Edinburgh Tram Stalls
That is the headline in Modern Railways this month.
They reckon that there might be enough money left to complete the Edinburgh Tram from Edinburgh Airport to Haymarket, but say some politicians want to kill the whole project off. Wikipedia describes the whole sorry mess.
Apparently, Starbucks or was it Costa, has made a proposal to convert the tram marooned in Princes Street into a coffee shop.
Edinburgh’s Tram To Nowhere
I do not like badly conceived and managed projects, as you’d expect from someone, who designed one of the first modern project mangement systems. I had thought that there was nothing that could match the Cambridge Busway for being badly designed, managed and executed project. But it would appear that the Edinburgh Tram, may come close.
Strangely, the two projects have a lot in common; both will be about 40 kilometres long ,both are running years late and massively over budget. Although the Edinburgh Tram will cost six times more than the Cambridge Busway.
They also get up the public’s nose spectacularly. In the Cambridge case, buses proclaim, “Will I be on the Busway soon?” and in Edinburgh, a static tram is parked to block Princes Street.
The Edinburgh Static Tram
I suppose the static tram does have a point, in that it makes getting a bus in the centre of Edinburgh very difficult, so by the time the tram comes into service in 2014, people will be more likely to use the tram. That could be the only reason, as what idiot would deliberately create a traffic jam with something that doesn’t work. Even those twats with 4x4s and supercars get parking tickets, when they block the roads outside Harrods! Why hasn’t someone stuck a parking ticket on the tram?
To make it worse, I saw this sign too!
Edinburgh Road Sign
So trams can turn right, despite the fact the only one is static!
The Anonymous Widower 