Despite Covid, despite shortages of material and skilled labour, despite unexpected ‘utility conflicts’ at key junctions, the Trams to Broughton project is within the £207.3M budget and remains on schedule for revenue service to begin in the spring of 2023.
City of Edinburgh Council is celebrating with a seasonal blizzard of statistics. Since November 2019, it says, the project has:
- completed 1,087 (76%) of the known utility diversions and excavated almost 4,000 m of road to enable the installation of tram infrastructure
- installed 2,400 m of track, more than half of the total to be laid
- installed over 3,000 m of communications infrastructure, 65% of the total required for the project
- installed over 3,000 m of power ducting and over 2,500 m of drainage infrastructure
- completed over 250,000 person hours on site
- installed 200 m of pipes that collect and store excess water from large storm events, helping safeguard the area against flooding in the future
- sold £170,000 worth of itison vouchers to use in local businesses
- assisted with over 5,700 deliveries from the logistic hubs
- supported local initiatives through the community benefits workstream including Leith Chooses, Leith Gives and the One City Trust.
Breathless and dizzy
And if all that doesn’t leave you feeling breathless and dizzy, then there’s some vertiginous drone footage showing progress from a height at which it’s impossible to hear locals gnashing their teeth.
Cllr Lesley Macinnes, Transport & Environment Convener, acknowledges ‘the disruption this major project has caused to people living and working nearby, and that changes to the programme, which are down to issues outwith our control, are likely to affect them.
‘We’ll be working hard to share the latest information and provide support in the coming months and will continue to look at ways in which we can mitigate against some of these delays.’
The current updated programme of future works is available here.
Readers in Spurtleshire will be interested to learn that work on Elm Row is scheduled to end in spring 2022, and between London Rd and York Pl in autumn 2022.
-------------
