The fate of Edinburgh's tram project was due to be decided on June 30.
It now looks as if the crunch meeting of the city council, like every other aspect of the beleaguered scheme, will be delayed.
In this case there is justification for allowing more time. The council delegated management of the £545 million scheme to its arms-length body, Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (Tie). Disputes between contractors and Tie have escalated along with rising costs to the point where the future of the project is in jeopardy.
With the arrival of Sue Bruce as the new chief executive at Edinburgh City Council and Vic Emery taking over the chairmanship of Tie, mediation talks have taken the first steps to breaking the stalemate. A subsequent governance review has resulted in the council taking much closer control of the project. Key figures at Tie, including the chief executive, have resigned, staff are being offered redundancy and Edinburgh’s director of city development, Dave Anderson, has direct management responsibility.
This is a woefully belated recognition by the council of failure of proper oversight but, with work on the network halted since last year, it is important progress.
The council must now make the crucial decision on whether it is better to go ahead with the project and incur the additional cost of borrowing around £200m or to scrap it, despite the high cost, to avoid further losses.
This is a heavy responsibility. Whatever they decide will be unpopular with the citizens of Edinburgh and the business community who have put up with disruption and in some cases suffered a loss of trade for far too long.
In that regard, the decision to delay the closure of Princes Street until September when the Festival and Fringe is over is the right one.
City officials are said to be burning the midnight oil to produce a report setting out the cases for abandoning and continuing. The sticking point appears to be pinning down the cost of the additional funding required to complete the truncated route between the airport and St Andrew Square. There are other elements to consider, including the projected user numbers and whether all the track already laid would have to be taken up to restore the roads to their original state.
It is of paramount importance that councillors make their decision based on reliable and robust information. In this much-delayed project, a few weeks further delay are of less consequence than getting the figures right and reaching the correct decision.
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