Letter: On wrong road from the very beginning

The Edinburgh tram scheme (your report, 9 October) went terminally and irretrievably wrong in the early stages when it was not appreciated there were two substantially different, extremely large and complex schemes.

Scheme one was to dig up the road surface and update or replace sewers, drainage and the many other substantially uncharted utilities below the road surface, so this would not happen piecemeal in the future. That huge task could have been completed without any thought of a tram system. It would have been a daunting task even without heavy traffic flowing through complex bottlenecks such as those at the east and west ends of Princes Street, the Mound and Haymarket.

Estimating the costs or negotiating a fixed-price contract for such works is impossible: the work could only be completed on a time-and-materials or cost-plus basis. These utilities works have proved far more complex and extensive than the worst estimates and they have absorbed a crippling proportion of the funds available for the tram scheme. The lack of separate specification and lack of the essential open-ended funding of the utilities scheme have plunged the project into chaos.

Scheme two was to install the tramway, a relatively simpler operation that could be costed. But one bottleneck or pinch point alone put the viability of that entire scheme into question from the outset - Shandwick Place. This is not the wisdom of hindsight: those of us old enough to have travelled on the original Edinburgh trams know that when a tram stops, traffic stops while passengers embark and disembark. It was blatantly obvious that running stop-start central reservation trams would cause tailbacks of traffic that would far exceed existing tailbacks. It was a scheme that was somehow expected to cut congestion while inevitably increasing congestion.

At the outset, these two schemes should have been separately specified and separately costed. Sources of open-ended funding for the upgrading of utilities - and limited funding for the trams system - should have been identified. A sensible approach would have been to complete the potentially more expensive utilities work. Then, and only then, the council could have determined whether trams or some other transport development such as hybrid trolley buses could be afforded.

Alarmingly, pollution is being ignored, despite public protest. If it turns out the existing rerouting of heavy traffic through narrow streets in residential areas with basements produces an unacceptable level of heavier-than-air vehicle pollution in the basements, traffic will have to be routed through Shandwick Place. That would kill off the tram scheme, as access by security and emergency services would be impossible for much of the day.

Pollution readings where they are most likely to endanger health - in basements - must be the priority next step.To do this last instead of first would an even greater act of folly that anything hitherto.

MICHAEL HAMILTON

Stodrig Cottages

Kelso