Land Purchases Still Needed For Trams

Submitted by edg on Tue, 22 Feb '11 7.11pm

We're catching up on the trams latest today. Yesterday, we learned that the trams project still needs more land. The Scottish Government is extending the time limits of the original legislation that gives the Council powers to compulsorily purchase land for the project.

The government release describes the property required as "a small amount of land between Edinburgh airport and St Andrew Square and some larger parcels of land, most of which are in the north-east part of the City."

So once next month's mediation is completed - hopefully with some sort of resolution to the current contractual deadlock - the Council first step forward will be buying the remaining amount of land to complete the tram track.

It's significant to note that since Audit Scotland's critical report of Edinburgh's trams works suggested that there should be more government involvement in the bogged-down project, Scottish Transport Minister Keith Brown has been keeping his distance.

With one eye on the Scottish Parliamentry Election in May, the latest announcement is used as an opportunity to once again wash SNP hands of this politically toxic project.

Says Brown: "The Scottish Government's position on Edinburgh trams is clear. We opposed the project, but in June 2007 the Scottish Parliament voted that we provide funding to a maximum of £500m. The project is and always has been the responsibility of City of Edinburgh Council."

Naturally, Brown is not keen to weigh in at such a delicate time.

"With mediation due to start next month (March) it is not the right time to be discussing substantial changes to the governance of the project. However, we want to ensure that every opportunity is taken to resolve this long running dispute so that a tram service can be delivered in Edinburgh, and have agreed that Transport Scotland will take part in the mediation process."

Later, Actionman should be providing an update on the Council's change of heart over pollution tests, caused by road traffic that has been re-routed, due to the trams works, through the Edinburgh New Town.

The Council's decision to go for extended authority for land purchase is really just an attempt to buy more time for the project.

The Council is possibly begining to understand, at long last, that there really is a pollution problem, however, they are moving so slowly in addressing the problem that any progress is barely perceptible.

The Council's measuring criteria has been proved to be flawed and the advice on measurement has been changed by DEFRA in support of the residents who have pointed out this error for many months.  No action has yet been taken on this and no acknowledgement of this has been made by the Council.

The Council promised concerned residents, affected by the rerouting of all the general traffic from Shandwick Place/Princes Street, that they would allow experts representing the residents to be co-opted on to the Trams Sub-Committee of the Council's Transport, Infrastructure and Environment Committee.

Almost three months later the Council say they have not yet fixed a date for a meeting.  

At the same time the Green Party are expressing great indignation that about six thousand people may suffer some pollution as they may be within half a mile of the route to a new Forth Road bridge!

This hardly seems compatible with the fact that the tram displaced traffic will give 134,500 households in the city (that is approximately 267,00 people) much worse air quality through pollution! The Greens are "happy" it seems, to accept this as the tram is supposed to be "green"!    What hypocrisy!

It is obvious to anyone that there needs to be an immediate halt to any further work on the trams project, until such time as there is clarity about the health penalty to be paid by residents for massive traffic diversions along the tram route.

Whether it is pollution from building another Forth Road Bridge or more pollution caused by re-routing the trams through residential streets that are not fit for large volumes of traffic, any more city pollution is bad.

The Greens main argument seems to be over the financial cost of building the new Forth Road Bridge (they say that it is more cost effective to continue to maintain the current road bridge and invest in more sustainable projects).

However, the simple, unassailable fact is that you can't build your way out of congestion. If you want to reduce car traffic in Edinburgh then you have to reduce traffic coming into the city. Or to put it another way Forth Bridge traffic creates pollution throughout Edinburgh.

So how to you get people out of their cars? We've been banging our heads against the wall about this for years. The trams did seem to be a part of the overall solution. Trams are more efficient in terms of energy use than each of us darting around in cars and they also have a longer exhaust pipe than cars. Things might have looked so different now had the trams project not been so badly handled and people made to suffer for so long from such incompetence.

Considering the state of this project, the Council should be bending over backwards to be more accountable, accessible, and open to concerned residents. Stonewalling (over levels of pollution caused by diversions) just adds salt to open wounds.

I suppose it could be argued that the trams diversion traffic only needs to be temporary - and assuming the trams do get completed to St Andrew Square in the near future - there'll be less through traffic because people will be riding the trams.