Edinburgh tram network: Grand expansion plans look set to burn through taxpayers' money – John McLellan

If Evening News readers are anything to go by, it’s fair to say claims the Scottish Government is embracing expansion of the Edinburgh tram system were not met with unbridled joy.

Edinburgh's tram network could be extended to Granton, Newbridge, Dalkeith and Musselburgh (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)

Although it could mean the financial burden of future extensions would not fall entirely on city tax-payers, those living or working along the new lines would face years of disruption, as anyone who has experienced Leith Walk will testify.

When the previously abandoned work is taken into account, it has taken a decade to build three miles of track from York Place to Newhaven and it’s not finished yet. Even without anything as complicated as a tram line, the Roseburn bike lanes show just how miserable Edinburgh Council can make life for locals when it really puts its mind to it.

As Transport Scotland’s second Strategic Transport Projects Review includes trams to Dalkeith, with a spur to Musselburgh, this is what the densely populated route south from North Bridge to the Royal Infirmary can expect.

With government money beckoning, it has only encouraged thoughts of ignoring the pragmatic option of using the existing track-bed from Roseburn to Granton, but instead spend billions on a line across the 200-year-old Dean Bridge and down Orchard Brae. However, the original plan to form a loop by linking Granton to Newhaven is absent, as is the sketchy proposal to build a line through Lauriston, part of the council’s pre-Covid fantasy transport game.

But no-one should under-estimate the desire of transport officials to burn other people’s money.