Edinburgh Tram Facts

    Residents in one of the first neighbourhoods to really feel the effects of the Tram project on traffic levels have sent around a document in their own neighbourhood which may be of help to other areas starting to realise the  increased traffic they are seeing is perhaps not going to be either as temporary or as small as previous assurances from the Council may have led them to believe. 
 
Any other Community Councils and residents groups can just access this document here  , while it is a 'neighbourhood document' and so addresses specific concerns as you will see some of these concerns are

It's often the case that in Regional media stories about the tram the interesting parts are not in the headline, or intro praragraphs, but are buried a little more deeply within the story.

In this latest one the 'awesome foursome' of tram project achievements 'returning to glory' the city aren't that interesting, given that any project, however badly managed will eventually reach some kind of completion (especially if £231Million gets chucked at it).

Two contributions shed a bit more light on things than the rewritten Press release sections of the story.

One from Joanna Mowat, a long

The cascade of bad decisions now being revealed piecemeal have been inevitable for years, and clear to anyone who has looked at the plans of the tram project and various associated piecemeal traffic management proposals that have flown from it.

A whole host of 'solutions', such as the loop(y) idea mentioned in the article above, are now arriving to address the problems created by the original ill thought through, and unnecessary, tram scheme layered onto the even older 'Gehl Vision' plans.

The worst effects of the collapse of traffic planning won't be felt in the central areas from which traffic

"the Council has been given advice by the Head of Legal, Risk and 
Compliance that it would no longer be prudent to hear deputations on 
Traffic Regulation Orders and to do otherwise could expose the Council to 
legal challenge."

One almost needs to read this twice to take in that this is how democracy is being practisced in 21st century  Edinburgh, a city that without a trace of irony can still describe itself itself as one of the guiding lights of the enlightenment at the dawn of the modern world.

Nobody is making threats, physical attacks or wild accusations.

But  apparently allowing