COMMENT: Pull the trams' plug 23 | 06 | 2011
EDINBURGH'S TRAM project, just goes from deep hole to deeper hole. It's now been revealed it will cost at least £700 million to get the scheme back up and running and — frighteningly — up to £50m more to scrap it.
A meeting in the next few days will decide on the ill-fated project's future — the report to be debated will offer the choice of will it be scrapped, or will in be resurrected — but bizarrely, Edinburgh City Council official have warned of the huge damage that risks being done to the city's reputation and its economic prospects if the planned network is abandoned.
Excuse me, but do they not think the city, and Scotland, has already been severely damaged by the miss-management of the project by city councillors?
Oh, and it's worth highlighting; the £700m will only build a truncated line to Haymarket; if, as makes far more sense, the tram system is extended into the city centre, that will cost another £70m!
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Now it doesn't really take a rocket scientist to work out that, if you're getting a tram from the airport into the centre of Edinburgh, it should actually go to the centre. That means linking up with the city's main railway station, Waverley, and not being stuck out in the middle of nowhere in the west end of Edinburgh at Haymarket.
Are these people actually being paid to make decisions like this?
The latest figures also confirm the cost of the project has soared by around £170m in the space of 12 months; and, even if it does get the green light again in a few days, the start date now shifted back to 2014 … three years later than planned.
It also means that almost £250m will need to be found to meet the costs of pulling the plug as at least £440m of the Scottish Government's £500m grant has already been spent.
And the cancellation cost, which is said to range between £690m-£750m, includes cancelling all contracts, winding up the council's tram company Tie, and dismantling the parts of the network that have been built.
"The most sensible option does seem to be to build the line as far as St Andrew Square," the council's transport leader, Gordon Mackenzie, said, "but we need a lot more clarity on the figures and possible funding packages."
And another senior figure in the council spoke a lot of sense when he admitted: "The only credible solution out of this mess is a tramline from the airport to the city centre. If the tram doesn't go to St Andrew Square it will be incredibly hard to sell it to the people of Edinburgh or businesses in the city who have suffered so much disruption.
Tram scrappage report delayed
"The report will strongly recommend going down this route and allowing the officials at the council to bring back options in the autumn for making this happen.
"Building less than half a line to Haymarket will not attract nearly enough commuters to make the finances stack up."
This all begs the question: why was this simple stance not taken right at the start of the project? Did no one actually sit down and do some simple, basic sums and arithmetic.
What Edinburgh has at the moment is a monument to the shambles and incompetencey of the city council. The whole trams project is has been an ill-conceived white elephant from the day pen as put to paper.
Pull the plug on it now; fill in the holes in the streets and let Edinburgh get back to some form of traffic sanity.
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Jim McGill