It suffered from a shambolic launch 11 years ago before cementing itself as a core part of the capital’s public transport system and now carries a record number of passengers, but what is the future of Edinburgh’s trams?
That is the question The Herald sought to address in a new series this week, investigating plans for a major extension that could double the length of the city’s tramway.
From funding to feasibility, the week seemed to end with more questions than answers, underscoring the uncertainty surrounding the project at this early stage. Who would foot the bill for a north-south line estimated at £2 billion, where it would be built, and - crucially - whether the city even wants one?
Read articles from the Future of Edinburgh's Trams series:
- Edinburgh trams extension is not going to happen. Here's why
- Next stop for Edinburgh Trams: Inside the £2bn plan to transform how the city moves
- Edinburgh’s new tram plans: Cost, journey times and impact compared
The council will attempt to find answers to these in responses to the first consultation on the plans, which closes tomorrow.
One of the first questions we explored was one I’ve heard raised several times since August when new tram plans were published. Is the consultation a ‘false choice’?
In other words, is the decision between a former railway route - off-road, cheaper, and faster, although now a popular active travel path - and one crossing an A-listed bridge, one of the city’s most historic structures, really a choice at all? And are these truly the only options for improving public transport in a city that’s growing rapidly?
Some who I spoke to, including Lesley Hinds, the former transport convener credited with saving the first tram project, and transport expert Christian Wolmar, agreed this was a false choice - wasting time and money.
While the current transport convener Stephen Jenkinson said the notion of a false choice “adds little to help people decide for themselves which potential route they would like to see in future” others argued the problem runs deeper — pointing to a culture of drawn-out consultations and reliance on external consultants that has slowed progress for decades.
“France has built something like 25 tram schemes in the last 30 or so years. We’ve built five,” Mr Wolmar told me.
He said: “We have to test things to the extreme [...] rather than having a plan and saying: Edinburgh needs better transit systems, this is the cheapest and quickest way of delivering it - let's just do it.”
But is Edinburgh getting carried away with its tram ambitions — and losing sight of the value of its municipal bus network, long regarded as the envy of cities across the UK?
Professor David Begg, a former councillor who pioneered a project to speed-up buses across Edinburgh in the late 1990s, was keen not to get drawn into a “buses versus trams” debate.
“The way I would phrase this is,” he said, “ignore buses at your peril, because they are still the backbone of Edinburgh’s public transport system.
“And even though in Edinburgh there was so much opposition to them when they were being built, there's now a clamour to get a tram service.
“But you don't get as much excitement about bus priority. Nobody goes along to their local councillor's surgery and says, ‘I want more bus priority,’ but it really matters.”
For the second part of our series, environment reporter Vicky Allan tackled the most contentious aspect of the north-south tram debate: the Roseburn Path. If the council proceeds - and secures funding - for the cheaper, faster northern spur between the city centre and Granton, a two-kilometre stretch of the pedestrian route would be used.
In the battle of ‘trees vs trams’, Save the Roseburn Path refuse to give ground — despite the council’s pledge to build a new walking and cycling route alongside the tram line.
Read all articles in the series here
“For us it’s like, yes, extend the tram network. There are plenty roads. Pick the best road. Why pick this place?,” campaigner Euan Baxter told Vicky. “The council claim they can maintain 70% of [trees] due to their design with battery-operated trams. We dispute that because they’ve not done a proper tree survey and they've not made allowances for certain infrastructure they know they need to include in the design,” he added.
Vicky also set out the seven key reasons people object to a Roseburn Path tram route, and reflected on the first disastrous phase of tram works outside her door 15 years ago, comparing the experience of ‘tram birth’ to childbirth.
“My own first dawnings that a tram was planned for our street came not long after my husband and I moved into our home following the birth of our first child,” she wrote. “Then, over the coming years, there were some early tram birth contractions, which stopped in 2010, when it was decided that the line wasn’t coming our way. The project’s costs, which had risen to £600 million, and contractual problems, meant the stretch to Newhaven was cancelled.”
In the third and final instalment, we looked back at what Edinburgh learned from its past tram troubles - and explored alternative ideas to keep the city’s public transport fit for the future.
Ms Hinds, who was among those left picking up the pieces of Edinburgh’s tram fiasco in 2012 and helped ensure a line could be completed under a revised budget and timetable, said the northern line should be prioritised, having been promised over 20 years ago before plans were scaled-back amid rising costs.
“[Roseburn Path] is offroad, it's a smaller project; let's get that and get that delivered and then deliver the next part,” she said, warning if Edinburgh didn’t focus on developing a strong business case for this first - before plans for a southern line - it could miss out on funding to other Scottish cities.
“If we don't have a business case we can't put that case forward to the Westminster government and to the Scottish Government,” she said.
“We are a growing city, with thousands of houses being built down on the waterfront, and in East Lothian, Midlothian, and West Lothian.
“This is a project about investment in the future of our city - and the whole of Lothians and Fife - and investment in public transport and the whole issue of sustainability, the climate, the air.”
Read articles from the Future of Edinburgh's Trams series:
- Trees v trams. 'There are plenty roads. Pick the best one. Why pick this place?'
- I cycled the Roseburn Path - here’s why so many cyclists love and defend it
- I helped save Edinburgh’s disastrous tram project - here’s what city should do now
The debate over Edinburgh’s tram future increasingly touches on the South Suburban Railway — a line between Portobello and Gorgie that hasn’t carried passengers since 1962, but which many residents now want linked to the tram network near Haymarket to allow tram-trains to run.
Jonathan Pugh, a retired Strategy and Planning Director for Network Rail, said of the idea: “Technically, it can be done.”
“It makes a case for having tram-trains,” he added. “I think it's much stronger than ever before because congestion has gotten worse in Edinburgh and also tram-trains reduces the big objection that the railway used to have to this, which is that all you were doing was going to be putting people on quite a long, infrequent journey round the sub to get into the centre.”
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