Letter: More heads must roll over trams fiasco

Published on Wednesday 3 November 2010 15:24

The news of David MacKay's resignation as chairman of Edinburgh Trams and Lothian Buses (your report, 3 November) must surely be the end of the line for all those at TIE and Edinburgh Council who are (supposed to be) in control of the trams project.

There has to be a limit to the incompetence. Mr MacKay speaks incredulously of underground chambers and cables where they should not be. Who appointed this man? Anyone and everyone who has any construction knowledge knows that this is perfectly normal.

Excavations in old towns and cities are always like this. Cables where they shouldn't be? Don't make me laugh.

It's not so long ago that an entire community was discovered, ironically right beneath the council building. Does nobody in Edinburgh Council remember Mary King's Close?

Mr MacKay states that Bilfinger Berger "probably underbid" in order to win the contract in the hope that it could use the terms of the contract to win extra costs. You don't say.

Construction companies have been doing that since the contract to build the pyramids was awarded.

Ten minutes into the initial meeting with TIE, Bilfinger must have realised all its Christmases had come at once.

Mr MacKay may be a whizz at running buses or trams or an airport, but creating a tram network is not a transport project. Running a tram system is a transport project; creating one is a construction job.

The people who failed to realise this should go, as should everyone in authority connected to this ludicrous vanity project.

Graham M McLeod

Muirs

Kinross

We should learn the bitter lessons from the Edinburgh trams fiasco and other large public projects.

Firstly, don't do it, unless we absolutely need it. That would have dealt with, for example, the trams, the Olympics and the Dome.

Secondly, if there is a much cheaper solution then take it. For example, the Forth Road Bridge should be re-cabled first, and only then should we consider whether to build a second road bridge.

Also, we should have put the Scottish Parliament in the old Royal High.

Thirdly, if a project won't produce the claimed benefits, then cancel it. For example, why are we building two aircraft carriers for which we will not have the aircraft, nor the escort ships, and which, as a consequence, will never be able to operate autonomously in support of British national interests?

Fourthly, projects should not be undertaken merely to create jobs or to secure vulnerable constituencies.

Examples of this are endless.

Fifthly, contracts should always be written to minimise cost and other risks to the public and, crucially, to enable the cancellation of the project.

I live in hope rather than expectation of our civil servants and politicians learning these lessons.

Otto Inglis

Inveralmond Grove

Edinburgh