Yet another twist to the long running Edinburgh Tramway fiasco

[rjhowie]

What a sad epistle this one has been.

Elsewhere in Great Britain where trams have been brought back it has been done sucessfully but not in Edinburgh.

There were to be 3 lines then in a Refernedum of toll charges the citizens voted out the third line. Then came a long and acrimonious battle between the German builder v the TCity Council/Tramway Company (owned by the Council). Building stopped and started andsomethimes for months. Eventually it is down to one line from the airport into the city centre. But even that was meant to go from the west right through the city to the east. The cost went up and up by hundreds of millions. Recently things got starte again but now another problem has surfaced. The tramway builders have been shifting hundred of tons of contaminated soil not just to an official site but dumped unofficially. You couldn't make this up! Being a Glaswegian and a mighty champion in the long tussle between the two cities I can give a raw smile but you can't but feel sorry for the ineptitude, ignorance and lack of Edinburgh's civic leaders in a project that has been altered and fought over for so long with legal interruptions. And of course well past the opening date. Had things been better worked out they could have had the original three lines for the price now being shovelled out for one!

 

[JCitron]

What a sad epistle this one has been.

Elsewhere in Great Britain where trams have been brought back it has been done sucessfully but not in Edinburgh.

There were to be 3 lines then in a Refernedum of toll charges the citizens voted out the third line. Then came a long and acrimonious battle between the German builder v the TCity Council/Tramway Company (owned by the Council). Building stopped and started andsomethimes for months. Eventually it is down to one line from the airport into the city centre. But even that was meant to go from the west right through the city to the east. The cost went up and up by hundreds of millions. Recently things got starte again but now another problem has surfaced. The tramway builders have been shifting hundred of tons of contaminated soil not just to an official site but dumped unofficially. You couldn't make this up! Being a Glaswegian and a mighty champion in the long tussle between the two cities I can give a raw smile but you can't but feel sorry for the ineptitude, ignorance and lack of Edinburgh's civic leaders in a project that has been altered and fought over for so long with legal interruptions. And of course well past the opening date. Had things been better worked out they could have had the original three lines for the price now being shovelled out for one!

Bobby,

This sounds like the MBTA (Mass. Bay Transit Authority) is involved. They closed a line from Huntington Avenue at Cleveland Circle down to Forest Hills area back in the 1980s due to a "cost-cutting" move. The tracks remained and so did the wires until only a few months ago. Residents wanted the trolleys (trams) back so much, but the "T" resisted. The T went to court to fight the rebuilding and the judge ruled in favor of the T and a bunch of NIMBYs, so today the tracks are ripped up and paved over. The T and the NIMBYs couldn't even wait a month to do the whole project in! The same thing happened to the old Watertown branch as well. People wanted it, but the T refused and went a long with a few NIMBYs. Instead the tracks are gone and the traffic is worse.

During the 1970s, the old EL was torndown. This went from Forest Hills to Everett Square with an extensive station at Sullivan Square in Somerville. Granted the old EL was a bit old, but it served the community quite well. The plan during this time was to remove the EL and replace the line on the old B&M and New Haven (NH&H) rights of way. These tracks are actually on an active line, but share the side of the route. In the southern end, near Forest Hills, the line follows a non-built highway grade (great idea for a change. The person that thought of this was probably fired though!) Anyway, the EL came down with the promise to many neighborhoods that there would be trolleys instead to replace the EL. This never happened. Instead there are buses and lots of them getting stuck in traffic. Sadly it's the poor that have to deal with less than adequate transportation because the Orange Line (old EL route), now serves the more yuppy communities. Whenever anyone, from the poor neighborhoods, asks about their missing trolleys, the T ignores them, and continues the buses.

Recently, perhaps in the past 5 years, the T purchased some new LRVs from Italy. Now the MBTA has some very tight curves in, in the world, located in the tunnels particularly in the Boylston Street and Park Street area in Boston. This is part of the original subway. The tracks are something like a 10-degree or less curve and require greasers to keep the cars moving. Well after many bids by many, much better manufacturers including Siemens and Bombardier, the geniuses went with these crappy cars. They're too big for the tracks and will derail. In fact they did this immediately even though they were supposedly built to spec. Me thinks someone was paid off well to get these cars even though they were not the highest bidder. It took many months, along with a lawsuit, to get the cars operating properly, and to this day there are still problems with them.

So when it comes to transit projects, nothing seems to be different no matter where you live. Sadly where you are, it appears there are an extra amount of idiots on the project, which sounds like it was destined to fail from the beginning because the heart was never into the project in the first place. It makes me wonder if this was done deliberately by the transit authority management. I see it as let's appoint "Joey". He's quite the tool, but his uncle is the big wig's and wanted the bloke to have a job because he's a college graduate! The idiot couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag, but since his uncle is a big wig, he's got the job.

John

 

[rjhowie]

That litany you mention John is dreadful.There are 6 places in Gt Britain with tramways (including the Blackpool Holiday resort sytem dating from Victorian times and being modernised. The others are all modern. All these systems got built and running well and one hopes to double their trackage in the near future. The only odd one out is poor old Edinburgh. You are spot on regarding being a problem from the start. Things were never worked out properly between the city council and the builders. Then the builders fround more utitlities to move than expected. Arguments went on about that and tools were downed for ages. Stop and start then as the thing rocketed in cost Princes Street the main tourist area looked like a building site. In due course the mileage was drasticallly reviewed and even the one reasonably long line from the airport itself was going to be curtailed a mile from the city centre! That would be catastrophic as people would have to get off the trams and get a bus or taxi i9nto the city centre! The government stepped in and brought in Transport Scotland who should have been involved from the start. The Council had emergency meetings and with government people as well and after more sword play the Council agreed to re-instate it into the city centre. Even the 6 miles or so when done is only half of the original planned route all the way to Leith.

Even what is going to be there is a pale shadow of the great system planned at a containable cost but now Edinburgh will be paying for this for an awful long time as the over sum is running into hundreds of millions. Many of those sympathetic to the trams have retreated. That fact that your situa is even worse does show that as you portray a lot of well, empty heads that aren't thinking ir planning right? Years ago Glasgow City Council mused on bringing trams back (we once had the largest tram system in Britain outside London until closed in 1962). Nothing came of it except a million odd pinds spent "looking at the possibility". Amusingly a friend of mine who was a bus inspector said that when a tramway system was mooted for Glasgow the bus companies went bananas as it would be unfair competition!

Bobby

 

[rjhowie]

The farce continues. Lately the tram builders cut through a main electrical supply and a chunk of the city had no power including hotels!

 

[Bob5446]

As someone who lives in Manchester but whose family is in Edinburgh I feel caught between a certain smugness and overwhelming exasperation over this debacle. The tram service in Manchester is very good and expanding yet again, albeit that we who live there think it rather expensive! Edinburgh and Leith, in my opinion, would have really benefited from the original proposal but it does seem to be doomed to a very poor compromise at best. I have never quite been sure whether the builders or the council were at fault but suspect it is most likely both. Glasgow would benefit too I think from a resurrection of its tram system but I can't imagine it likely any time soon given the horror story down the M8!

 

[JCitron]

The farce continues. Lately the tram builders cut through a main electrical supply and a chunk of the city had no power including hotels!

This sounds like, as I said Bobby, a group of inempt contractors hired by a bloke with no experience. I'll make a bet too that the contractors were not the lowest bidders for the job either.


And... in response to your other post. The bus companies are complaining about the competition. The same thing happened and is happening here. The reason why lightrail (trams) is such an evil thing is the director of the T was involved in buses before and this is where his ties are. If he was prorail and protransit, this would have been different.

It gets better than this. The new Amtrak train, the Downeaster, which is very successful despite what the pundits were saying, was fought tooth and nail by the New Hampshire legislature for several years. They used every excuse not to endorse this service even though many of the state's biggest cities would benefit. The reason, the local bus company, the Dover and Portsmouth Bus, which runs express service to Boston, was blocking this in the statehouse. They did not want the competition from the trains. Right now there is a similar issue trying to get trains up to their state capitol, Concord. The track is in place, everyone wants it, but the state is ignoring the request for service. The reason is the local bus company doesn't want to lose the business and is paying off officials to keep things from happening. This time it's the Concord-Boston bus.

John

 

[Konni]

Hi,

There is one aspect that gives me food for thought. If cities do not keep track where they buried power lines, sewage canals, pipes for drinking water and other utilities including disused ones, then any kind of underground work becomes a gamble. Faulty data might well cause tremendous increases in building cost since relocating utility lines are a major cost factor. It also provides food for lawyers wrangling over liability.

In my home town Karlsruhe, they are currently moving some major tram lines underground. One of the problems encountered were pieces of disused water or gas pipes mistaken for bombs left from WW II. Each time they had to evacuate large inner city sections until bomb disposal squads had been called in and investigated the matter.

Cheers,

Konni

 

[JCitron]

Hi,

There is one aspect that gives me food for thought. If cities do not keep track where they buried power lines, sewage canals, pipes for drinking water and other utilities including disused ones, then any kind of underground work becomes a gamble. Faulty data might well cause tremendous increases in building cost since relocating utility lines are a major cost factor. It also provides food for lawyers wrangling over liability.

In my home town Karlsruhe, they are currently moving some major tram lines underground. One of the problems encountered were pieces of disused water or gas pipes mistaken for bombs left from WW II. Each time they had to evacuate large inner city sections until bomb disposal squads had been called in and investigated the matter.

Cheers,

Konni

Hi Konni,

I hope everything is going well for you!

You made an important point here. Where I live we have what's called "Dig Safe" in my state. The utility companies, both private and public, subscribe to this and supply data to the state department of public utilities. This organization publishes this data so any contractor can found out if there are gas mains, water pipes, sewer, etc. in the ground before they dig. This has saved quite a bit of time and delays. Occasionally a contractor may hit a water main, but rarely an electric conduit or gas main.

John

 

[rjhowie]

What a diabolic situation there John regarding that rail introduction plan and the bus lot paying to get it blocked. What happened to the idea of competition and freedoms?! In Scotland I discovered an intersti8ng thing about bus companies and ther government. The biggest bus operator in the Glasgow area is being moaned at for drastically reducing a number of servicxes in areas in the evening - one of them in my suburb is being withdrawn after 7pm. Most griped about the bus operator but it seems that the Scottish Government lot alwatys waxing about giving things free, etc has curtailed the subsidy for bus routes and the company no longer finds it economic. Now maybe that news should be broadcast a bit more.

However we do have for my tuppence worth a fairly good rail service in and around the city and is reasonably extensive. On the matter of the Edinburgh tram nonsense Glasgow once had the largest tramway outside London when closed in 1962 so I reckon we would have done a better job on tramway building than our rival over on the east coast! But to be fair our own Local Authority repeatedly yakked about modern trams being brought back but zilch. Likewise the Glasgow Subway is the second oldest in the world (goes round in a circle with track up to storage yards at street level) and another thing suggested for extension and again, zilch. When you consider the lack of passenger train services in the USA compared to here and that opening would be a boon it is galling?