The Ongoing Saga Of The Embra Trams

By Ian Stewart

What follows is based on fairly extensive research and which draws heavily on various articles published in the Edinburgh Evening News and Scotsman newspapers. Unfortunately it's now got to the stage where even I, a born and bred Glaswegian, can no longer see humour in the debacle.

The Capital's track record on transport plans has been, to put it mildly, chaotic.

November 16, 1956 : Edinburgh's last tram makes its final journey.

1987 : Plans for a £184 million Metro tram system are adopted as part of Lothian's transport strategy.

1991 : Metro plans are suspended as the council says wider transport issues need more discussion.

January 1998 : David Begg floats idea of trams running up and down the Royal Mile to serve the new parliament and Dynamic Earth.

September 1998 : The New Edinburgh Tramways Company (NETCO) launches a plan for ten 200-seater trams between Haymarket and Newhaven. It claims it can do it for £28 million and have it ready for 2001, but council officials are sceptical.

1999 : Council unveils plans for fleet of guided buses to link the west of Edinburgh to the city centre, known as CERT (City of Edinburgh Rapid Transport).

January 2000 : Transport leader Mark Lazarowicz unveils plans to borrow £60 million a year for a tram scheme and hints at £1-a-day city entry charge.

September 2000 : Waterfront Edinburgh floats idea of joint venture with private sector to build an £80 million tram scheme to link the new development to the city centre.

October 2000 : City council names £250 million tram network as its number one priority in 15-year transport blueprint.

June 2001 : The controversial £50 million CERT guided busway is scrapped.

October 2001 : City council unveils £190 million plan for trams linking the city centre to the Waterfront.

September 2002 : Council unveils its £1.5 billion transport vision for Edinburgh, including three tram lines, better bus services and road tolls.

Better bus services ? Lothian Buses was hailed as the Best Bus Company in the UK awards in 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2008. If it wasn't broken, what were they trying to fix ?

Could it have anything to do with the anti-car, green agenda that appears to grip those in Edinburgh transport circles and guides their every decision ? The most serious traffic congestion is on the peripheries of the capital and trams do not address that.

Recall that the problems do not only affect Edinburgh, the rest of Scotland is footing the bill to the tune of £500 million.

The Dream

Line 1 - The North Edinburgh Loop : Costed at £190 million. Intended to provide a circular service from Ocean Terminal to Haymarket, via Newhaven, Telford College, Western General Hospital, Craigleith Retail Park, Roseburn, (Murrayfield), Haymarket, Princes Street, Leith Walk and back to Ocean Terminal. This route now appears to have a funding 'black hole' and there is some doubt as to whether it will actually go ahead.

Line 1B - Roseburn and Granton Spur : Costed at £87 million. Currently shelved until a later date.

Line 2 - The West Edinburgh Link : Costed at £165 million. Was expected to run from Haymarket out through Saughton, Edinburgh Park, the Gyle and Gogarburn to the airport and Newbridge. This is the line currently under construction, although the Newbridge link appears to have been quietly dropped.

Line 3 - South-East Line : Costed at £123 million. Starting at Waverly Station and running to Newington, Cameron Toll, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Craigmillar, Fort Kinnaird Retail Park, and Newcraighall railway station. This route has never received Parliamentary approval and has now disappeared from all current publicity material.

So only a single line (2) remains of the original plan and even that has been truncated.

Original projections suggested 11.6 million journeys would be made each year on the Northern route, 4.2 million a year on the Western line and 3.8 million on the South-East line. Eventually, it was envisaged that there could be trams running out as far as Livingston, South Queensferry, Dalkeith, Musselburgh and Penicuik. These routes were being developed by Transport Initiatives Edinburgh Ltd, a company created by the council to deliver public transport improvements.

TIE have a list on their website of some of their 'achievments' which include.
1) Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (EARL)
Project Status - Suspended
2) Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine railway line (SAK)
Actually a partnership between Transport Scotland and Clackmannanshire Council.
3) Congestion Charging in Edinburgh
Project terminated following a referendum (62% turn out)

In truth, none of these are 'achievments' but are typical of TIE's bombast.

The Actuality

June 2002 : £6.5 million was awarded to develop the North Edinburgh Loop.

July 2002 : £5 million was awarded to develop the West Edinburgh Link.

September 2002 : CEC unveil their £1.5 billion transport vision for the city which includes the three proposed tram routes.

October 2002 : £3 million was awarded to develop the South-East Line.

March 2003 : Scottish Transport Minister, Iain Gray, announced £375 million from the Executive's integrated transport fund would be awarded to Edinburgh City Council to allow them to build two tram lines to serve the North and West of the city, the first of which, all going according to plan, would be running by 2009. Mr Gray said the money would pay for 'at least' the first tram route, the North Edinburgh Loop. The council believed the cash would also pay for the second line, from Haymarket to the airport.

October 2004 : Line 1 - The North Edinburgh Loop, originally costed at £190 million, now estimated at £243 million

October 2004 : Line 2 - The West Edinburgh Link, originally costed at £165 million, now estimated at £230 million.

2005 : The New York-based Parsons Brinkerhoff Group given the £23m design contract, due to be completed in February 2008.

January 2005 : Officials admit the initial completion date of the project has slipped from 2008 to 2009.

Scottish Transport Minister Nicol Stephen announced the Scottish Executive would pay for the £750,000 feasibility study to transform the historic Haymarket Station into a major transport interchange.

The cost of two tram lines is now £473 million, nearly £100 million more than the Executive's grant.

February 2005 : Edinburgh's failed congestion charging referendum means funds will be unavailable for the third tram line to the South-East of the city and plans are shelved indefinitely.

September 2005 : It is revealed that inflation has not been included in the cost of the scheme, increasing the price from £473 million to £714 million. Completion date put back to 2010.

October 2005 : Officials admit the capital's streets will need to be dug up twice, firstly to move underground utilities and then to lay the tram tracks.

November 2005 : It emerges that the Scottish Executive bail-out of £115 million will not cover the funding shortfall.

December 2005 : South Hampshire Rapid Transit project and the Liverpool tram scheme are scrapped by the Westminster government. These follow on the earlier cancellation of a project in Leeds, an extension to the Manchester network and plans to refurbish Blackpool's trams.

Despite this apparent volte-face on transport policy, Edinburgh Council, supported by the Labour / Liberal Democrat executive in Holyrood, press on with the project.

January 2006 : It emerges that one of the two remaining tram lines, linking Haymarket and Granton, is in doubt after the estimated cost rocketed from £473 million to £714 million.

March 2006 : Tram chiefs come under fire for planning to spend up to £60 million on the scheme before final approval is given in the Autumn.

May 2006 : Project chief Ian Kendall leaves.

June 2006 : TIE (Transport Initiatives Edinburgh) chief executive Michael Howell quits. Willie Gallagher is appointed to run the project. Chairman Ewan Brown steps down (as planned).

September 2006 : Final completion date put back from July 2010 to February 2011.

November 2006 : TIE have paid in excess of £440,000 to public relations firms and companies involved in promoting the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (Earl), around two thirds of which is thought to have gone to one company, Jack Irvine's Glasgow based Media House. A further £60,000 has already been earmarked for the next financial year.

January 2007 : Matthew Crosse appointed as Project Director with TIE. He replaces Andie Harper, who quit in 2006 after just six months but continues to be involved with the scheme on a consultancy basis. Harper was the second man to leave the top role in 2006, Ian Kendall having left in May.

February 2007 : Transport Minister Tavish Scott confirms that the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (EARL) would be funded in its entirety, estimated cost of £650 million, with most of the money coming through Transport Scotland, helped by contributions from Edinburgh Airport Ltd.

March 2007 : The first work to divert utility pipes and cables in Leith gets under way.

4th May 2007 : The SNP win the Holyrood election with 47 seats to Labour's 46.

June 2007 : The new SNP administration at Holyrood, who had made a pre-election commitment to scrap the project, were defeated by 81 votes to 47 after the opposition parties joined forces against the them. They agreed to fund the trams scheme to a maximum of £500 million.

July 2007 : Work started in earnest on the tram 'network' in Leith.

September 2007 : Plans for the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (EARL) are scrapped following a report by Audit Scotland and a vote in Parliament.

October 2007 : BSC Consortium (Bilfinger Berger, Siemens and CAF) awarded an initial contract.

November 2007 : Willie Gallagher's basic salary has almost doubled in a year to £170,000

January 2008 : Steven Bell appointed as Project Director. What happened to Matthew Crosse ?

Shandwick Place, at the West end of Princes Street, to be closed for five months.

April 2008 : A £30 million funding gap has developed on the proposed Granton tram spur due to the weakening of the Pound's value against the Euro.

May 2008 : TIE signs final contracts for the project with the BSC consortium and it's agreed that they would take responsibility for the final completion of the design which will now cost £512 million. Finish date put back to July 2011.

October 2008 : City centre left gridlocked after the closure of Princes Street at the Mound. Figures revealed that £177 million had been spent on the Newhaven to Edinburgh Airport line without a single piece of track being laid.

November 2008 : TIE chairman, Willie Gallagher, and bus chief ,Neil Renilson, stand down.

Councillor Phil Wheeler, the city's transport convener, admits the council may look at approaching Ministers for cash for the doomed 1B Line between Roseburn and Granton. Plans for the £87 million spur line are now expected to be dropped as they have so far banked just £3m of the £25m it planned to raise from developers' contributions for line 1A.

December 2008 : Interim TIE chairman David Mackay admits it is 'inevitable' that the cost will rise. Plans to close Princes Street for most of 2009 are confirmed.

The disruption caused by the tram project is set to cost council chiefs £1.2 million in lost parking revenue, which goes to road repairs. This is due to the number of parking bays which have been suspended for tram works or traffic diversions.

January 2009 : There are around 350 different sets of roadworks currently underway in the city.

February 2009 : Newspapers claim that Bilfinger Berger say the job will cost an extra £80 million given delays in preparatory works by other contractors. This is denied by BB and number is reduced to 'closer to £20 million' within a matter of days. Edinburgh City Council are adamant the dispute centres on Princes Street, the contractors are blaming delays at Leith Walk and Gogarburn (which are being carried out by Carillion) and state, 'For months and months, we've been urging the client (TIE) to speed things up because we saw the delay coming. We have to work strictly to the agreed conditions in the contract and conditions are not as they are in the contract. Preparation (utility diversion) work was not finished. Many times we told them there was a delay. TIE was aware we would not start until all the contractual agreements had been reached.' TIE officials are said to be particularly angry that Bilfinger is carrying out work at Gogar, Edinburgh Park railway station and Haymarket, while insisting it is unable to start work in Princes Street. TIE chairman David Mackay admitted there had been 280 changes to the construction contract, which involved extra costs. However, he claimed that TIE had made only 25 of these.

March 2009 : The cost of designing Edinburgh's tram line is more than £10 million over budget and months behind schedule. Despite two years of work on the £512 million line, transport chiefs have still not finalised the final design of the airport to Newhaven route. Works at Haymarket Station have fallen at least another six weeks behind schedule resulting in the station's car park remaining closed for six weeks more than initially expected. TIE said the construction of an access road should have been completed in January. Work is also continuing on a viaduct that TIE had hoped to have completed by the end of last year.

Transport chiefs have still not finalised the final design of the airport to Newhaven route. Problems with key sections of the route, including Picardy Place, York Place and Princes Street, have pushed design work over budget and off schedule. The lack of finalised designs is at the heart of an ongoing dispute between tram firm TIE and Bilfinger Berger. The New York based Parsons Brinkerhoff Group was given the £23 million design contract in 2005 and it was expected the design would be finished last February but this changed when contracts were signed with the tram consortium in May. It was then agreed that the consortium, which includes Bilfinger, Siemens and tram-maker CAF, would take responsibility for the final completion of the design. However, this last phase, around 20% of the total design work, has proved the most difficult in terms of getting the contractors, TIE and the city council to agree to a final plan. Just £40 million remains of the original £96 million set aside for overruns or tram line problems.

Lothian Buses will be forced to bail out the tram project to the tune of £5 million a year. Transport chiefs plan to merge Lothian Buses and tram firm TIE into a new company, Transport Edinburgh Limited (TEL), to create an integrated service when the trams start operating in 2011. Last year, Lothian Buses blamed the tram works for contributing to a 7% fall in passenger numbers, which led to it cutting a number of services and saw the price of a single fare rise from £1 to £1.20. One insider said: 'The idea was always that the tram and bus companies would be merged so that it would not be possible to separate out their financial results. That means the tram losses can be hidden in the profits of the bus company. To try and hide the impact of the tram was always the strategy. Of course, they never said that publicly. It was initially thought the tram would make a £3 million-£4 million annual loss in the first few years, but in the current climate even £5 million might be a bit on the light side.' The final business case for the trams, which was compiled in 2007, projected that together as TEL, the buses and the trams would make a £2 million loss in 2011, before going on to make a £1 million profit in 2012. The same figures predicted the company would be posting a pre-tax operating profit of £21 million by 2021. However, the figures included line 1B, which was to account for 30% of all tram passengers. This line is currently shelved but is now expected to be scrapped.

April 2009 : Tram work has finally started on the city's guided busway, five months later than planned. The £10 million busway was closed to traffic in November but a series of delays resulted in bus passengers facing congested roads and gazing in frustration at the empty busway. The Fastlink route, a two-lane stretch of road from Stenhouse to Broomhouse, opened in 2004, promising a 'fast, modern bus service that will speed past traffic congestion'.

May 2009 : In the past week, the project's Line 1B, which was to carry 30% of tram passengers, has run out of money and been shelved indefinitely, thus destroying any notion of a tram 'network'. BSC, the consortium building the trams, will get £3.2 million for not delivering the line. Meanwhile, productivity bonuses of £1 million have been paid to tram bosses, although there is still no sign of a track being laid. Total costs for the trams have already risen to £512 million and are expected to climb by another £200 million before the completion date scheduled, optimistically, for 2011.

July 2009 : John Carson, a former director of maintenance for Network Rail, claims that work at the Gogar tram depot could be around two years behind schedule. Work at the tram depot should have started at the end of February 2009 but preparation for the construction phase had begun 16 months late and still had around seven-and-a-half months to run, meaning building work faced a combined delay of more than 23 months. This is disputed by TIE, which said work was only a nine month delay, still potentially pushing the completion date into 2012.

August 2009 : The project faces a new funding crisis as council bosses begin a lengthy legal wrangle with contractor Bilfinger Berger. The project may now not be completed to 2013 and council chiefs have admitted for the first time it is likely to breach its £545 million budget. The council is thought to be facing a £90 million shortfall, which could force the city to borrow against future tram and bus profits. There were also suggestions that tram chiefs are now looking seriously at scaling back the route and leasing rather buying the £50 million tram fleet.

September 2009 : Transdev, a French firm which runs trams, buses and river shuttles in 70 cities could be ditched from the project. They were chosen in April 2004 to run Edinburgh's trams, beating rivals First Group. Senior figures from Transdev were said to be in talks about formally ending its involvement in the project within months and it is hoped an amicable split will avoid costly court action. A cost-cutting shake-up of the £500 million scheme would see them removed and replaced by a new company bringing together Lothian Buses and TIE.

The first set of trams are set to be delivered within months . . . to Croydon. The vehicles were to be housed in the new Gogar depot, planned to be finished by the end of 2009 but work has fallen badly behind with estimates varying between nine months and two years behind schedule. Tram bosses are now discussing sending the first four trams, currently being built in Spain, to the London borough instead. Shirley-Anne Somerville, an SNP MSP for the Lothians and an outspoken tram critic, said, 'TIE have never even suggested that the trams would have to be tested out before being brought to Edinburgh. It's ironic that the only thing being delivered on time here are the tram themselves, with nowhere to store them and no track to run them on'. TIE chiefs have confirmed that they will take delivery of all the 27 trams intended for lines 1 and 1B, despite the second route being dropped. They say the extra vehicles will ensure more regular services.

October 2009 : A briefing document prepared by TIE for Edinburgh council has put the current estimated costs at £524.5 million PLUS whatever TIE has to pay out to the contractors it is currently in dispute with. The total bill now almost certain to exceed the £550 million mark. However, it could soar yet further as Bilfinger Berger are believed to be looking for an extra £80 million to £100 million from the project. Other sources have claimed that costs could now be as much as £750 million, a figure fiercely contested by TIE.

November 2009 : It's musical chairs time as Richard Jeffrey, TIE chief executive moves to the position of chief executive of Transport Edinburgh Limited (TEL) where he will join his colleague David Mackay, the outgoing chairman of TIE, on the board. Mr Mackay will also become the new chairman of Lothian Buses on 1st January 2010. Iain Craig, managing director of Lothian Buses, is also set to become a TEL director.

December 2009 : Transport bosses are still thinking about building a tram line from the city centre to the southern outskirts of the city.

The tram scheme is blamed for a £400,000 drop in parking ticket income. Business leaders said the fall reflected a drop in the number of people visiting the city centre by car, but the city council said the lower number of tickets issued was due to more drivers complying with the rules.

Council bosses have raised nearly two-thirds of the money they need for the city's tram project. Figures released under freedom of information laws show the city council has now amassed £29.6 million for its share of the project. The city is required to pay £45 million towards the project, with the Scottish Government picking up the remaining £500 million. However, the vast majority, £21.1 million, comes through borrowing, with just £4 million from developers' contributions and capital receipts and a further £2.5 million from the capital investment programme. So the real figure raised is £6.5 million of the £45 million required ?

While there is a £545m budget for the project, the cost of the 11.5 mile line from the airport to Newhaven was set at £512m. Earlier in the year, the estimate for this was revised to £524.5m, plus whatever TIE has to pay out in penalties to the contractors.

January 2010 : Tram bosses refused to be drawn on reports that the cost of the embattled project is set to soar past the £600 million mark. TIE are currently locked in a £80 million adjudication process with Bilfinger Berger and its consortium partners over a series of outstanding issues about how work should progress across the 11-mile route. It is believed that only four out of 12 separate issues have so far been resolved, potentially delaying the project by several more months. Meanwhile, the most recent adjudication, concerning piling work carried out near Murrayfield Stadium, led to TIE paying out an extra £4.5 million to its contractor. John Carson, a former head of maintenance at Network Rail and a long-standing critic of the trams, said 'There are areas along the railway line where more piling needs to be done by workers on night shift. You're looking at another £50 million for that section alone.'

February 2010 : A second patch-up job is set to be carried out on Princes Street after cracks and potholes began appearing in the road surface less than three months after tram works ended. Metal plates are currently being used to cover holes which have appeared in the road, to prevent further damage being caused by the Capital's buses. News of the potholes follows the discovery in December that cracks had appeared in the road next to the newly laid tram tracks, leading critics to accuse TIE of carrying out a 'rush job'. Tram workers worked through the night to have Princes Street ready in time for the Capital's Christmas celebrations at the end of November.

February 2010 : The transport interchange at Gogar which would link Edinburgh-Fife trains with the tram project has risen from initial estimates of £20 million last summer to £35 million, with improvements to the nearby Gogar Roundabout expected to cost an extra £5 million.

March 2010 : City council chiefs are now said to have backed down in the row over who foots the £5 million bill for the road improvements at the Gogar roundabout connected with the new train-tram interchange. Reports indicate that council taxpayers will now have to pick up most of the cost. The dispute has delayed work on the first major part of a £1 billion package of rail improvements in the Central Belt.

TIE admitted that £338 million of the £545 million budget had been spent so far although other sources suggest that the figure is nearer £375 million with Bilfinger Berger claiming there could be a further £100 million in additional costs and that TIE bosses were 'in denial' about the shortfall and the scale of the problems facing the project. Council officials later admitted for the first time that the project is set to go over budget, with a new report stating there is a 'strong probability' that the cost of the trams will be more than the £545 million of funding identified.

The increasingly bitter contractual disputes between TIE and Bilfinger are also likely to prove costly as it is believed that the independent adjudicator has found in the German firm's favour in three of the first four rounds. A letter from Bilfinger UK's managing director, Richard Walker, to senior executive members of the council, claims that £100 million would be a 'conservative' estimate for the cost of these.

Tram sources said that TIE had failed to learn the lessons of losing an adjudication process and, when things had not gone TIE's way, it had resorted to giving the consortium 'a kicking'.

In another twist in a year-long dispute between the consortium and TIE, it was revealed that the construction consortium approached TIE earlier this month about delivering the project in stages, with the airport to Edinburgh Park part of the route finished first and warned that the scheme could not be delivered in its entirety until January 2014, two years later than currently planned.

Tram developer TIE then set a new deadline of June 2012 for the work to be completed, after which firms building the line will be fined £1 million for every month that it runs over schedule.

A spokeswoman for the tram project said bosses remained committed to building the whole route, adding that external experts believe the scheme could still be delivered by 2012 and that TIE was 'deeply concerned' over the revised programme, which it insisted was 'unacceptable', and the city's transport convener, Councillor Gordon Mackenzie, suggested the German firm could yet be kicked off the project. For its part, Bilfinger said it would defend 'with vigour' any attempt to remove it from the project. When TIE previously made overtures to replace consortium leaders Bilfinger Berger with partners Siemens, the firms closed ranks against it.

It has also emerged that work to move underground cables and pipes, which should have been completed last year, may now not now be finished until December 2010.

It is now believe that the council will push to deliver the airport to Haymarket section in time for the 2012 local elections, sparking fears that once that section is complete, the rest of the route could then effectively be postponed until more funding is in place.

Tram bosses have claimed work on the Gogar depot is 'progressing well', despite an official report revealing that it is not even 20% complete. The first of the tram vehicles are set to arrive next month but, according to a spokeswoman, 'are not intended to go to the depot when they arrive anyway, as they will be put on public display.' The original business plan for the project shows that tram chiefs had hoped to have the depot almost finished by this point of the project, with a test track up and running by April. Plans are still under discussion to send them to Croydon for testing instead.

The update on the progress of the tram project is contained in a report to the council's tram sub-committee, which is due to meet at the end of the month for the first time since last August. The sub-committee, set up to scrutinise the project, have met just twice in the last year. Meanwhile, an update on the ongoing utility diversions, the first phase of the works, shows TIE believe they are now 97% complete and should be ready by September.

How much of the construction work is actually completed as of mid-March 2010 ?
Russell Road retaining wall - 17%
Gogar depot building - 19% - with the first trams due for delivery in April
Haymarket viaduct - 42%
Carrick Knowe bridge - 44%
Track laying on the guided busway - 70% Gogarburn bridge - 85%
Edinburgh Park viaduct - 87%

'TIE Ltd, with the support of their stakeholders, are engaged in a number of workstreams with a view to providing greater certainty in terms of cost and programme delivery. At this stage, there is now a strong probability that the project cost out-turn will exceed the available approved funding.'

In simple English that translates as : We're desperately trying to find out just how much we've already spent on the project and how late it really is but we're now pretty certain that the cost will be more than we have in our piggy bank !

Some Photographs

OK, fair's fair. I've got lots of photos on my Glasgow page. In an attempt to redress the balance, here are some recent photographs of Edinburgh which I've sourced from the Internet. Well, I had to, I mean, it's not likely that I'd actually choose to go to Embra to take some photographs, is it ?

Welcome to Princes Street. Oooops, it's closed !

Princes Street. Always crowded with foreign tourist, but . . . errr . . . not today !

Princes Street. Aah, here are the tourists at what I think is the new entrance to the South Bridge Vaults. I wonder where the workmen are ?

Leith Walk (at the East end of Princes Street). Just as well it wasn't called Leith Drive or it would probably contravene the Trades Description Act.

Lothian Road (at the West end of Princes Street). It's nice to know that TIE are an equal inconvenience organisation. Does TIE stand for Trams Incapacitate Embra ???