Trams

[andrewducker]

So, Edinburgh council recently made the decision to stop the trams at Haymarket station, which (for those of you who don't know Edinburgh) means that it basically stops a mile and a half from the city centre. This would save about £9m/year, at the cost of leaving us with a tram system that doesn't actually go anywhere useful. The decision has been roundly condemned by all sorts of people as being the sort of solution which is fuck all use. Businesses were particularly apoplectic, as having had huge amounts of disruption they were hoping that there might actually be an upside if the trams ever got finished.

The decision was voted in by Labour and the Tories, with the Lib Dems voting against (they want the trams to go to St Andrews Square, in the centre of the city), with the SNP abstaining (because they've always been anti-tram, and have washed their hands of the whole thing).

Today, it's transpired that because the tram line isn't going to deliver what was promised, the Scottish government (SNP) are going to withhold the final £60m of the block grant they were contributing.

The previous decision by the council wasn't something that could be reopened - unless something happened which materially changed the consequences. The withholding of the grant does that, so there's going to be a special meeting on Friday.

At which, if I had to make a guess, the SNP will say "You lot couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery" and vote in favour of the trams going to St Andrews Square, thus looking like they sorted out an intractable problem, and stopped Edinburgh looking more stupid than it already did for the constant stream of tram-related fuckups over the last few years.

I wonder if they had that planned all along.

More here.



Edit: Oh for fuck's sake. They'll also have to hand back £5m and write off £20m of contributions made by businesses on the grounds that the trams would go past their front doors. More here.

Comments

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Given how much of the linework has been laid between the city and the airport, good grief. I always though if anything, it would be better to do the link between the airport and Haymarket, to make sure it all went smoothly, then work inwards from there. Clearly this is an insane option.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Airport to Waverly seems to me like the most logical option too but oh well.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The tramline never went to Waverley station, not even in its previous incarnation. There was only one tram stop planned for Princes Street because the three-car trams are very long (to cut down on the number of drivers needed) and by the time a tram got onto Princes Street from the St. Andrews Square turn it would be half-way to Lothian Road anyway. Anyone wanting to get to Waverley from the tramstop would need to walk at least two hundred metres, maybe more.

The extra line section from Haymarket to St. Andrews Square would cost another 260 million quid which the council would have to borrow since there's no more Scottish Government grant money left in the kitty. That would mean paying 15 million quid a year for the next thirty years from the Council budget at a time when a lot of other things like school repairs are being defunded due to cutbacks. Of course there's no guarantee the costs wouldn't go up -- there's still a lot of digging and relaying of services to be done as well as the reconstruction of the existing Princes St. trackworks.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there a line going most of the way along Princes St? Maybe I'm just used to walking but what I meant when I said 'Waverly' was 'Princes St'. Anywhere on that road would be close enough by comparison to Haymarket.

The SNP need to make the best of a bad job right now. Unfortunately, I'm not sure even their best will be good enough for what was a disaster and a terrible idea from beginning to end.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Looking at the route plan, my assumption is that the thinking is this: making a good connection to Waverley would be tricky given the location, and even if you did stick a station at the top of Waverley Steps, you'd have a lot of congestion from it being a popular location in its own right. Haymarket is a much better choice to make a tram-rail connection, as it's a smaller site and the two can be side by side. In most cases, a connection at Haymarket is functionally identical to one at Waverley: most trains stop at both.

Taking it to St Andrews would have three more stops: Shadwick place, at the bottom of the Mound, and St Andrews Sq itself, where there's the connection with the central bus and coach station -- which is another good reason not to have a Waverley tram stop.

[andrewducker]

Looks like the government is going to withhold £72m. Add in the £25m from businesses, and that's £97m. Which is a fair chunk of the additional £260m cost.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-14713476

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The problem being that most people using the trams will want to get to the city centre, so if it terminated at Haymarket it is very likely end up having so few passengers it will be a loss-making service, making it hard to justify extending the line.

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

I sincerely hope they do vote in favour of continuing to St. Andrew's Square. It's just madness not to.

I'm also sceptical of their numbers: 230 million to complete the line to St. Andrew's Square? That's almost half the original budget, and haven't the lines already been put in place on the most troublesome parts?

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> I wonder if they had that planned all along.

As do I. They've been fervently -- even frothingly -- anti-tram for ages. Now they use the big stick (or rather withdrawal of carrot) to force it to work. Only reason I can see is that they get to crow about how they solved the problem and aren't they wonderful.

[andrewducker]

Frankly, none of the SNP, Labour or the Tories look good from the politicking over this.

And the Lib-Dems look pretty awful for the mismanagement of the project.

Total fail all round.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> Paris Metro operator RATP made an approach in July which was rejected, but they are said to be 'still interested'.

Just saw this. Let's just get the Parisians in. They've built four tram lines in Paris already, including one in the centre which was a fucking nightmare but they got it done in the end.

Though given the current drama, I do wonder whether the real problem is not the contractors but the politicians.

[andrewducker]

The main problem is that the original contracts split "digging up the road" and "laying the track" into two separate chunks, given to two separate people.

Cue the first part taking massively longer than expected, and the people responsible for the second part claiming huge amounts from the council for not being able to start on time.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Ohhh. I didn't know that. I bet one of the problems was also the second lot finding that the first lot hadn't done the prep work to their spec and that sort of thing.

[andrewducker]

Sneak peak at a link for today:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/transport-environment/experts-say-they-told-tie-how-to-avoid-wrangles-with-contractors-1.1120334

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

Having read that when you linked it yesterday, it sounds like *such* a blindingly obviously good idea that I cannot imagine the idiocy that must have gone behind the decision to split it.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

Gordon Mackenzie, Edinburgh transport convener and a Tie board member, said: “At the time it seemed madness to go in and open up main roads in the city only to close them and then come back later and do it again. It was felt that the planning had been adequate: now clearly that has proved to be wrong.”


this is what happens when you have people in charge that do not understand what they are in charge of.

Expert advice was ignored because the responsible individual simply did not believe it. I have seen this happen countless times.

you have someone making decisions based on how they think something *should* work, rather than how they have been told it *does* work.

I had several years of similar blinding frustration, leading to investigations into my working practices and a rather horrid nervous breakdown. Turned out I was right every time. who knew?

[chuma.livejournal.com]

There is also the fact that original contracts never covered the tons of cables and lines under Princes Street that they didn't know about. Negotiating those added huge extra expense to those digging up the road.

What has baffled me is why, especiallon on Princes Street, with the road being dug up constantly that they didn't do a New York style tube to put all the cables and mains lines through that they could access without having to dig up the road again. At least then they would be saving money long term on disruptions.

[andrewducker]

Yup - you might expect some overrun on clearing the cables, when it turns out there are more than you thought. It's the fact that this overrun then costs vastly more because the other contractor is made late by it. Stupid contracting decisions.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

They only found out about a WWII bomb shelter at Haymarket that wasn't on any plans when a digger fell into it. There were water, sewage and gas pipes still in use along the route that had been put in in the 50s -- the 1850s that is and they weren't on any plans either. While carrying out the operations to move the underground services they had to avoid cutting thousands of homes off from their necessary gas, electricity, water, sewage, telephone, TV cable etc. connections which made everything take longer and cost more. It would have been cheaper to hire the Luftwaffe to bomb the city centre flat and rebuild with a clean sheet, I think.

In addition a large chunk of the services relocation cash went into the Newhaven and Leith Walk tram route to the east of the city centre which will not now be completed. That money's gone with the wind but it's still part of the overall bill.

[andrewducker]

Yup. All stuff that wasn't avoidable. There was no way of knowing how much stuff was under there, and frankly the tidying up that was done has probably saved a fortune in the future for the next time people need to go digging down there.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

part of this - and indeed it's something that should have been staggeringly obvious - is the random distribution of works and the total lack of central coordination / control.

In essence, the reason what you suggest didn't happen is that there is no obvious way to /make/ it happen, short of stripping the entire surface and collecting all works. For that to happen, Princes Street would have to be shut down near completely because no-one has/had the faintest clue what's down there.

It wouldn't even be as simple as digging up sections of road and gathering exposed works, because lines of stuff cross all over the place.

But even worse is that the Council should have bloody well known that, and accounted for the fact that the diggers were going to have the most God-awful time imaginable.

this is what happens when you have people in charge that do not understand what they are in charge of

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn't work!"
- Homer









(Homer _Simpson_ that is...)

[skington.livejournal.com]

Putting in trams fucks the place up for years. But it's bloody well worth it once it's finished. Deciding at the last minute to only do half a job is monumentally stupid.

[andrewducker]

It was already half a job (they cut St Andrews Square->Leith ages ago), they were making it a _quarter_ job).

[zz]

can we not just shoot everyone? continuously, till the end of time? it's the only way.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

no need. Wait til the Republicans are back in office and we'll all be exposed to Cosmic Death Rays as they give all the money in the universe to the military and oil people.

out with a bang

as it were

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I feel like sharing this with my Seattle friends just so we can see other regions have intractable and half-assed transportation debates that never go anywhere. Hah!

[andrewducker]

Feel free. Share the horror!