Waste of money

On Wednesday Keith Brown, the Scottish transport minister, informed MSPs that Network Rail had instructed BAM Nuttall to identify “the major construction challenges along the route” of the proposed tramway to Galashiels (your report, 10 May).

He had just assured everyone that this £295 million project would be finished by the end of 2014 and on budget.

One would have thought that the scale of these challenges was central to the achievement of both of these aims and that they would have been quantified long ago. In the real business world, they would have been but in the fairytale world of Scottish Parliament politics and economics, they have not and yet again the taxpayer will foot the bill.

It should also be noted that canny Network Rail will not confirm its price or timescale until late summer.

Not content with re-opening a line which Dr Beeching described as “the biggest money loser in the British railway system” (some achievement), our politicians are making such a mess of the project management that the line has no hope whatsoever of being built to any sort of economic budget.

Shades of the Scottish Parliament.

Jim Sutherland

Lauder

Borders