e2toe4's blog

NEW health dangers emerging for Edinburgh Council to acknowledge

Submitted by e2toe4
on Thu, 01/26/2017 - 12:55


An OPEN LETTER  has gone to various people in the City of Edinburgh council pointing out NEW DANGERS from traffic in the city.

In 2007/8 the council DISMISSSED detailed scientific concerns about the  EFFECTS OF AIR POLLUTION ON HEALTH by people worried at the massive dislocation to the City's traffic flows that was being planned to accommodate the Tram project.

This dislocation ,in effect, picked up the heavy , noisy, polluting traffic from the former (lightly inhabited) main through-routes in the city (in particular Leith Street, Princes Street, Shandwick Place-- but also George Street) and

WE said...they said...this happened

Submitted by e2toe4
on Wed, 07/06/2016 - 00:36

One thing about just keeping on, keeping on , for long enough is that eventually things that begin as predictions eventually become facts.

In respect of the Tram project in Edinburgh since we started our attempt to get the Council to listen,it went from much delayed vanity project to hastily finished reality.

The passenger number projections which fell throughout it's planning and building were eventually revised down to such a low level they ended up embedding an operating loss, and created such a low bar that a small trench had to be created to lay it in.

Not even our Council could fail

Does it matter our tram raises pollution levels in Edinburgh--??

Submitted by e2toe4
on Wed, 08/26/2015 - 08:49

We've made the point repeatedly that the Edinburgh Tram raises levels of pollutants in our city...  it cleans up the showpiece central streets, takes the pollution from there, increases it, and dumps in residential streets.

We don't think many people believe us, mainly because it just seems too difficult to believe....  Trams?  CREATE pollution??  Everybody knows that's wrong---don't even have to think about it!

The facts show the council knew this in 2003... this table and comments are from the main, widely circulated report into the project's feasibility called STAG 2003 (Scottish

Join the dots

Submitted by e2toe4
on Tue, 08/25/2015 - 20:10

Just ten dots

Dot one...2003 Edinburgh Council told if the tram is built as planned the city will see MORE, not less pollution..and this MORE in residential areas than main roads. ALL OVER the city (not just streets near the tram line)

 

Dot two... Council told their Tie Ltd contract was not fit for purpose---it had too many loopholes, wasn't fit for purpose.

 

Dot three.. Tram built anyway...contract costs spiral out of control... Contractors drive a fleet of buses through the loopholes..and Tie Ltd collapses in chaos

 

Dot Four..Tram costs over £1.1Billion for about half the planned

Edinburgh Council divide to rule

Submitted by e2toe4
on Tue, 04/14/2015 - 21:42

Throughout the tram project the Council administration has followed a divide and rule policy toward not only separate interest  groups, (thus trying to create a completely false cyclists v car drivers opposition) but also even neighbourhood v neighbourhood opposition.

 

The *we can't do anything for you - because it would not be fair to them* argument is invariably used to do nothing for anybody.

"On time and on budget" became the rightly derided Council catchphrase, characterising the  complacent use of convenient untruths to cover up reality during the planning and construction phase of

One set of facts...and one 'Set of Books' needed

Submitted by e2toe4
on Wed, 04/08/2015 - 09:39

This page from an early project analysis report has a very simple table and two paragraphs below  that look as if they add a little bit of explanation to the figures in the table.

But in truth, these few lines are not quite the whole truth and nothing but the truth,and it provides just one (early) example that  illustrates something that reappears again and again throughout the history of the tram project.

The way in which the smallest details of the project are produced but then always so very carefully presented  with statements that appear straightforward and artless, but are all too

1934 and all that....

Submitted by e2toe4
on Sun, 02/15/2015 - 20:50

"Churchill was distressed at what he saw as sophistry and evasion. He was convinced he was upholding a basic principle a basic of principle of (Parliamentary) democracy, that the Government must act honestly in its evaluation of information, and draw the correct conclusions from those facts, however embarrasing or alarming they might be, rather than twist them to fit the policy."

(From the recently deceased great historian Martin Gilbert's biography*Churchill: A life* pg 528).

Churchill was reacting to a British Government fiddling the facts to suit a policy (on India) in June 1934 that was

Why Edinburgh Council's cover up of air pollution matters....today

Submitted by e2toe4
on Mon, 12/08/2014 - 10:34

(Note links to data sources mentioned are embedded in the text..click to access)

Today we have seen a stunning report about the inadvisability of building schools next to roads.

In France the possibility of banning diesel vehicles from Paris is being discussed.

Air pollution in the UK shortens the lives of 28,000 people a year according to the latest estimate.

According to the published official figures it causes 205 deaths every year in Edinburgh.

The politicians will now doubtless tell us that the issue of air pollution was not *well understood* and is now  *rising up the agenda* and

You couldn't make it up...you'd think

Submitted by e2toe4
on Wed, 11/19/2014 - 23:55

Edinburgh Council called it "prudential borrowing" in 2011...after blowing £500M+ with absolutely nothing to show for anything on the Edinburgh tram project...they were desperate.

Desperate enough to decide saving their face was worth another £500M or so of OUR money.

They wanted *something*...anything...to give even a pretence of *success* in a project that had turned into a worldwide byword for incompetence. And so the decision was made to throw another Half a Billion or so after the one already spent.

Three years ago (and the proof is elsewhere on this site) we said the real annual costs

Truth will out

Submitted by e2toe4
on Wed, 11/19/2014 - 21:14

This website contains a lot of source documents, records of votes, council papers and comments on history of the tram project.

In 2011 the City of Edinburgh borrowed £276M to finish some of the tram line that had by then consumed virtually all the £545M without anything of any significance being built.

The Council borrowed the money because back then they wanted *something* to show for years of well documented abject failure.  The tram as originally conceived was dead and nothing could bring it back--no specific deliverables of any kind remained in the wreckage.

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