Letter: Trams flaws

David Wragg (Letters, 26 June) suggests scrapping the Edinburgh trams scheme. It would be misguided since transport infrastructure projects, unlike defence projects, usually provide most of their benefits years later.

By The Newsroom

Published 27th Jun 2010, 22:19 BST

Updated 27th Jun 2010, 22:29 BST

We need to be moving from fossil-fuel powered transport and the most common power source in the future is going to be electricity.

What this project, along with the Scottish Parliament building, shows is that politicians and quango-based companies are not good at managing projects. Properly run by a private sector company with the correct contracts and performance bonds, the trams project could have been delivered on time.

The tram project was flawed from the start with the route design. We now need to produce a workable scheme from the ruins of the project. Opening it in stages would be sensible.

The reality is that its overspend is not as great as the saving to be made by scrapping the unnecessary carriers and Trident submarines where the saving could total over 60 billion with neither project being of benefit to the nation.

As regards the comments on the Borders Rail, it is also poorly thought out. We need to use these lines as core transport systems with other public transport feeding them. Even if it was extended all the way to Carlisle, it would not compete with the faster electrified Caledonian line through Carstairs.

BRUCE D SKIVINGTON

Strath

Gairloch, Wester Ross