The Scottish SPCA rescued a distressed deer from the side of Edinburgh’s tram tracks yesterday. The animal welfare charity was alerted by a concerned member of the public who saw the animal standing next to a tram line for three hours without moving. Continue reading Doh! A dear – a female deer – none the worse for tram track trauma
St John and the City has continued to roll out life-saving defibrillator devices across Edinburgh with 17 machines installed on Edinburgh Trams yesterday.
Continue reading Defibrillators installed on Edinburgh’s trams
‘We are satisfied there will be no impact on Council budgets in the short or long term.’ – Council leader Cllr Andrew Burns
Councillors will discuss proposals to extend the Edinburgh tram line to Newhaven at next Thursday’s full council meeting.
If recommendations are agreed, a nine-month period of project development will commence, including the beginning of procurement processes for external support and site investigation. However it is unsure at this stage whether the SNP group on the city council – Labour’s partners in the Capital Coalition – will support the proposal to extend the line.
Once the first stage is complete, a report will be brought back to Council recommending the way forward. If Councillors agree to continue with the extension a second stage, scheduled to take 21 months and costing approximately £8.3m, will include further site investigation and working with the Council’s advisors in carrying out procurement and enabling works.
While the Council is yet to identify specific resources to fund the borrowing costs required for the project, the business case concludes that these can be funded from wider Public Transport revenues with no impact on Council revenue budgets in the short, medium and long term.
Council Leader, Councillor Andrew Burns, said: “The updated Outline Business Case provides further justification for bringing the tram to Leith, clearly demonstrating the social and economic impact the extension could have on this key area of the city.
“This first stage of project development for the extension will allow us to take another step towards achieving this. A significant period of work will ensure robust governance, allowing financial evaluation and risk analysis to be carried out.
“By obtaining funding for these initial stages from the city’s Public Transport revenues, we are satisfied there will be no impact on Council budgets in the short or long term.”
In June, Councillors considered the emerging conclusions of the draft Outline Business Case, which proposed a formal market consultation and further, detailed analysis of project finances before any decision was made.
A report, to be heard by Council on Thursday, 19 November, details the findings of the Outline Business Case for the extension to Leith.
It is recommended that Councillors approve, in principle, extending the tram to Newhaven over alternative options to end the line at Ocean Terminal, the foot of Leith Walk or MacDonald Road.
The Outline Business Case, based on a formal market consultation process, audit of the financial model and identification of funding options, concludes that extending the existing tram line to Newhaven will boost the city’s economy while delivering a range of wider benefits in relation to employment, population growth and social inclusion.
Spur lines to Leith and Granton’s Waterfront were an integral element of the original masterplan for Edinburgh’s tram network back in 2003, but these were dropped as the project ran into well-documented financial difficulties.
Back then the then Labour-led Scottish Executive allocated £375m for proposed tram routes linking the city centre to both Edinburgh Airport and Leith. Original projections indicated that trams would be running on city streets by 2009.
The project was years late and millions over-budget: the project cost taxpayers £776 million and trams did not run until 31 May last year – and then only on a single line, not a network.
An inquiry into what went wrong, to be led by Lord Hardie, was announced by then-First Minister Alex Salmond in June last year.
The Inquiry is attempting to find out why the Edinburgh Trams project – with a final bill of £776m plus over £200m in interest on a 30-year loan taken out by the council to cover the funding shortfall – was delayed and went so badly over-budget. The Inquiry also aims to establish why, through reductions in scope, the project delivered significantly less than projected.
The official terms of reference for the Inquiry are to:
The inquiry, which was converted to a statutory inquiry almost exactly one year ago, is ongoing: the process has been broken down into ten separate stages and the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry team is currently working on stages 4 and 7. This includes gathering material, retrieving and reviewing documents; and reviewing written evidence which will be considered by Lord Hardie to decide what further evidence is required at oral hearings.
No date has yet been set for publication of the report of the inquiry’s findings – these will be made available ‘at the earliest opportunity’.
When Alex Salmond announced the public inquiry last year he promised MSPs it would be a “swift and thorough” inquiry.
Swift? Perhaps not, but anyone who has any knowledge of the lengthy and complex nature of the Edinburgh trams story knows that speed has never been the driving factor. But thorough? The Scottish taxpayer, the businesses and citizens of Edinburgh surely deserve nothing less.
Years late, £ millions over budget and there’s an ongoing public enquiry – but on Sunday (31 May) Edinburgh trams will celebrate their first year of operation. A Happy Birthday? Edinburgh Trams Director and General manager Tom Norris certainly thinks so …
In terms of our business there has been much noise about our performance. Our annual report will be out shortly for the year to end December 2014. On top of this we are releasing further data to give a view of the first full year. So what does it say?
Where did that year go? As I reflect on where we were in May 2014 and the amount of change our business has gone through since then, it is unrecognisable.
We carried 10% more passengers than expected in the first full year. 4.92m in year one.
Our passenger revenue was 3% ahead of target.
Passenger satisfaction was 95%.
In May last year we were totally focussed on the 31st of May go-live date and were in the midst of intensive staff training, testing, commissioning, press engagements and promoting our service. The whole organisation was geared towards this start day with a cautious eye on the One Direction concert at Murrayfield in our first week.
There was a whirlwind of media and external activity as we approached go live and it really seemed that the whole of the UK was looking on as everyone at Edinburgh Trams made their final preparations for that all important first day of service. My last engagement being STV news broadcasting live from the depot on the eve of our first day. As I finished what was a relatively challenging interview, I was hit with a realisation that there was nothing more I could do and it was over to the team to start passenger service.
I arrived at the depot at 0330 and after a quick briefing final preparations were put in place. A number of our key stakeholders were at the depot to be ready for the first tram. It was clear from our tram stop cameras that people started arriving at the Gyle Tram stop a long time before the first 0500 tram was due to arrive. The atmosphere on the first tram, and indeed throughout our first few weeks was electric.
The following year has passed incredibly quickly and I’m delighted to be able to say that it appears both Edinburgh residents and visitors to the city have really embraced our service. We’ve serviced major concerts, international rugby and European football events matches at Murrayfield. We felt truly involved in the summer festival season with festival goers and even performers using our services.
But that said, this year hasn’t been without challenges. Trams have broken down, systems have failed and incidents have occurred. In the scheme of things the disruption has been few and far between. We are very proud to report service reliability of 99% and passenger satisfaction of 95%. Our fare evasion rate is incredibly low. All of these measures can be benchmarked against other operators, and we come out very well indeed. That’s down to a team of committed staff working day and night across Edinburgh Trams, our sister company Lothian Buses, Siemens, CAF, our partners at the City of in Edinburgh Council, as well as and other contractors who support our services.
It’s really at this point I should give a nod to my team. The sheer amount of change our business has experienced over the past two years is more than most would experience in many years. On top of this all of the measures we have for the business are all in the right place. The team have been flexible, committed and it has been a real privilege to lead them over the past two and a half years. My team are superstars and as much as I can reflect and enjoy looking back on our first year, it’s been our people who’ve made it all come together. I simply couldn’t have asked any more. Well done and thank you.
We’re hugely passenger focussed and our staff have delivered exceptional passenger satisfaction scores. But we won’t rest here. There are many changes underway, timetable enhancements to speed up services where possible, relaxing some of the more overzealous rules for our passengers and continuing to build our passenger base by delighting more and more people. We do listen, and we do react. One of the catalysts for changing the rules on food and drink on our services was a letter that stuck with me that I received from a customer who had been feeding his child an oatcake and had been asked to stop. There is no criticism of our staff here, they were following the rules that had been set down. But the reality was that this rule just wasn’t aligned with our customer expectations and harmed the overall experience. That’s why it was changed. We listen to our customers and we act.
So year one of Edinburgh Trams is over. It has been an absolute honour and privilege to lead this team into passenger service and a highlight of my career. From me, a huge thank you out to our customers, our staff and our supporters.
#tramiversary
