HOW fitting it is that it was one of Edinburgh's finest sons, Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote in El Dorado: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." It could almost be the motto of the capital's trams project, which has certainly cost the city a near mythical sum in gold.
But now there is good news at last in this Jekyll and Hyde city, with big numbers using the tram as part of park and ride into the congested centre. It is always a chicken and egg argument when it comes to congestion and public transport use but it is good for air quality either way.
A city such as Sheffield has built an entire tram network for the cost of Edinburgh's half-route. Bordeaux, using an identical tram system, now has the whole city covered and an extension to the new football stadium to be used for the European championships.
The capital's problem was a procurement disaster rather than an engineering one, so let's hope the completion of the line to Leith and another extension out to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary can be proved to be affordable and the capital's burghers can come to love their tram.
Then they might travel hopefully, from a locale of their choice, to a destination they need to get to. That really would be a better thing.
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