Rant Alert.
More sheer stupid madness.
'Embra' - yes they really do mispell 'Edinburgh' with a 'V' because they think it makes it sound old, and historical and special - decided to build some trams so it worked out an estimate. £545m. Hmm thought a few people, that seems 'cheap'. But still Embra (pop 450k people) likes to think 'big' - even though it is really quite a little place both in terms of population and physical space - and simply had to have one.
Well, it seems the estimate was a little 'light' as these things usually are. We have some history here, the parliament building for example was estimated to cost £40m, ended up over 10x that amount.
Anyway trams - they will now only go 50% of the original distance, they have removed one 'optional' line, and it will now cost £700m - on latest estimates.
Oh and if we decide to cancel it then thats £750m - at least. And the streets have already been dug up everywhere - in some places twice to fix what wasn't done right in the first place.
Oh and another tiny problem is that the estimated £700m route will not go where people actually want so it won't earn money and will run at a loss all the time - to get that part will cost between £740-770m. Estimated.
This is what was originally proposed :
I've carefully used my superb graphical image skills to modify a later diagram to show what we are actually going to get, and highlight the part that may not be completed. Seamless, I'm sure you will agree.
And at the same time our schools are facing cuts, roads are not being repaired, there is no way to get to the railway line from the airport - but the train line runs past the end of one of the runways, and traffic going to the Forth Bridge still has to go through the suburbs.
Anything this will achieve could have been done by just upping the number of buses running, or making better use of existing roadspace or perhaps not allowing developers to build so many shopping centres which (gasp) people want to DRIVE TO.
I can't be the only one that wants to ask if anyone in charge is paying attention, am I ?
(and breathe...)