I used to laugh whenever anyone - usually taxi drivers - suggested to me that Edinburgh would never see a tram running down Princes Street. As it turns out, they were right.
Edinburgh City Council today voted to block the funding that would have seen the trams go from the Airport to St Andrews Square, along Princes Street. Instead, the trams will now terminate at Haymarket.
I'm not despairing at this. I'm apoplectic.
It appears that the Labour and Conservative councillors, with an eye on the council elections next year, have taken fright and decided that what Edinburgh really needs is a line that stops short of anywhere that the public actually might want to go.
As much as I think that Haymarket should be utilised a lot more than it is, and that it would make an effective transport hub, terminating the trams there is idiotic. Yes, Haymarket being a stop on the way into the city centre will be welcome, but visitors to the city will not be happy having to decamp there and catch a bus for the last mile.
In fact, they'd be as well just getting the excellent Airport Bus service, which already stops at Haymarket before continuing into the city centre and terminating at Waverley Station - a transport hub!
For that reason, I'm now of the opinion that if the trams are to be terminated at Haymarket then there's no point to them. The entire scheme may as well be scrapped. It pains me to say it, as I believe that more public transport is never a bad thing, but the costs of running the trams, coupled with the report that they will never make a profit just going to Haymarket, mean that they will not be financially viable and the city will land itself with a huge bill every year.
There is one glimmer of light. Having the trams running to Haymarket, and leaving the tracks laid in Princes Street, means that at some point in the future a Council that has a bit of guts about it might actually join the two together.
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