tram and a train to get to the airport, especially as a new multi-storey car park has now opened, valet parking has been introduced and there are more long-stay parking options than anyone can ever remember?

And the council hasn't finished yet. There's its City Vision 2020-2040, christened the Fingers of Development, which has huge obstacles to overcome and there are genuine concerns about whether it will ever get off the ground.

The "fingers" point to the need for an integrated approach to transportation and land use planning that provides new developments and communities with certainty over development and choices of transport. From recent experience, it does not bode well.

The council's high-profile blunders and inability to recognise the situation - the "crisis, what crisis" syndrome - as well as its total lack of leadership are there for all to see. And faced with escalating costs, it will be the Edinburgh council tax payer who will be hit in the pocket for this tram folly, a scheme that is neither affordable or sustainable.

The time has come to surely put a stop to these tram plans, for those in charge to hold up their hands and admit that it is the end of the line, and for the hundreds of millions of pounds that it was intended to pump into the tram routes to be spent on other more viable transport projects, such as upgrading the bus system - especially for those in Granton.

• Alex Orr is a board member of the Scottish Institute for New Economics, a transport and economics think-tank