http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-14648510

What’s the point in that then?

none whatsoever.

The point of it is that it saves the Labour councillors and party from having to admit that the SNP were right all along.

At least they, the council as a whole, didnt vote to borrow another £1/4bn with the same in interest payments.

And people wonder why the SNP are so popular.

Saucer of cream Druidh? 🙂

you 3 actually live together don’t you? give TJ the Evening News back Glupton, you’ve had it long enough.

Now that really is a bonkers decision. Either scrap it or build a meaningful route. Only going to Haymarket is just useless. At the very least you have to go into the centre of town.

It follows earlier news that bosses overseeing the project had admitted they had overestimated the cost of cancelling the scheme.

What kind of organisation “estimates” the cost of cancelling a scheme as costly as this one? That is just not a credible way of doing things. If you’re going to cost cancelling a contract like that you get definitive figures, you dont pluck things out of your arse.

At the least the cooncil are getting to **** us over and they know that they’re using the Edinburgh contraceptive.

“getting off at the Haymarket”

There are already tram-like vehicles running from Haymarket to the airport. They’re called buses.

How have the people “managing” this project not been fired for gross incompetence?
OK, it doesn’t particularly affect me, I used to travel in and around Edinburgh quite a bit (much less so now thankfully) but seeing the catastrophic stupidity displayed by so many people throughout the whole sorry debacle is beyond belief. I live in Manchester and they built a city-wide network (in fact one of the most extensive tram networks in the UK) for the same price. 😯

As an aside (lived in Edinburgh for a few years when at uni), why does almost every bus have to run through Princess street? I mean, really?
Back to the op tho.. The whole thing seems to have been a shambles.
Made me laugh that Princess street will need to be closed again so they can dig up the bloody tracks cos apparently, they’ll be a health and safety issue!!! (rofl!).

I agree its one hell of a clusterf**k of gargantuan proportions, even for the Edinburgh city fathers/mothers but Ill bet a pound to a penny that all of the same incompetent cooncilors will be elected by the people next time the elections come round, no matter how much this would have cost the Councillors know that they will pretty much all be in a job next time.

This is an utter waste and shambles. F’wits.

why does almost every bus have to run through Princess street? I mean, really?

Because it’s tricky to route a bus coming from East, West or South through the centre that *doesn’t* involve running along Princes St at least at some point. The A8, A9, A700, A900, A1 and A7 all converge on Princes St. You can’t run much through the Old Town. You can’t run much down the West End of Queen St.

Er, I accept that a lot of the main roads converge in the centre but it’s not the case that all the buses(mostly) HAVE to go along Princess street- there are other routes from one side to the other. North and south of the city centre…
It is about ten years since I lived there but I doubt it’s changed much!!

there are other routes from one side to the other. North and south of the city centre…

Not really sure what you’re suggesting in that case – the buses that do go through the city centre mostly go down Princes St because that’s the natural route, and that buses that don’t go through the city centre already don’t go down Princes St because they don’t go through the city centre!

And if you routed buses that currently go down Princes St so they ran “north and south of the city centre”, then they wouldn’t go through the city centre any more, which is no good for people who want to use them to go to the city centre.

Edit: by which I mean, if they go through the centre, Princes St is going to be a natural or even unavoidable route for them. And if they don’t go need to run through the centre, they don’t need to go down Princes St, but Edinburgh’s a pretty centralised city and I suspect most of the people on existing bus routes through the centre do actually begin/end their journey in the centre. But I might be wrong.

I have posted this before but the cooooncil have a long and well practiced tradition of late, overbudget and crap delivery on projects. This cutting from 1955/56 apologises for late introduction of the busses when the trams were removed as well as the cheap way of replacing the tram lines with tarmac.

Found in our house when we took the carpet up…

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I was in Granton and Pilton yesterday for business (not pleasure!)

What a disgrace – those tenements make HMP Barlinnie look like a doll’s house

The worst ones have been knocked down and replaced with houses

Isn’t this just yet another example of politicians and their vanity projects

It comes down to a basic inability to see any connection between the huge figures with all the naughts on the end of it, and the actual money that comes out of the mugs taxpayers wagepackets.

See also: the Dome, the Scottish Parliament Building, Every Olympic Venue, etc etc etc

seriously? the worst are away? In some isolated pockets in Glasgow you still see some of the horrendous inter-war housing but most has been completely modernised or demolished.

I was surprised by the scale of the Granton and Pilton estate. The tenements look ten times worse than anything in Wester Hails or Muirhouse. They have tried to tart them up by painting the masonry and, in some cases, overrendering but that was the first time i’ve ventured into that area and it was a genuine shock that there were still so many blocks like that in occupation.

That should be a national scandal – especially with the obscene cost of property just two miles away in the new town – not to mention the trams, the parliament and the money ploughed into the waterfront. 😡

Pretty much binners.

Edinburgh s badly congested and needs a decent integrated transport system. However this is not a decent integrated transport system. Its not even the basis for one. Its been compromised to uselessness.

A question to people who live in Edinburgh, Why didn’t they just put a spur off the railway line which runs right past the airport to a new station at the airport? (not trolling, just curious…seems like an obvious thing to do?)

GW – Member
you 3 actually live together don’t you?

with al locked away in the garage with just his cutlery and some glue ?

lodious – no idea at all.

There were plans to do this but it would be expensive.

The obvious thing to have done would have been to do that and have trams that can also use the railway lines like in Manchester. That and reopen the north and south suburban circular lines – the south one still has the rails!

Then we would have got the basis for an integrated transport solution.

It should be possible to get a train from stirling, edinburgh or Glasgow direct to the airport. its certainly possible to build this

What is it with the Scots and spensive construction projects? Parliament- seventy five thousand times over budget. And crap. Tram project- not actually all that useful apparently and going to cost over a billion quid.

And you want independence?

When you’ve spunked all the oil and gas money in about, oh, 3 years or so on stupid daft stuff like this, what are you going to do to for an income? Knit jumpers?

We will sell happiness to you poor unhappy southerners

Eh? How d’you work that out? Youse are the most miserable people in England! 😆

You’duv bin better off investing the money in umbrellas and tarpaulin sheeting…

Want to buy some water?

Elfin, what were you saying about self moderation?

The whole sordid affair is a complete embarrassment. Having recently visited Germany where most town/cities have a decent integrated transport system this nonsense seems to be nore than a bit incompetent. Councillors, Government and the contractors have to share the blame. We deserve better than this shambles.

Think of how much a decent system would cost if managed in the same fashion by the same clowns?

A decent system would have trams going to all the outlying suburbs as well as tourist destinations and hospitals.

No thanks we have plenty down here at the moment ta.

Elfin, what were you saying about self moderation?

Sorry; it just seemed too good an opportunity to miss. 😀

No seriously though; seems there’s an awful lot of argue going on in the Scottish parliament, and over stuff that affects only a relatively small amount of people. Granted, we spunk a lot of money down here in That London, but stuff like the DLR and Croydon Tram, link are actually of benefit to people, and there’s a lot more people down here who use stuff. The DLR is a very successful transport system, which cost relatively peanuts compared to the Edinburgh Tram system, and serves far more people than the ET ever will, too.

And our Parliament will still be standing long after the Scottish one has fallen down…

A decent system would have trams going to all the outlying suburbs as well as tourist destinations and hospitals.

Like Manchester for example? You really don’t need to go to Germany.

I’ve heard that in ‘that London’ they have carriages without horses that run under the very ground itself. What kind of evil is this?

I’ve heard that in ‘that London’ they have carriages without horses that run under the very ground itself. What kind of evil is this?

This is very true, Binners, and it’s nothing to be afraid of, simply a wonder that exceeds your mental capacity to understand.

Fear not; come suck on the teat of blissful oblivion…

Isn’t that route only 2 miles long?

You lot are funny.

I’ve heard that in ‘that London’ they have carriages without horses that run under the very ground itself. What kind of evil is this?

And the ones to the east of the city that ‘fly’ above the buildings on a single line, with no driver. 😯

And the ones to the east of the city that ‘fly’ above the buildings on a single line, with no driver to go on strike at the drop of a hat.

FTFY. 😈

Yeah, cos that happens like every day, dunnit Flashy? 🙄

And not that you care, but some of those strikes have been about safety; that’s right, YOUR safety, and the workers concerns that YOUR safety was not being adequately catered for…

So shut up with yer right-wing undemocratic nonsense please. Thanks.

X

I’ve heard that in ‘that London’ they have carriages without horses that run under the very ground itself. What kind of evil is this?

They have those in Glasgow too.

Bit harder to do in Edinburgh what with the city being built literally on top of the the old plague-ridden city.

(And the ground under that being mainly volcanic)

HLS…..

😀