Infra Dig - A Green Street Podcast
The Infra Dig Podcast, formerly The IJGlobal Podcast, from Green Street Infrastructure’s editorial team, digs deep into the finance, procurement, delivery, and operation of infrastructure and energy projects around the world.
The focus ranges from the project finance behind greenfield developments to major M&A activity and the evolving dynamics within the infrastructure fund community. If it shapes the global infrastructure and energy landscape, you’ll hear about it here.
Infra Dig - A Green Street Podcast
Infra Dig – Nightmare on Edinburgh Tram
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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.
