COUNCILLORS voted last night to plough ahead with Edinburgh's troubled trams project, despite a shortfall in funding of almost £300 million. A truncated line from Edinburgh airport to St Andrew Square will be pursued over the next few months after calls for a cheaper alternative which would have halted the tram at the Haymarket area were defeated.

However the fate of the project still hangs in the balance because of the Scottish Government's refusal to grant any more funding to the beleaguered scheme, which is expected to cost up to £773m. Officials have been given two months to produce detailed funding options to get the scheme up and running amid fears the council is facing a costly legal action if it ends up pulling out of the project.

THE Capital's tram debacle has sparked interest from around the world from firms interested in completing the route, it has emerged. City leader Jenny Dawe said she had received a number of inquiries from companies interested in completing the line to Newhaven.

It comes after councillors backed a plan to build the tram line to St Andrew Square, leaving officials just two months to make up a £228 million shortfall. Councillor Gordon Mackenzie, the city's transport leader, said the council was exploring the possibility of a private firm building the remainder of the 11.5-mile route and allowing the council to rent it back.

PLANS to create Scotland's answer to the London Eye on Edinburgh's waterfront could be shelved because of the city council's failure to take the tram line to Leith. Great City Attractions – the company behind the world's biggest observational wheel in Singapore – hoped to build a similar structure near Ocean Terminal.

But the Birmingham-based firm today said that the ambitious project, "Scotland's National Wheel", is now under review because the tram link to the city centre and Edinburgh Airport was critical to making the scheme financially viable. It is the latest blow to hopes of regenerating the Leith Docks area, after the Evening News revealed yesterday Forth Ports will reassess its 30-year vision for the development, following its recent takeover.

A PRIVATE company has been called in to take over the trams project amid fresh hope the money can be found to get the troubled scheme back on track, it can be revealed today. International consultant Turner & Townsend has been appointed project manager as council chiefs prepare to order "full steam ahead" on building the line to the city centre. It will take over from the council's own firm TIE in a move that signals the death knell for the arms-length company.

A council meeting next week will be presented with a detailed funding package on how to meet the estimated £770 million cost of completing the tram route from the airport to St Andrew Square. A senior council source said today: "TIE is toxic and has been for some time. We believe it will be good for the project to bring in a project manager to have a fresh look."

Around £110,000 is to be spent shipping trams to the city – even though they are not needed, it emerged today. The city council has confirmed that the cost of shipping trams from northern Spain totals around £11,000 per tram.

One of the trams – which cost £2 million each to build – arrived at the new Gogar depot last week and another is in storage in West Lothian. The remaining 25 that are still being stored in Irun, in northern Spain, will make the long journey by road and sea in the coming weeks, at a total cost of nearly £300,000.

Details of more road closures and diversions for the Edinburgh trams have been announced. Princes Street is already closed for work to go ahead, with the street clearing for the festive celebrations. And now two more areas in the city centre will be closed to allow work to take place.

St Andrew Square will close on January 7 for almost a year. The east side of the square will be shut along with South and South St Andrew Street. Traffic will be diverted to the west side of the square. On January 14, Shandwick Place will closed to traffic between Atholl Crescent and Lothian Road until Spring 2013. Buses will be diverted down Melville Street and West Approach Road.

I recently took my grandson on Scotland's only working tram system...

IT HAS been a long time coming, but the end is in sight for Edinburgh’s beleaguered trams project. Between July and September 2014 was unveiled by the council yesterday as the date when the long-delayed trams will finally start rolling in the city. The date for “commissioning and running-in” was included in a timetable setting out when each stage of the eight-mile airport to city-centre route will be completed.

The tram depot at Gogar, where trams are due to start moving shortly, is planned to be finished by the end of the year. The 27-strong tram fleet – five of which are due to have arrived by Christmas – should all be there by the end of 2012. The first completed section of track on the £776 million scheme is programmed to be between the airport and Gogar, by March 2013. The Haymarket-Roseburn stretch would follow by June and Roseburn-Gogar by September. The rest of the route, the on-street section east from Haymarket to York Place, north-east of St Andrew Square, would be finished by March 2014.

THE man in charge of Scotland’s infrastructure has ruled out trams going to Leith for the next 25 years. Infrastructure Secretary Alex Neil said any move to take the route further than the city centre would be a decision for “another generation”. Mr Neil was unveiling the Scottish Government’s infrastructure investment plan up until 2030, which includes a host of road and rail projects, hospitals, schools and colleges – but no more trams.

SNP ministers have repeatedly said there will be “not a penny more” of government money for the controversial project beyond the £500 million agreed in 2007 when the Scottish Parliament voted to support the trams, against the wishes of the then minority Nationalist administration. Since then, there have been repeated delays and the budget of £545m for a route from the airport to Newhaven has soared to £776m for bringing the trams from the airport to St Andrew Square.

I recently took my grandson on Scotland's only working tram system... Summerlee Industrial Museum in Coatbridge...

THREE years in, barely half way to completion, and it’s still not even the longest working tram line in Scotland. One of Edinburgh’s new trams finally carried its first passengers yesterday, but the public will have to wait at least two-and-a-half years for the experience. The long-delayed milestone took place on a 470-metre test track at the Gogar tram depot – which is no longer than the line used by heritage trams at Summerlee, the Museum of Scottish Industrial Life at Coatbridge in Lanarkshire.

Transport minister Keith Brown, a critic of the trams project, joined Liberal Democrat Edinburgh council leader Jenny Dawe for the inaugural ride – prompting ridicule from other politicians. The jaunt followed a ceremony to mark completion of the depot and tram control centre beside the Gogar roundabout and its handover to the council. The ceremony came months after the resolution of a two-year dispute between the council and building contractors over changes to the tram project, the cost of which has soared to £776 million.

A TRANSPORT expert has offered to build Edinburgh’s tram route all the way to Newhaven – for the same money. Professor Lewis Lesley says using a different type of tram track would allow the controversial scheme to reach its original destination within the £776 million budget. He says the alternative track type would also mean minimum disruption during construction.

Professor Lesley, who is technical director of light rail company Trampower, met city council transport convener Gordon Mackenzie and senior officials to discuss his proposal. But council chiefs say they believe the existing consortium led by Bilfinger Berger is “best suited” to deliver the project.

Prof Lesley said the LR55 tram track he proposed for Edinburgh had already been proven a success in Sheffield and was being considered by the US Department of Transportation as a US standard. He said: “It’s a different technique for laying the track, which means only five per cent of the road has to be dug up instead of the whole road. It’s much less expensive because you only have to lay what is in effect a large kerb and the track sits in the kerb.”

RESIDENTS have spoken of their horror at watching tram workers chop down trees which have lined one of the Capital’s most prestigious addresses for decades. They condemned the felling of 23 mature trees from the West End’s Coates Crescent and Atholl Crescent, near Shandwick Place, describing the move as “desperately” disappointing.

Dance teacher Patricia Douglas MBE, a resident of nearby Walker Street, said: “I am desperately disappointed about this and, in fact, everything about the trams. I have spoken to hundreds of people and not one of them has wanted trams. I cannot believe this is acceptable.”

The trees have been removed so the road can be widened for a tram stop. The city council says the work is necessary and that the trees will be replaced with semi-mature ones in two years’ time, but residents were distraught to see contractors start taking them down earlier this week.

ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners have hit out at Edinburgh Council after it emerged that thousands of trees have been chopped down to make way for the city’s tram route. A total of 3,321 trees are to be removed on the nine-mile route from the airport to St Andrew Square, the council has admitted – with the majority of the trees having already been felled. The route of the blighted project, which was originally due to have been completed last year, was finalised in September after an initial council vote to truncate it even further – stopping at Haymarket – was overturned. It is now due to open in summer 2014. “People are very surprised at the scale of this,” said Green Lothians MSP Alison Johnstone, who is a city councillor. “When they see these old trees there one day and gone the next, they are shocked. People are not convinced these trees had to come down or these areas will be returned to the way they were. It will take decades for new saplings to grow.”

The council said there will be a net total of 50,000 more trees planted along the route than there was previously and said consultations had been carried out with the local community prior to planning being granted for the tram line. “We take the issue of environmental impact very seriously and have worked extremely hard to keep this to a minimum,” said Gordon Mackenzie, convener of the council’s transport, infrastructure and environment committee. “Indeed, we view the tram project as an opportunity to better Edinburgh’s public realm, as evidenced by the sheer scale of our replanting programme.” Jim Cooney, of the West End Community Council, said he planned to try to identify any trees along the route which could be saved. “We’ve been following this whole trams situation from the beginning.” The RSPB said it would monitor bird populations and planned to ensure that no tree felling was carried out during the breeding season for birds.

THE trams project is now “even more out of control” than it was when arms-length council company TIE was in charge, a group of civil engineers has claimed. The Edinburgh-based group led by long-term tram critic John Carson have written to council chief executive Sue Bruce, insisting the risks which plagued the controversial project for years while the council and the contractors were at loggerheads still existed.

The city council has rejected the criticism and has insisted the project is on a sound footing since TIE was dissolved.
Transport leader Gordon MacKenzie recently told the Evening News the work was ahead of schedule and the line may even be up and running by the end of next year. However the four engineers, who say they have a combined 150 years of experience, claim council chiefs have actually made the situation worse by deciding to extend the curtailed route into York Place instead of stopping it in St Andrew Square.