Edinburgh tram fiasco gets even worse!

[wholbr]

Hi Everybody.

I suppose you could argue that the bank bail out that has caused the UK pound to sink rapidly recently and the cut backs was not the fault of private industry, ie the banks at all but rather the public sector. After all the Canadian Government managed to make a profit on the bank bailout, it lent funds to the local banks secured by mortgages that it was already insuring and no local banks went under.

Cheerio John

John, I do not think that Canada is in anyway near as prominent as the UK in being a worldwide financial centre and a headquarters base for the international banks. Of course the failure of those institutions is a big factor in the financial plight of the UK but it is also a big contributory factor in the financial plight of countries such as, America, France, Greece, Ireland Portugal just to name a few.

Perhaps if the governments worldwide had kept their eye on the ball and agreed tighter regulation on the international banks then the world would not be in the ever continuing financial crisis it is at the moment.

However, I cannot see the connection in your posting with my comments on the spending of taxpayers hard-earned money financing tramway systems such as the Edinburgh project.

On my way back up from Barnstable earlier today and I was only half listening to the car radio when I believe they where advising that over 400 million has already been spent on the project to date. With only four hundred thousand people living in the Edinburgh area that equates to almost 1 million pounds per Edinburgh Citizen indebtedness in this fiasco and it is not half finished yet.

I have got a job to believe those figures but they were given out by the BBC news. so would somebody please correct me if I am wrong, if not this is a bigger fiasco than any one outside of the Scottish people who have been aware of the problems could have ever dreamed of.

How can anyone go on believing in and supporting such projects.

Bill

 

[rjhowie]

Firstly, Edinburgh City Council as expected has changed it's mind again and the line will go the extra mile into the city centre and St Andrew's Square.

As for people's taxes going on these projects there are a great many people like me who don't drive a car or indeed want to. I am well aware that motorists pay a road tax but we still dish out large sums for motorists to drive great new highways, etc. Millions of drivers want the right to drive legions of cars with often one person in them. In time this clogs up roads and so we nuild more of them and the circle goes on. We cannot simply keep building roads and spoiling places. To offset this there needs to be a reasonable public transport of course. Experts also tell us that most of the tram systems created encourage use of them and business and jobs go along with it. I can remember when the trams were brought back down in an English city and a bus route that ran parallel to the tram line had to cut back as folk preferred the comfort of a tram to a bus.

Nobody moaned decades ago when tramways (and many buses) were operated by City Councils across Great Britain dishing out taxes to run them. Very few had cars so there was okay! Interesting how the mindset changes with the onset of millions of cars causing jams and still they increase the number on the roads. Because there are rogue situations such as Edinburgh that is meant to clobber all such systems? A kind of over-kill. Why then is Manchester going ahead with a doubling of the number of lines and another city wanting an extension?


In my suburb of Glasgow I am nearly 6 miles from the city centre. Round the corner I have one bus route that is every 20 minutes a second that runs every 30 minutes and the third runs every seven-and-half minutes. We also have an electric suburban statioj with trains every 15 minutes so no excuse for not using the transport system.

Edinburgh is an example of politicians who usually go saving whales not getting their heads right everyday things. Originally it was meant to be a much bigger system but the citizens voted outline theree as there would have been road charging into the city centre. Fair enough so that would mean 2 lines until the incompetence started surfacing and now down to a fraction of the original. And while we are at it just think how every project - roads - bridges - tunnels, etc never cost the original price but often twice or three times the original. I don't hear motorists moaning about that when they get what they want??

 

[pfx]

Try and stay off the politics folks or the thread will end up locked.

 

[wholbr]

Hi pfx, rj howie and Everybody.
Rj Howie I could not agree with you more on the overuse of cars within the UK. I do drive a car and was a Hgv driver for many years. However, these days I hate driving on our overcrowded roads. Only yesterday driving back from North Devon in mid afternoon I found myself in one of those 70 mph traffic jams you get on the M5 and on all our motorways these days.

Having said that I believe you and I RJ will have to agree to disagree on large-scale funding of rail projects at the present time. in modern times the car has been a curse but has also been a blessing in the number of jobs it has created and still maintains in the modern society. Therefore we will always have to have roads for vehicles to travel on if only to the nearest railway station.

Therefore, better use of our existing road and rail networks I believe is the right way forward. Such things as park-and-ride which has been a major success in several cities judging by this thread. Also good bus services from major rail terminus has also shown excellent signs of improvement here in the West country.

The car is great for shopping trips, days out and the annual holiday. What we have to get away from his cars being used for the daily commute into the city center commercial areas. That's where the railways can really play a major part as the increase in passenger numbers is showing. Along with that must come better use of the undervalued bus and bus lanes to speed those vehicles and further encourage people out of those cars and onto good, reliable, punctual and most of all safe public transport.

That can be done through better use of the roads and railways we already have and without burdening future generations with billions of pounds worth of debt.

Bill

 

[rjhowie]

I can go along with some of that Bill. I am not basically a great fan of spending billions as it is tax money at the end of the day. Of course we cannot keep building roads as I say or it will end up like 1984 with a giant tarmac from Land's End to John O' Groats! It was fine yonks ago having single driver cars when there weren't so many owners but now we have millions and constantly increasing. Everyone wants the right to drive their car and many are just one person but the way things are going that is increasingly a privilege due to constant increase in drivers and cars.

What we need to ensure is a proper balance betwen cars and public transport. I think that up here there areless people in proportion with cars for example so alternatives are important. Rail plays a big part in Scotland and the re-openings I referred to in another thread show that. Trams are part of the public tranpsort system. In the USA a number of cities have brought them back evenif they have a fancy name such as 'light rail'. They are still trams (!). I found when ion the Continent where the tram still rules it was a more comfortable trip than a bus and the same will go for the modern systems in England and over in the Irish Republic in Dublin.

The principle of atram system in Edinburgh was a fine concept if they had been able to run the original idea of tracks from one end of Edinburgh in the west and airport all the way to Leith, etc. But they were and are so totally inpet through there. No-one else in Great Britain had this nonsense and figghts over utilities and so on. Why didn't the City Council not look more into the offer from the Continent to come in and finish the project with millions off the price? Even if the present builder had got compensation might still have been cheaper. One party to their credit concerned about the runaway public money did want the present builder to get the kick off but overall they have made an ass of themselves in Auld Reekie.

Over here in Glasgow wee used to have a famous writer who always argued the case in the long running competition betwen Edinburgh and Glasgow. He was Jack House and he said once that the best road in Edinburgh was the one that led to Glasgow! They might be very posh in Edinburgh but they don't have our practicality here in the gritty city (!).

 

[wholbr]

Hi Rj And Everybody.
I think I can go along with almost everything you have stated in your last posting Rj. Throughout the UK we have to find a balance between public transport and the use of private cars.

I believe we are moving in that direction as the majority of the population realizes that there is little alternative to the above thinking. The love affair with the car which started in the 1960s is most definitely over. The foregoing is proven by the dramatic rise in the use of rail transport throughout the UK.

I can remember when as a teenager everybody used the buses as a means of local transport in getting to work. With few cars on the road the buses where not delayed and therefore quick and reliable. along with that the bus stop was the place where you met your friends and neighbors and therefore this built much of the community spirit which now seems to have been lost.

In my journeys up and down the country using rail as much as possible I find that once again people do converse with one another on trains even if that person is a complete stranger. Let's hope that as public transport in general once again becomes the major means of everyday mobility throughout the UK that aspect will increase and begin to rebuild once again that tolerant and respective side of British society that as stated seems to have been lost in the " car love" years.

Bill

 

[rjhowie]

Well the present Scottish government has re-instated the grant towards the tramway and a new contract with the builders is being discussed right now. It may be a pale shadow of the original hope but at least getting into the city centre. The government is also seconding officials from the Transport Scotalnd a government group onto the tram company board to ensure things are done right. Maybe they should have done that a long time ago but the SNP lot had griped about the thing since they took office and inhereited the grant from the previous Lab-LibDem crowd. The hope is that a definitive date for completion can be ascertained and Princess Street once again closed to contine the track build.

 

[rjhowie]

The first tram arrived on Monday 17th October in parts by low loader and the rest of the 27 fleet will follow. The depot has been electrified for static tests.

Oddly the Councillor in charge of the Transport Committee has said publically that the idea of eventually going right through to east Edinburgh and to Leith may still be something in future?