The word tram comes from the low German traam, meaning a beam or shaft; things we associate with light as well as transport. It is not just the people of Edinburgh who would benefit from a shaft of light being shone on the latest murkiness to descend on the city's £512m tram project. It emerged yesterday that the next phase of the scheme, due to begin in Princes Street today, has been put on indefinite hold because of a dispute over the contract.
The word tram comes from the low German traam, meaning a beam or shaft; things we associate with light as well as transport. It is not just the people of Edinburgh who would benefit from a shaft of light being shone on the latest murkiness to descend on the city's £512m tram project. It emerged yesterday that the next phase of the scheme, due to begin in Princes Street today, has been put on indefinite hold because of a dispute over the contract.
The detail is not clear but it appears that Bilfinger Berger, one part of a tripartite consortium awarded the contract to deliver the project, has asked for perhaps an additional £80m to take account of delays caused by realigning gas pipes and electric cabling. According to Transport Initiative Edinburgh (Tie), the arm's-length body set up by City of Edinburgh Council to oversee the project, the BSC consortium has tried to impose unacceptable conditions which, if not agreed to, will prevent the work starting in Princes Street. The consortium denies putting a gun to Tie's head but declines to divulge more because negotiations are continuing.
A vow of silence is not good enough, for two reasons. First, the taxpayer is footing the bill (90% of the cost comes from the Scottish Government and the remainder from the local authority) and has a right to know why, and how, work on the next phase ground to a halt hours before it was due to begin. Secondly, the fact that the contract has been awarded surely renders null and void any argument for secrecy. The day of rival bidders benefiting from a breach of commercial confidentiality is long gone. Tie is playing hardball, insisting not a penny more will go the consortium's way.
The stance is justified. A fixed-price contract was signed for the work and no substantive reason has emerged to warrant its renegotiation. Indeed, Robert Black, the Auditor General, found in June 2007 that the project was then in sufficient shape to meet cost and time targets under a management that could deliver. We need not only to know what has gone wrong but also to be assured that the dispute will not cause the project to be delayed. Work was to start in Princes Street now to accommodate the Edinburgh International Festival and ensure there would be no adverse knock-on effect on this year's Christmas shopping on the retail thoroughfare. Given the parlous state of the economy, the last thing Princes Street and the wider city of Edinburgh need is unscheduled disruption at the busiest time of the shopping year.
As matters stand, only the legal fraternity stands to gain. Tie cannot afford another bout of bad publicity for a project that was opposed by the SNP but eventually won Scottish Parliamentary approval on the basis that it stayed within budget. On balance, it would be unwise to scrap the project at this stage, given the money already spent (more than £100m) and the environmental, economic and mobility gains offered by the mass transit system. But it must risk falling out of service unless the dispute is settled promptly and at no extra cost to the public purse.
