If there’s a UK transport project from yesteryear that continues to set teeth on edge, it has to be Edinburgh Tram. The only solace IJGlobal readers take from it is… that it wasn’t a PPP.
In this week’s Infra Dig podcast, IJGlobal editorial director Angus Leslie Melville talks to return guest Mike Flynn of Michael Flynn Associates about this disastrous, directly-procured light rail project.
Mike – known widely as an itinerant builder of railways – delves into his knowledge of the Scottish capital’s plans to build a tram system and looks at what went wrong.
Some 45 minutes later and there’s a lot more to say… and Mike never even touched on the inquiry that has been running since 2008, racking up a cost (so far) of £12.5 million, with no end in sight.
To put that into context, the Iraq Inquiry was announced in 2009 and published in 2016.
This podcast gives a railway-builder’s view of a disaster project that brought the centre of Edinburgh to a grinding halt for years, set the public side to war with the private, but now provides a valued mass transit solution… with plans afoot for an extension.