Lack of drive

CITY of Edinburgh Council has now confirmed that the long-awaited and much-truncated tram service will only run every ten minutes during the day, with a modest increase in frequency to every 7½ minutes during the weekday peak periods. Meanwhile, ten of our publicly-owned trams will languish at Gogar depot on a care and maintenance basis, instead of being used for passengers’ benefit.

In Nottingham, which has a population about half that of Edinburgh, the trams run every five minutes during the day over most of the route and are usually well loaded. Yet, Nottingham does not have any major destinations along its tram route, unlike Edinburgh’s Gyle Centre, business parks and airport, nor does it have Edinburgh’s high visitor levels. The Nottingham tram simply connects the city centre with Trent University, the northern suburbs, and park-and-ride car parks.

Nottingham’s trams carry 10 million passengers a year on a similar length of route to Edinburgh’s, but capital’s projections appear to be for less than half that number. After all this effort, does the council really have so little faith in the largest single investment in public transport the city has ever known? 

Robert Drysdale

Primrose Bank Road

Edinburgh