Ticket machines - 'Needless cost racked up by the trams'

Few things are guaranteed to get our backs up quite as much as the sight of money being thrown away by a publicly-owned company.

The ripping up of 32 on-street bus ticket machines after just three-and-a-half years and an outlay of 150,000 looks at first sight like an inglorious example of such waste.

The machines installed by Lothian Buses were so unpopular with customers they accounted for less than a quarter of one per cent of ticket sales.

And that should be no great surprise.

It was always going to take more than a 10p discount to get passengers out of the habit of simply handing over their fare on the bus.

Frankly, why would anyone want to bother persuading them to do that?

Our buses work quite efficiently as they are, thank you very much.

The answer to that question, like so many other modern Edinburgh conundrums, lies with the troubled trams project.

The real driving force behind this innovation was always the desire to find an efficient system for selling tram tickets, rather than the needs of bus passengers.

Now that tram bosses are exploring ticketless technology, there is no longer the same need for these on-street sales points - and they are being ditched.

No-one will mourn their passing. In fact, our streets will look all the better for getting rid of some of their ugly clutter. This can be chalked up as yet another needless cost racked up by the trams.

Unfortunately, as a blunder which cost only 150,000, it will only merit the tiniest of footnotes when it comes to the final reckoning of what went wrong.

Back in time

OUR photographs today of MacKenzie Place in the New Town offer a fascinating glimpse of the changing face of the Capital.

The curve of the tenement-lined street, the children playing on the stone sets without a car in sight and the gas street lights are all so evocative of a now bygone era.

The memories will come flooding back for many of our readers, while the younger ones will simply enjoy the atmospheric black and white image - an Edinburgh equivalent to Oscar Marzaroli's famous Gorbals Boys pictures.

It is reassuring to know the same land will continue to be enjoyed by young and old when it is turned over to allotments to meet our renewed enthusiasm for gardening.