The tramline extension from Granton to Bioquarter is the subject of a consultation which ends on Monday.
The council said that around 7,000 responses had been made with a week to go. Among the views expressed are those from a group which has long campaigned for better public transport in the city.
The Capital Rail Action Group (CRAG) has backed the return of trams to Edinburgh for years. They welcome the passenger numbers reported by Edinburgh Trams on the route from the airport to Newhaven now that trams are running once more.
And they say that for years it has always been the case that the tramline extension would use the old railway from Roseburn to Granton – which already has parliamentary consent. They reference the Lothian Regional Council plans for an Edinburgh Metro which envisaged using the former railway lines.
But they also caution against the view that more buses are the answer. The group estimates that to accommodate the growing population in Edinburgh another 300 buses per hour would be required on the capital’s already crowded streets.
And they conclude that mass transit is the answer, particularly in Granton on the waterfront where the tram was supposed to be re-introduced first.
This is their submission to the consultation:
Dear City of Edinburgh Council
I write on behalf of the Capital Rail Action Group – established in 1989 and whose main goal is to campaign for better public transport, especially rail-based, in and around Scotland’s capital city.
We have long championed the return of trams to Edinburgh – and are heartened by the success of Edinburgh Trams in attracting some 12.1m passenger journeys last year.
While bus services will always remain the predominant mode of public transport in and around Edinburgh, journey times by bus have in some cases grown by nearly 20% in the past decade – and in a growing city where it is estimated that a minimum of 300 more buses per hour would be needed to transport folk by public transport, it’s obvious that more mass transit is required. That’s a journey many cities much smaller than Edinburgh have been on in Europe in these past few decades. We would do well to learn from their experience.
It’s inclined to be forgotten that the original impetus to return trams to Edinburgh was to facilitate the redevelopment of the city’s waterfront from Leith through Newhaven to Granton.
Although the number of homes proposed along the waterfront is now less than originally envisaged – the docks in Leith are not to be completely deindustrialised – we’re still told that further redevelopment in Granton requires greater capacity public transport than buses alone can provide.
And development on brownfield sites in the city helps, of course, to preserve the city’s Green Belt and avoids even greater housebuilding outwith the city – with all the increased demand for transport provision that brings with it, including a greater proportion of car owners than would be the case with housing inside the city. And also longer travel distances to access work, hospitals, leisure facilities, etc..
So, for decades, it’s been envisaged that trams would one day run along the old railway trackbed from Roseburn to Granton.
Lothian Regional Council’s 1989 ‘Edinburgh Metro ‘proposals (see attachments 1-3) envisaged use by trams of this old trackbed – and even the information panel on the path at the old Murrayfield station platforms indicates just such a future use (attachment 4).
Moreover, Parliamentary consent was granted for this back in 2006 – an expensive process.
It’s just a pity that it takes decades to realise even modest public transport infrastructure improvement in the UK.
That’s meant decades of active travel, leisure use and tree growth along the old railway line – a good thing in its way but something folk are now understandably reluctant to see even in part encroached upon by running trams along this corridor. Despite wider environmental, economic, transport and social benefits.
The Roseburn to Granton route is far preferable to the now proposed alternative option of running via Queensferry Street, the Dean Bridge, Orchard Brae and Crewe Road South:
- it provides a route segregated from other traffic
- travel times will be less and reliability greater
- ongoing operational costs will be less
- disruption during construction will be far less
- the cost of construction will be far less – with few utilities to divert
- it serves the important transport hub of Haymarket
- it would allow trams to run between the airport and Granton
We note that the Council have, when compared with the double track line given Parliamentary consent, now proposed that, in order to best keep an active travel corridor alongside, the tram route from Roseburn to Craigleith should be only single track – and powered by batteries rather than overhead wire to keep tree loss to a minimum.
Single track running undoubtedly will bring with it operational risk for the trams. It’s unfortunately the case that lack of segregation and imperfect priority at key points along the existing line from, in particular, Haymarket to Newhaven already result in trams being delayed and not running to their published timetable. We will take a great deal of persuasion that, with a frequency of every seven minutes, trams will not frequently have to sit at either end of the proposed single track awaiting an oncoming tram. The Council, therefore, will need to provide serious detailed modelling of the operation of such a single track section in the real world before we can accept it. We have not seen any evidence of this to date. And, at the very least, we would like to see a passing loop (with possible station – dropped under the current proposal – at Ravelston Dykes).
So, while we can understand the Council’s motivation in honestly attempting to address the concerns of those who have grown to value the current active travel and leisure use of the former railway trackbed, we believe that this asset is currently undervalued and underused when looking at the transport needs of the city as a whole. At a predicted 4.25m passengers per year along this section of the north-south route, trams will provide improved mobility to many more people than the current figure of 0.6m for ‘active’ travellers. And, of course, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to be an ‘active’ traveller, a restriction which will not apply to tram travel. We therefore fear that those increased benefits – the greatest good for the greatest number to use an old saying – will be seriously compromised by the current proposal.
And the alternative route proposed via Orchard Brae will, as outlined above, be of even less benefit to the city. Indeed, we would go further and argue that it’s just not a viable option. Such a false choice should never have been put forward – it has dominated the consultation and sucked the oxygen from the much wider and more important question of how to provide Edinburgh with a fit-for-purpose public transport network for the 21st century.
For Edinburgh to grow sustainably, we need the north-south tram line. The Caledonian Railway thought it needed a double track railway from Roseburn to Craigleith – so do we when it comes to transporting passengers reliably and timeously in a much busier city than they could ever have envisaged.
Lawrence Marshall, Chair, Capital Rail Action Group
Capital Rail Action Group – Campaigning for better public transport for Edinburgh
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