Road To Ruin

The Edinburgh trams. Possibly yhe most ill-conceived, incompetently-managed and downright ludicrous waste of public money in the Western world in the past decade?

Edinburgh council has always been against motorists. To be fair to the council, the city is not well designed to accept car traffic, and the council has never had the kind of vision that Glasgow had to open the city up to mototists.

Anyway, back in 2005 the council held a referendum on a proposed congestion charge, similar to that which is in operation in central London. The electors of Edinburgh told the council to take a hike, with almost 75% of voters voting against.

To punish people for voting the wrong way, the council instead came up with a new scheme - they would build tram lines on the major roads, thus increasing congestion and making life worse for motorists trying to spend money in the city centre.

To ensure things went smoothly, the council sent its best legal mind to negotiate the contract. Sadly this in fact meant that the job was done by a hung-over summer student, who is also the main project planner.

Rather than the original three lines, the current contruction now will only offer one line. That line, originally planned to run from Newbridge to Leith will only run from the Airport to York place (significantly shorter than the original plan).

The initial cost for a two-line scheme was £498million, and it was meant to open in July 2011. The latest estimate for a shortened single-line scheme is that it might open in 2014, the cost being about £700m (£1bn if interest payments on the loan are included).

And, the council cannot see OPERATING profit in the first fifteen years of its existence.

Quite incredible.

And not in a good way.