For some unknown reason I felt I should
go to Edinburgh as soon as the long awaited tram opens, and as I
could fit it into my spring schedule, I did book a flight as soon as
the beginning of operation was finally announced a few weeks ago. For
several months the official Edinburgh Trams website had stated that
operation would start in May, so to keep that promise, I guess, they
picked May 31 and not one day earlier. This day happened to be a
Saturday, usually a good day for an opening, to fix teething problems
before regular commuters would get on the following Monday.
I don't want to list all the problems that had led to the long delayed conclusion of the works (see the respective Wikipedia article), but the general impression reading the news in all sorts of tram magazines over the last years was that this tram might never open as it was often close to being cancelled altogether.
With these delays and the enormous
(though actually quite common) cost overruns, I was getting excited
to find out whether the result was worth all the wait. So following
are my personal impressions gained on the first two days of
operation, which means that some initial problems may have been
solved and can be filed under normal teething problems. Some, or
maybe too many, problems, however, will either need another large
amount of money to be fixed, or people will have to bear with them
forever.
Generally, the 14 km line that connects
the city centre to the airport, is 'o.k.'. The CAF trams are nice,
run smoothly and have rather comfortable seating. As the line goes to
the airport, luggage racks are provided, too. A positive thing, at
first sight, but once you look through the 7-section tram, you'll
find out that there are five such racks, each about 2 m wide and with
three shelves. An approximate calculation resulted in a capacity of
some 60 typical suitcases to be stored, a number I would consider
very excessive for a tram that runs every 10 minutes and with the
airport buses continuing service on a similar route. My guess is that
eventually, if a little money is available, some of these (probably
mostly empty) racks will be withdrawn to increase the number of
seats. After all, the tram is meant to provide an urban service and
not just an airport service. If the airport had been the primary
purpose to build the tram, then certainly a railway branch would have
been a cheaper and more recommendable solution. In fact, there was a
project to build a rail access, which would have been useful for
people from other Scottish regions, too, whereas the tram is only
good really to go from the airport into Edinburgh itself, although
there is also convenient interchange at Edinburgh Park station for
local trains west.
Otherwise the CAF trams feature most
things one would expect of a new tram, screens announcing the next
stop, acoustic announcements, etc. but no air-conditioning, and as it
appeared, no proper ventilation either. Unexpectedly, the first day
of operation, 31 May 2014, turned out to be a very warm day, and with
the trams packed with curious passengers, the air inside the trams
got quite unbearable despite some open windows.
The opening as such was quite
disappointing, as there was actually no opening ceremony at all. The
toughest fans (not me) gathered at 5 in the morning at Gyle Centre,
where the first regular tram coming from the nearby depot entered
service. An eye-witness told me the first tram was overcrowded and
some people couldn't even get on. Unlike other grand tram openings
like those in France in recent years, Edinburgh Trams did not
organise any kind of popular festival around it, and they did not
hand out free try-out tickets to residents along the line. Instead
they made everybody pay a full fare from the very beginning.
Loudspeakers at stops continuously announced that all passengers must
purchase a ticket and that inspectors (well, they call them something
milder) will be on board to check tickets, and they did. So all that
left a bad taste in my mouth, especially as service was getting very
irregular during late morning, when they even switched off the
next-tram indicators, and just announced that trams would arrive
every 10 minutes. In reality, waiting times became much longer, and
often two trams came one shortly after the other. But it seemed they
gave up checking tickets in the afternoon. So Edinburgh Trams as the
operator somehow missed this unique opportunity to get the public
opinion on their side from the first day.
A single ride costs 1.50 GBP, quite
reasonable, and a day ticket for 3.50 GBP including all Lothian Buses
is actually a very good deal. So, compared to the really bad fare
system in Glasgow, Edinburgh at least has good integration of buses
and trams, although local trains are left out as of yet.
The initial tram line, which was
supposed to continue northeast to Leith but was curtailed due to the
cost overruns, actually consists of two rather different sections.
The eastern part, between York Place and Haymarket railway station,
is a typical tram with a high share of on-street running, just the
easternmost 300 m before the York Place terminus is on a central
reservation. Other parts are shared by private cars and mostly by
hundreds of buses which run along Princes Street, so that could cause
mutual obstruction. Otherwise my major objection to this stretch is
the lack of a stop near Edinburgh's main railway station Waverley.
So, people with suitcases arriving in Edinburgh and not familiar with
the surroundings of the station, will have problems finding the
nearest stop. For St. Andrew Square stop (which on maps shows 'for
Waverley') they will have to walk a couple of hundreds of metres, the
Princes Street stop is a bit further away, but might be the better
choice if going westwards. Princes Street is one of the city's main
shopping streets, but funnily, it is here where you find the longest
distance between stops. The next stop west lies some 800 m away, a
distance more typical for metros, but even for those not
recommendable in the city centre, where generally more stops are
necessary to spread people out a bit. The island platform at Princes
Street will soon get problems with overcrowding, never a good thing
in the middle of a 4-lane road. I assume that even shop owners (who
suffered most during construction) realised that the stop called
Princes Street is so far east and that passengers might not bother to
walk back west to their shops. As a result the next western stop,
initially marked as 'Shandwick Place', was renamed 'West End-Princes
Street' although Princes Street actually only begins some 250 m
further east!! So my advice is, move the present 'Princes Street'
stop further east towards the Waverley Bridge, and add another stop,
maybe called 'Princes Street West' somewhere in between. The last
stop of the tram-like section, at Haymarket, is conveniently located
just outside the railway station of that name, busy with commuters,
but long-distance trains often just serve Waverley.
The entire section west of Haymarket
can be classified as 'light rail', completely on its own
right-of-way, with only a few level crossings (the only major one
just south of Gyle Centre), and with some sections allowing speeds of
up to 70 km/h. Around Bankhead/Saughton the tram took over an
existing busway alignment, which already had dedicated bridges to
avoid level crossings. To reach this busway alignment, however, two
viaducts had to be built to take the tram to the south side of the
mainline railway which it parallels between Haymarket and Edinburgh
Park station. So, here the big question remains, whether this
alignment was really necessary or whether another one or two stations
for local trains would have done the job, while the tram could have
stayed in a more urban environment. But that's done now. After
Edinburgh Park the line runs through nice lawns between office
buildings in this business park, and most likely a lot of new
buildings will be built in this area soon. Beyond Gyle Centre, once
the depot has been passed, the line continues through farmland, just
serving a Royal Bank of Scotland business park at Gogarburn and the
free Ingliston car park. Between these two stops, two level crossings
as well as a ghost stop can be seen amidst a huge meadow, so this
area may also change in the future. Another ghost stop is visible
just east of the depot which may provide interchange to a
still-to-be-built railway station, though likely requiring a long
walk if I got the local situation right.
Ingliston P+R is the last stop within
the normal fare zone, for the Airport a special fare of 5 GBP is
required (9 GBP for a day ticket). The Airport terminus, unlike York
Place, which has only one track, features two stub tracks with a
scissors crossover before it. I don't know whether this stop is the
property of the Airport, but it was surprising that it had no signs
at all, no name signs and no next-tram indicators. There are several
ticket machines, and there was an assistant on the first day, but
there is no information office in the airport. Many passengers will
therefore rather take the bus because there is a manned ticket booth
and also drivers available for information.
So, it might seem that the fast
light-rail section would compensate for the naturally slower urban
tram section, but this optimism is soon erased by the fact that too
many curves along this section are so badly built that trams have to
reduce speed drastically. Funnily, there is a speed restriction of 10
km/h at the depot entrance, but not for trams going into the depot,
but for trams staying on the running tracks. Was this a planning
mistake?? On other curves, most notably just west of the Ingliston
stop, tracks were laid on concrete (honestly, no idea why!), and
obviously badly laid, because these curves cause noises I have never
heard before in my long tram-watching life! A similar flaw, though
not as loud, can be found just west of Gogarburn, where the trams
take an S-curve through empty grassland. Like at Ingliston, the
immediate question comes up, why did they have to align the platforms
parallel to the nearby road, and why didn't they build them some 45
degrees to the northwest to avoid the need of such tight curves?
Another not-approvable section can be found around Murrayfield
Stadium where trams wind their way around a train yard, requiring
speed limits of 25 km/h. I would say that on a new light rail line a
continuous speed of 45-50 km/h should always be allowed, otherwise
the respective engineers should be sacked, in the case of Ingliston
even taken to jail. I wonder if the original planners are responsible
for that or whether it was German construction company Bilfinger
Berger? In any case, they should have refused to build such bad
trackbeds even if the local supervisors had insisted. I have not been
on Manchester's latest extensions, but on U.S. light rail systems
which have very similar alignments, I have never observed such a
series of construction flaws.
The tram stops all have a uniform design, St. Andrew Square, Princes Street, West End-Princes Street and Airport with island platforms, the rest with side platforms. There are small shelters, ticket machines, an information poster, next-tram indicators and proper station name signs. The latter are better than elsewhere, and repeated along the platform, at least twice. I would have preferred an inverted colour scheme, though, a maroon (or whatever the corporate colour is supposed to be), with white, slightly larger characters. The only stop that is slightly different is Murrayfield Stadium next to the Rugby stadium. It is on an elevated section, with a huge flight of stairs to cater for large crowds, and all in typical Edinburgh sandstone, which brings us to another point. Edinburgh is without doubt an elegant city, but with its uniform sandstone style it is also a very colourless city, especially on a rainy day. And the choice of a very decent colour shared by Lothian Buses and Edinburgh Trams, both now under the Transport for Edinburgh brand, has not added a little colour touch to the city, while it could have been a modern contrast to the otherwise classic urban environment, for example by using a strong but noble red instead. From experience we know, however, that British liveries change at least every five years anyway, so there is hope....
So, if someone asked me, should the
system be extended, I would say, I don't know. They should at least
build the extension to Leith as initially planned to give the present
line more reason to be, as it would serve a busy corridor and could
thus replace many of the current buses. But I think it will be hard
to convince local residents and politicians to invest further, as the
present tram is not even capable of providing a faster journey to the
airport. After having been to Leith on a bus instead, I would say,
that at least a tram is much more comfortable than the bumpy buses
(if it wasn't for the squealing noise in so many curves...). In any
case, I'm afraid, we won't see any extensions for a while as the
Scottish transport minister said they wouldn't give any more money
for the tram. It will also take a while until people realise the
advantages of the tram, as the present line actually only serves a
very small portion of the population. What would help is a much more
frequent hop-on hop-off service in the city centre between York Place
and Haymarket (an existing siding between here and Murrayfield
Stadium would make this easily possible). Trams would be much more
visible and worth to wait for, whereas currently it is mostly faster
to walk instead of waiting for the next tram in 'about' 10 minutes.
The single-track stub at York Place might limit such aspirations,
however. Rolling stock would not be the problem as 27 trams were
purchased for the entire line including the Leith extension, while
only 17 are now needed for an 8-10 minute service.
LINKS
Edinburgh Trams (Official Website)
Edinburgh Tram at UrbanRail.Net
