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Edinburgh Tram Shambles......
What on earth has been going on with the Edinburgh Tram project? It seem to be a very expensive, poor managed project. It is now predicted that the scheme is now likely to cost near the £1 Billion mark - a hell of a lot of money for 10 miles of tram tracks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/23/edinburgh-tram-project-network
http://www.scotsman.com/news/1bn-to-complete-full-Edinburgh.6790337.jp
Heads should roll for this expensive shambles, both in the Scottish Parliament and the local Council.
Whilst I generally support schemes such as Trams and reopened railways, I don't think this project serves value for money at all. I can't see how the predicted ridership figures will cover the cost of construction.
This to me has proven that Boris Johnson's decision to cancel the Cross city Tram was the right one. £1 Billion could be spend on other ways of improving public transport.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/23/edinburgh-tram-project-network
http://www.scotsman.com/news/1bn-to-complete-full-Edinburgh.6790337.jp
Heads should roll for this expensive shambles, both in the Scottish Parliament and the local Council.
Whilst I generally support schemes such as Trams and reopened railways, I don't think this project serves value for money at all. I can't see how the predicted ridership figures will cover the cost of construction.
This to me has proven that Boris Johnson's decision to cancel the Cross city Tram was the right one. £1 Billion could be spend on other ways of improving public transport.
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It will cost much more i believe, the ruling administration and TIE have shown incompetence throughout this process. No one in Edinburgh wanted it yet still the pushed ahead with it.
Expect to see CT bills rise and the sale of Lothian Buses to plug the deficit.
Basically and in a nut shell this was one of the last grandiose schemes of the last Labour Government in Scotland. The SNP have tried several times to wash their hands of the project since taking power like they did with that other pie and sky Labour vanity project GARL, sadly with less success.
You are of course right that £1 billion could be much better spent on the long long overdue extension of the A90 to bypass Aberdeen completely, dualing the A96 north of Inverurie towards Inverness , making it less of a death trap and massively reducing the frankly outrageous 3 hour jounery time or towards building a new Forth Road Bridge.
A farce and a travesty of tax payers money.
Again we see projects that were initiated under Labour coming in way over budget and costing taxpayers a fortune. they really do have no sense of financial cost management at all.
London's Cross City Tram as proposed by Ken Livingstone was another Labour grandiose plan, had that of been taken forward and work started I wonder how much that would of cost? Although I think Boris has cancelled some good transport ideas (DLR Dagenham Dock extension for example) I think he was right to cancel the Tram project. Ken Livingstone and his pie in the sky projects at the London CT payers expense can remain history as far as I am concerned.
The Edinburgh Tram Scheme is no better. Ill conceived, no real cost control and poorly managed since day 1. It is a White Elephant and heads should roll over it.
Again in our area the traffic light friendly Labour council went about replacing roundabouts with traffic lights at great expense. They even made one road worse by installing traffic lights and removing the roundabouts. Local traders and residents have complained but nothing has been done about it.
David Begg is another I wish dead for the mess following his time as councillor in Edinburgh, that scumbag is also on the board of BAA where he was involved in the decision to cut back money for maintenance and new equipment at Heathrow, hence why the airport ran out of de-icer and did not have enough manpower or equipment to deal with the snow last year.
I gobbed a big greasy one on him when he was councillor.:D
A lot of regeneration isnt happening here now because of Boris cancelling the Dagenham dock extension.
New retail areas, and mixed housing are on the back burner as the developer was brought in on the understanding that the DLR would be coming here.
The biggest, most short sighted failure in my mind, was the East London river crossing cancellation. At a stroke, it would have changed the traffic dynamic completely, and eased congestion for the A13, Blackwall tunnel, and allow the closure of the Woolwich ferry.
Just heard on telly that 96% of the contract was supposed to be fixed cost. How on earth did it get to such an overrun then?
Who on earth advises our representatives before they draw up contracts with such punitive cancellation costs?
It's ironic that both Edinburgh and Glasgow were served by great tram systems and instead of updating them, like they did in continental Europe, they destroyed them completely.
The most disruptive policy after that in my opinion was the deregulation of the buses. Services can go off within weeks, numbers and routes are changed too willy nilly and no-one has strategic control any more.
Expansionist bus companies sometimes aggressively push out their competitors on routes and then later decide the route they fought so hard for is uneconomic and withdraw leaving communities adrift. It's the old and young who can't drive who suffer in the long run.
Edinburgh used to have a local bus service to be proud of.
The Dagenham Dock extension is back on the list of proposed extensions for the DLR.
The map below (officially issued by TfL) shows what they have planned for it:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WXthdyYxzzs/Tb5bmUtGTWI/AAAAAAAAAAU/AzRnimjWVJE/s1600/dlrextensions.jpg
Considering it goes from the train station to the airport, that's a pretty big mistake to make, especially when the airport buses have the space
It should not be shut down to return back to the dark days of everything regarding Scottish only policy all debated and voted back down at Westminster.
Only MSP's voting on scottish only policy at Holyrood is a good thing.
You pass the airport from the west by train to Waverley with the planes going overhead. But then you have to travel west by bus to the airport the direction you came from. How stupid is that.
There is still the same old outdated parallel thinking in far too many places that you get the bus from the bus station and you get the train from the train station, no connections. Why has there never been and never will be a bus from waverley train station platform level to Edinburgh bus station? Yet there's a bus between Buchanan bus station, Queen street train station and central train station every 20 minutes.
They need the express train from Glasgow to stop at Edinburgh Park and have the 100 bus calling there. also the Aberdeen trains stop at South Gyle and the 100 bus calling at South Gyle
No tram would still mean the same old pathetic non connection between bus and train stations in Edinburgh oither than a ridiculously expensive taxi. They never provide any alternative at all to a cancelled project which is ridiculous.