[Closed] Edinburgh trams yet again.

This is from a 1956 newspaper we found under the carpet...

What goes around etc etc. The cooncil will be ripping up the trams for hover boards in 2025..

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Its the "One Big Contract" that makes me laugh...

See if they'd just given someone "one big contract" rather than lots of people lots of different contracts the trams would have been finished by now.

druidh - Member

Princes Street does get snarled up with buses at rush hour, but how much better will it be when there is one less lane for them to use in order to keep it clear for the tram?

Quite a bit, I expect. It's a fairly solid reduction in the number of buses, and the trams load and unload far faster. I'm not sure what's planned for the bus stops though. The reduced route's going to have an impact on that though of course.

a future episode of Top gear features the men helping to solve transport problems for poor people who cant druive, using a car pulling some caravans down a railway track, looks good.

See if they'd just given someone "one big contract" rather than lots of people lots of different contracts the trams would have been finished by now.

It does seem like the main problem is around the procurement and governance of the whole project.

Glad it's going ahead and just wish they would get the bloody thing built now. Edinburgh city centre is rubbish for traffic and always has been (been living here 10 years now, long before tram works and traffic calming). I say get Edinburgh Airport - St Andrews Square done, see how it works out (reckon it will be pretty good myself) and then crack on with turning Edinburgh Park into a viable interchange station for trains from west and airport trams and get building a wider network over 10-20 years.

Rail link would have been a problem on may levels. First off, which line do you link it up to? The Edinburgh - Forth Bridge line goes by the end of the runway (but still about a km from the terminal); the Edinburgh - Glasgow line is on the other side of the A8 and about 20m higher than airport level so again would take a bit of moving. There's a lot of volcanic rock around there (see Ratho quarries, Craigie Hill etc) which is expensive to tunnel through as it's so hard, you're not dealing with chalk etc. And if you can solve that there are still severe capacity problems between Waverley and Haymarket. Only 4 tracks service about 15 platforms and no way of widening without encroaching on Princes Street Gardens, or tunnelling through the Castle Rock. Stopping trains at the airport would add a few mins to every journey too (the logic for not stopping Ed-Gla at Edinburgh Park apparently). Have a look at what the Heathrow Express to set up and a "few miles of track and a station" soon adds up.

Infrastructure programs are always long term gain for short term pain - that's sort of the point.

Bumped by who though? Someone big and powerful was masterminding all of this

Princes Street does get snarled up with buses at rush hour, but how much better will it be when there is one less lane for them to use in order to keep it clear for the tram?

Buses won't be running the same way as the trams.
No bus service will be allowed to run in direct competition with the trams.
Which basically means that if you want to go anywhere that involves going in a similar direction to the trams, yet isn't on the tramline, you'll have to get of a bus, on the tram, then back on a bus.
For example, if you want to go from Jocks Lodge to the Zoo, which you could do via the 26 at the moment, you'll have to get the bus from Jocks Lodge to St Andrews Sq, get the tram along Princes Street to Haymarket, then get another bus for the final stretch to the zoo.

I'm sure First Bus will come up with alternatives, but I'm equally sure the council will ensure there's no decent direct alternative routes.

mc - Member

Buses won't be running the same way as the trams.
No bus service will be allowed to run in direct competition with the trams.
Which basically means that if you want to go anywhere that involves going in a similar direction to the trams, yet isn't on the tramline, you'll have to get of a bus, on the tram, then back on a bus.
For example, if you want to go from Jocks Lodge to the Zoo, which you could do via the 26 at the moment, you'll have to get the bus from Jocks Lodge to St Andrews Sq, get the tram along Princes Street to Haymarket, then get another bus for the final stretch to the zoo.

I still don't understand exactly why a quote for work, once accepted, can change. If I tell a customer what I'm going to do will cost them £1000, knowing I'll make £100 profit, if my profit drops to zero because of increased costs then I have to swallow that loss and re-think my strategy. Why is it different in this kind of venture? All that seems to happen is people quote stupidly low (or reasonable) prices and then as soon as the first 5 minutes are up there's tooth sucking and head shaking and it's as twice as pricey as the most expensive quote. idiotic.

Most engineering contracts quite rightly feature clauses for unforeseen circumstances, things that cannot be quantified before the works begin - like the amount of services in the ground and their location. The only ones that don't are Guaranteed Maximum Price contracts.

M74 £2000 / inch
Trams about £2500 / inch at the moment

expensive eh?

I don't know the veracity of this but there is quite of a lof of information here

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Trams ]Wiki trams[/url]

which appears well substantiated and I would recommend anyone who is interested at least have a read.

I just wrote a massive reply, but deleted it because it feels better to sit here and just smile at the majority of these posts 😀

Nortwind
Ill happily take that shiny scottish pound bet with you, infact ill take any value of wager you like!
There is not enough time left in the universe for the trams to be extended to even the "completion" of the.proposed first phase of the first route to newhaven let alone granton or any of the other pie in the sky routes.

Given the proposed building of homes in the eastern part of leith docks i would suggest that the trams were to pre-empt some planning concerns

I wonder why the route wasnt started from the airport and built towards the outer terminus, im guessing because they knew there would be serious budget issues and without large swathes of the work done that the project would be pulled. If they had built it from the airport to town then the trams could have been running by now generating an income while the remainder of the works were completed.

Given the history of edin cooncil an non completion of projects, some ancient, calton hill, some more recent, the western approach road its hardly a surprise!

The most annoying thing about this imho is that the edinburgh electorate will vote the same ****wits back in!! Im all for the stw massive standing in every ward on a trams were a fiasco ticket. Not on the fact that they were built but on the managemet of them.

Fwiw if the original plan of a tram NETWORK had went ahead it would have been worthwhile and tackled many of the congestion issues but not a partial single line!!

The reduction in traffic on Princes Street was modelled on the whole length of the track. By not going down Leith (the part with the highest profit potential, apparently) the 22s will still run at least part of teh route.

[b]druidh[/b] That'll be the development activity reduced and production beginning. Different skills required, see.

Nope, they are still in development, its the production staff they are laying off, because they can't get anyone to invest in wave power and buy the devices.

I think that is the SPR machine you linked to in the picture, the eon one is already up in Orkney being tested. I think once the SPR machine is built they are going to lose their production staff which is a real mess.

Ruddy tram - what a farce. All that money for a useless white elephant It was allways the wrong solution to the wrong question. mainline trains should be going to the airport, light rail should have been the reinstatement of the south suburban loop(the rails are still there and used for freight) with the north suburban loop added ( maybe later).

The trams do not integrate with either the railway or the airport properly anyway - just stupid. Worse that the existing bus service for integration

What went wrong with the Western Approach Rd (mentioned by Turin)? First bit was just an old railway line to Princes St, couldn't ask for an easier thing to tarmac.
It always does strike me as an odd road, coming out the back of Gorgie the way it does, this start point is sort of discrete. I've never needed to use it though, maybe it's great if that's your commute.

Western Approach Road - [url= http://www.cockburnassociation.org.uk/default.asp?page=85 ]this[/url] proposal?

turin - Member

Nortwind
Ill happily take that shiny scottish pound bet with you, infact ill take any value of wager you like!

I'll put one aside for you, just in case.

Glasgow still has tramlines.

The only problem is they are buried under several inches of tarmac!

I remember seeing them on Hyndland Road years ago when they had dug part of the road up.

Well, see them quite often on Maryhill Road when the potholes open up. Together with the cobblestoned streets below. Looks lovely...... as you are spilled over the handlebars to crack your wrists on 100 year old tram lines.... 8)