Tram options

IT WAS interesting to read that the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Willie Rennie, had lambasted the Edinburgh councillors who voted to spare the city £231 million of expense (including the erection of unsightly electric catenaries in Princes Street) to bring the trams to St Andrew Square.

His clinching argument appears to be that somehow the cost/benefit ratio of the shortened route falls dramatically from the alleged £2.20 benefit to £1 of cost for the city centre option, to a very lowly figure, despite the absence in the airport-Haymarket model of the related incremental debt funding obligations implied by the full route.

I’d like to welcome the conversion of the Liberal Democrats to a belief in avoiding a poor cost/benefit ratio in transport projects. Let’s look for the logical extension of the new doctrine: that means withdrawal of Lib Dem support for the infamously late and over budget £295m Borders railway.

The benefit/cost ratio fell last year from 1.75 to 1, to just 1.2 to 1. But do the Lib Dems really want value – or are they actually just in it for votes? The airport has 8.6 million passengers annually requiring transport; Border railway target Galashiels has a population of 14,361 of which one in 30 can be expected to be commuters. The 35 mile railway is thus set to be an even bigger fiasco in value terms than the trams.

A radical reassessment by the SNP administration of the rail proposal in the light of experience of the realities of Lib Dem-sponsored infrastructure projects would show at last the sort of prudence that we seem to have lost as a national trait.

Peter Smaill

Borthwick

Midlothian

Over the past few weeks, Labour and Tory councillors have complained about not being able to rely on council figures for the Edinburgh tram options but on four occasions they had the chance to halt the project when this was proposed by the SNP and on 30 April, 2009 the SNP group tried to get the trams scrapped due to the absence of a detailed breakdown of costs and that the full risk report for the project would not be made available until after contract close.

This required councillors to make decisions without access to essential information, but they got no support whatsoever from any other councillor.

At the decisive council meeting held on 25 October, 2007 all Labour, Tory and Lib Dem councillors voted to continue with Labour’s tram project rather than spending the £45 million on essential council services at a time when Edinburgh’s financial reserves had been exhausted by the previous administration.

It was Labour’s Malcolm Chisholm MSP who claimed in June 2007 that “indeed nobody with more experience of digging up Edinburgh can be found than the company that has been awarded that part of the contract”; and “we cannot say that inevitably there will, because there have been cost overruns on one project, be cost overruns on the other”. The people (Tie) involved in developing the Edinburgh trams project have learned the financial lessons of other such projects.”

Unlike the other parties no SNP councillor sat on the management board of Tie.

Calum Stewart

Montague Street

Edinburgh

At least one tradition has been upheld with this debacle: if you miss one price another one will be along in five minutes.

Ian Lewis

Mayfield Terrace

Edinburgh

It would appear that the scope of the Edinburgh tram project is reduced to servicing the needs of the privately-owned Edinburgh Airport. To reduce running cost losses a £1 “drop off” fee should be charged to BAA for each passenger dropped off at its Ingliston retail park.

Michael N Crosby

Muiravonside

By Linlithgow