Trams: 'Even long-term supporters will begin to doubt'

Published on Thursday 11 March 2010 08:59

THERE has hardly been a moment since the ink dried on the contract between TIE and Bilfinger Berger to deliver Edinburgh a tram line that can't be described as controversial.

Even before that, the very idea of returning trams to Edinburgh divided the city to such an extent that the council shied away from holding a referendum.

However we have always believed that ultimately, despite all the pain and upheaval involved, a tram running from Edinburgh Airport to Leith would be a great thing for citizens and tourists alike – as long as it was delivered on time and as near to budget as possible.

Yet it has now emerged that contractor Bilfinger Berger has told TIE that it cannot complete the whole line because the money is running out. There's just 170m left in the pot and that is without taking into account the costly disputes between the two organisations which have still be to financially resolved.

TIE and Edinburgh City Council are bullishly denying this is the case as well as claiming Bilfinger Berger might still be sacked from the job. But if it is true, then this has to go down as the saddest moment in the whole sorry saga, and even long-term supporters will now begin to doubt the wisdom of the scheme.

A line from the airport to Haymarket will go nowhere near achieving the purpose of the tram – to give Edinburgh a new, modern form of sustainable public transport. Nor will it be able to earn the money it was claimed it would in the business case which convinced Holyrood to award millions of taxpayers' cash to the ambitious project in the first place.

A line just to Haymarket will also mean that Lothian Buses will have to continue to run many of its services which would otherwise have been dropped, therefore doing little to help cut congestion.

Perhaps nowhere will this news be greeted with more despair than in the shops and businesses of Leith Walk and Princes Street who have gone through months of hell – some even closing due to lack of trade – as the roads were dug up time and again. All the pain and now no gain.

Questions need to be asked of TIE and Edinburgh City Council about just how the initial figure of 545m to lay a track from Leith to the airport was reached, if it was at all realistic, whether the contracts drawn up were flawed, and ultimately why things have gone so wrong.

Of course councillors of every party – including the anti-tram SNP group who have been conspicuously quiet on the subject until today – will attempt to pull out all the stops to ensure as much track as possible is laid before the next council elections in 2012.

For without doubt no party will be left untainted by a tram that only goes halfway to somewhere. This debacle will indeed take the gloss off their expensive party political leaflets.