You may have noticed a distinct lack of mention about Edinburgh's wonderful new trams lately on here. That's because I've been despairing over the whole issue!
Let me get this out of the way first: I am pro-trams. I am pro- any increase in public transport, or any initiative which will get people out of their cars and on to public transport.
Which is why I've been so horrified by the mess the Council seems to have made of the whole saga. If you haven't heard the news in the last week, it's roughly this: the main contractors chose the day that Edinburgh's main shopping street, Princes Street, was closed to all traffic for a year to down tools and walk off the job. They're reportedly demanding an extra £50 - £80 million on their fixed-cost contract signed a few years ago. In addition to that, the project was already somewhat behind schedule with some reports saying the delay will be 70 weeks!
It's hard not to feel that the council are being held to ransom here, but at the same time it's hard to find a citizen who has a good word to say about the trams. Unnecessary is the word mostly used.
A couple of my colleagues and I went to visit the mock-up in Princes Street yesterday (that's it above), and I have to admit that I came away thinking "unnecessary", too. The trams will have a capacity for 250 people, which sounds great until you realise that 170 of them will be standing. Which means that one tram will have the same seating capacity as a double-decker bus. They'll follow the route up Leith Walk and along Princes Street that the Number 22 bus takes, every 5 minutes at peak time. The No 22 is already every 5 minutes at peak time.
I'm clinging to the hope that the trams will attract more people to public transport that would never consider taking the bus, but really to have two-thirds of the passengers standing will not give them a good reputation.
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