Cancelling trams would be the real ‘folly’

THE word “folly” is being used by some of your correspondents to describe the anticipated decision to press ahead with new funding for the Edinburgh tram project.

Those who use that word are also those who, with their fingers in their ears, continue to ignore the huge economic benefits which tram projects have brought around the world, including to places, such as Nottingham and Croydon, which are considerably smaller and have less economic potential than Edinburgh.

These critics continue to blame the tram project itself rather than those who have so grossly mismanaged it. The solution now being advocated, while far from appealing, is the high price we all have to pay for the council’s prolonged and misguided defence of the hapless tram project manager TIE.

The folly of cancellation would include international humiliation and ridicule for Edinburgh, the writing off of at least £600 million of public money, and the biggest and most untimely reversal of transport progress since the closure of the city’s suburban railways in the 1960s.

Robert Drysdale

Primrose Bank Road

Edinburgh

STEPHEN Druitt is absolutely correct (Letters, 23 August) that the figures presented to Edinburgh City councillors concerning the continuation or cancellation of the tram project are likely to be loaded in favour of continuation in order to save face.

The Scotsman is also correct to highlight the continuing cost and possible decimation of small businesses through this monumental disruption starting all over again.

However, both points fail to raise the unaccounted for costs of extended journey times for goods and people through the city over many years, nor the inevitability of annually increasing running costs should this hugely questionable project ever be completed.

I try hard to think what the council vote might have been if, at the outset, councillors had been asked to approve spending £1 billion on building a toy train from near the airport all the way to Harvey Nichols?

Let us hope that this time they have the courage and the humility to listen to their electorate and cancel whilst they can.

David Gerrard

Spylaw Park

Edinburgh

AS A retired accountant, I note that the prevailing concerns regarding the Edinburgh tram tragedy seem to relate to the capital commitments to be incurred for financing the additional expenditure.

There do not seem to have been any figures available of the detailed estimates of the losses which will be incurred if the trams actually run. It may be impossible to envisage sufficient income being generated from the proposed limited tram track.

Can we have figures for the estimates of the numbers of travellers to and from the airport and of the likely pattern of the times of flights landing and taking off and if a large proportion of the flights will be at unsocial hours?

Will the tram timetables reflect this anticipated usage pattern by travellers and just what will be the relevant income against expenditure? Apart from airport users, what will be the usage by ordinary folk – are we reckoning on them queuing up at stops when the rain is lashing down in January and February?

In the absence of realistic figures which show that losses will not be in incurred in running the trams, I would have thought that those Edinburgh City councillors who vote in favour of financing and running the trams would be in danger of being surcharged with the losses.

Robert S Stewart

Burnbrae Avenue

Bearsden

Glasgow

THE Scotsman’s coverage of the tram debacle (23 August) clearly shows there appears to have been considerable duplicity in many aspects of the present dreadful situation in which Edinburgh finds itself, with this monster hanging round our necks.

There are strong grounds to indicate we simply cannot afford to allow any work to resume, because of the immensely serious impact it will have on so many city businesses.

The cost of the nightmare is now being mentioned in terms of £1 billion. Where are we to get this sort of money from?

How are we to get out of this mess? It seems to me that there is a strong case for a public inquiry. There would seem to be a plethora of errors and misjudgments to be identified and criticised

JR Hall

Colinton Grove

Edinburgh