Tram bungles begin

News into EdSucks is that the current works on re-routing the ulilities have already hit a stumbling block both on Leith Walk and Elm Row. 

The joint utilites contractor, McAlpines has recently started excavating trial pits in Leith Walk – standard practice when a contractor hasn’t a clue ‘what’s where’ under the road, because most utility records are woefully inadequate. 

We understand that McAlpines were informed there were 4 lots of services in Elm Row, but so far, they’ve identified 11, plus blundering into a couple of large, plated-over chambers outside Shrubhill (from the old cable-car pulleys, pre 1922, that the Council claimed to know all about) Anyone with operational experience of roadworks in Edinburgh could have warned them.  This comes after TIE’s multi-million pound super-duper, ultra hi-tech laser utilitity-finding exercise (how many schools, nurseries and community centres would that keep open).

Indeed the cock-ups are so bad that we are led to believe that a lot of the supervisory workers on the project are looking elsewhere in the road maintenance industry for jobs so that their professional reputations are not sullied by working on the Council’s single line tram set.

It seems that the above is not only rumour but in fact totally true.  Indeed recent comments on the Evening News website seem to confirm the facts and from the knowledge of the poster confirming there may well be a highly placed source in City Development who knows that the single line tram set is already going downhill and we don’t mean the journey from St. Andrews Square to Constitution Street.

If that (wo)man who comments would like to release themselves of further information, we would be only to pleased to help you get it out.  We are sure the poster is not City Development Chief Andrew Holmes because we believe that himself and some other ‘suits’ would do that to spoil the bullying they get from TIE and Lothian Buses supremo Neil Renilson – who coincidentally wants the trams.

Maybe the Evening News, The Scotsman or dare I say it Talk107, should try to hire a good investigative reporter to uncover what is actually going on and inform us – or maybe the results wouldn’t fit their editorial profile.