THE DISTRESSED Edinburgh tram project faces its greatest hurdle yet today, as the city council considers whether to axe the scheme.
Meanwhile, the possibility of terminating the line from the airport at Haymarket is back on the agenda, while it has also emerged that the costs of abandonment may have been exaggerated.
A new report which will be considered by councillors says that the price of scrapping the project could be at least £80 million lower than the previous figure, of some £750 million.
When that figure was calculated, it implied that only £20 million would have been saved by abandonment, because the costs of completion from the airport to St Andrew Square, off Princes Street, were put at £770 million.
Now, however, the crucial savings gap has widened from £20 million to as much as £300 million or more. Not only is the cost of ending the scheme at least £80 million lower than it was, it has also been revealed that the costs of borrowing will be £230 million, taking the total expenditure to £1 billion.
Edinburgh South MP Alastair Darling has dubbed completing the section between Haymarket and St Andrew Square as 'absolute madness', it is reported. Labour city councillors have responded to the former Chancellor's warning that the costs of this section could not be justified by tabling an amendment which would terminate the line at Haymarket, because 'material changes' have been revealed.
The project is now running three years late, having been mired in a spiral of rising costs and lengthy disputes between the council's development company TIE and the main tramway contractors, Bilfinger Berger. Mediation talks began in March.
To add to the gloom, the council-owned tram development company TIE has been trying to sell at least some of the 27 CAF trams it has bought for some £2 million each – so far, without success.
Various potential buyers have been mentioned, including Sheffield and Watford-St Albans in Britain, but TIE has already been rejected by Transport for London, which needs extra trams for the Croydon area but has chosen to buy six new vehicles from the Swiss builder Stadler.