Tram costs soar and line scrapped

Published on Friday 24 April 2009 00:47

THE cost of Edinburgh's tram scheme has risen above the planned £512 million, The Scotsman has learned, as the city council confirmed it planned to shelve the second part of the network because of the recession.

The bill for the Edinburgh Airport-Newhaven route is now thought to have increased by several million pounds, but still remains within the available 545 million funding.

A report to next week's council meeting will outline the increase, which comes more than two years before the scheme is due to be completed.

The report will also confirm the widely expected recommendation to councillors not to proceed with an 87 million spur, called Line 1b, between Roseburn and Granton.

It would have formed part of a planned loop between the city centre and Forth waterfront, with the remaining stretch between Granton and Newhaven completed later.

The council had been keen to complete the first two stages of the tram network at the same time to save money, as restarting work would add millions of pounds to the cost.

However, it failed to raise enough funding to cover the second phase. The local authority is contributing 45 million to the tram project, to supplement 500 million from the Scottish Government.

Project manager Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (Tie) and the City of Edinburgh Council would have secured the 87 million cost to build Line 1b as a fixed price if they could have committed to it by this month.

Council leader Jenny Dawe said of the decision: "It is disappointing that, in the current recession, monies are not available to fund Line 1b. We will revisit this as soon as economic conditions improve."

Tie chairman David Mackay said: "I believe that it is prudent to postpone Line 1b until such times that the climate for development is far more favourable. Our focus in the meantime is the delivery of Line 1a."

Ron Hewitt, chief executive of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, said that he believed once the main line was up and running, it would prove a persuasive argument for Line 1b. He added: "It is regrettable that the existing aspirations for the tram are receiving this knockback."

He said that the real potential for light rail as a rapid transit system lay in "connectivity" across the Edinburgh city region, benefiting Fife, East, Mid and West Lothian as well as the core economy of the city centre.

"We are only going to arrive at this complete network by degrees. What is essential is that there is a timely completion of the first line which will, as we saw with the tram system in Dublin, create the most convincing argument for the extension of the system."

However, the SNP's Steve Cardownie said: "You had as much chance of seeing Haley's Comet as seeing Line 1b from the very start. It was a con, put in the plans to dupe the people of Edinburgh into thinking that there was more on offer than just Line 1a."

Mr Cardownie said that the attempt to blame the recession for the shelving of the plans was "ridiculous", adding that it was being used as "a convenient cloak that some people are going to hide behind, but they are not going to get away with it".

He said the rising cost did not come as a surprise because the SNP group had already expressed concerns that the scheme could turn into "a Holyrood on wheels", but he added that the party gained no satisfaction from the news.