Scotland Coach

First topic message reminder :

Breaking news; Mark Dodson, SR CEO, announces "We have concluded our search for a head coach and will announce that in coming weeks."

Any Ideas? sounds like its someone still in a job

funnyExiledScot wrote:

George Carlin wrote:The fact that the SRU have apparently offered Cotter a wheelbarrow of cash and a sedan chair in which he will be carried around Edinburgh may also have been a consideration.

It'll be nice having another sedan chair user in Edinburgh. Carbon neutral after all!

I'd hate to carry a sedan chair up some of the narrow cobbled streets in Edinburgh!

Still quicker than the tram...

These Trams are a shambles.

Who knows maybe after all the Tram malarky is over the person responsible will be offered a job in the SRU.

RuggerRadge2611 wrote:These Trams are a shambles.

Woah woah woah Radge – enough of your controversial remarks! Don’t rock the boat too much now!

Is the bluddy tram line actually finished? Still looked an omnishambles extraordinaire when I saw the sites last year?

George Carlin wrote:Is the bluddy tram line actually finished?

steady on

They are testing trains between Gogar and the airport but it is still a long way off being an operational route.

They are starting to put up the over-head cables and supports – now people will get to see what their city is really going to look like! None of the ‘artists impressions’ show the web of cables and supports – makes a massive difference to how it looks.

The other great thing they have done now is make Princes Street down to 1 lane for busses, so they form a long queue and all have to stop whenever a bus gets to a bus stop, which happens very frequently!

GC - are you kidding??

There's an obstacle course of building works I have to negotiate every morning and evening on my walk to work and back, and in the entire 14 months I've been here, absolutely nothing has changed other than a few fences and blocks of cement being moved from side to side. Shandwick Place to Haymarket is a total shambles, and showing zero signs of changing in the foreseeable future. There seems to be no end in sight, and meanwhile the roads in Edinburgh generally are falling apart as the entire budget is being swallowed by these stupid trams.

See what you’ve done GC – don’t mention the trams!!!!

I was under the impression Edinburgh council were using them as tourist attractions

"Come and see the longest running tram fiasco in history” or failing that we're claiming they're ruins from when trams were last used in Edinburgh.

It's when you check out the wikipedia page and realise the cost has ballooned from £375m to over £1 billion and the staus is labled as "national disgrace" you realise what a farce it has become.

It's worse when you look at the Scottish parliament that was initially going to cost £40m and it ended up costing in excess of £414m.

I don't know what these civil engineers and architect type people go to University for. Their projects all become a blight on the proud heritage of Scottish engineers.

On another note this topic has derailed badly but I'm happy to rant away.

RuggerRadge2611 wrote:On another note this topic has derailed badly but I'm happy to rant away.

Nicely done!

I heard that the trams were a great idea and would be the key to Edinburgh getting to the HC final....

Riskysports wrote:I heard that the trams were a great idea and would be the key to Edinburgh getting to the HC final....

How will that work? Are we going to substitute Ben Atiga for a tram that doesn't work?? Actually, not a bad swap.....

Don’t go blaming civil engineers!

The problem is that the councillors are all former teachers, nurses, insurance workers and librarians – they know nothing about running huge infrastructure projects and yet were put in charge of doing so. They then hired a dodgy contractor because they were cheap – there was a reason they were cheap and they generally proved that they were at it constantly.

They also massively under-budgeted for re-directing the buried services, and found out that Edinburgh have a lot more than they originally planned for. That added time and money.

They are also a bunch of idiots who can’t plan construction properly – they re-directed all the services for the tram tracks and re-surfaced the road, happy days. What they forgot was that trams need pylons, and pylons need foundations – so they had to do it all again!

I’ve lost track of who ‘they’ are but feel the need to vent anyway!

RDW_Scotland wrote:Don’t go blaming civil engineers!

The problem is that the councillors are all former teachers, nurses, insurance workers and librarians – they know nothing about running huge infrastructure projects and yet were put in charge of doing so. They then hired a dodgy contractor because they were cheap – there was a reason they were cheap and they generally proved that they were at it constantly.

They also massively under-budgeted for re-directing the buried services, and found out that Edinburgh have a lot more than they originally planned for. That added time and money.

They are also a bunch of idiots who can’t plan construction properly – they re-directed all the services for the tram tracks and re-surfaced the road, happy days. What they forgot was that trams need pylons, and pylons need foundations – so they had to do it all again!

I’ve lost track of who ‘they’ are but feel the need to vent anyway!

It is either Farrel or NDL

My own view is that the buck stops with the First Minister. He should fall on his sword.....

Outside Haymarket is an utter shambles - makes it a right pain in the erse to get anywhere! THey do seem to have made quite a lot of progress down Shandwick Place recently though. There doesn't seem to be much happening with the new railway station at Gogar though, which was meant to be an important part of linking the airport to the railway network other than the few trains that stop at Edinburgh Park.

I look forward to watching 68,000 people trying to get onto the trams at Murrayfield though! Especially as you'll have to buy a ticket before boarding, and Scotrail will no doubt have queues out over the tram tracks at Haymarket so nothing canget through anyway...

On a sidenote, I know someone who works for the SRU. Very competent chap.

I’d happily provide the sword for King Salmond FES.

RDW_Scotland wrote:I’d happily provide the sword for King Salmond FES.

Will it be an independent sword, or will it be tied to the union?

Just realised that I am making less sense that normal

Think I need a coffee!

More ranting:

I have a friend who works on the new Haymarket station project and they have to work closely with the tram people – apparently they are totally incompetent and regularly have to dig up things they have just done and do them again. I get the bus to Glasgow most days and have to see the shoddy workmanship and mistakes they make – concrete hides a lot of evils but in a few years time when it is cracked to hell and has to be dug up again the contractor will be long gone and the residents will have to foot the bill.

highland_scot wrote:On a sidenote, I know someone who works for the SRU. Very competent chap.

He won't last long in which case....

RDW_Scotland wrote:See what you’ve done GC – don’t mention the trams!!!!

RDW_Scotland wrote:More ranting:

I have a friend who works on the new Haymarket station project and they have to work closely with the tram people – apparently they are totally incompetent and regularly have to dig up things they have just done and do them again. I get the bus to Glasgow most days and have to see the shoddy workmanship and mistakes they make – concrete hides a lot of evils but in a few years time when it is cracked to hell and has to be dug up again the contractor will be long gone and the residents will have to foot the bill.

Doesn't surprise me at all. To be clear, I can barely change a lightbulb or correctly wire a plug, but I certainly recognise that utterly confused and baffled look you regularly see on the faces of the workman at the tram sites. It's the same look I have when confronted with Ikea furniture....

I think I'll need to start putting aside a small cash warchest, just to cover the inevitable hike in the already extortionate Edinburgh council tax!

Vern Cotter for First Minister!

Final rant:

The trams are not allowed be cheaper than an equivalent train fare of the same journey – so they will probably be quite expensive to use.

Lets say they were £10 return (they won’t be that high but just as an example) and the project cost £800M that would be 80 million journeys just to make the money back. But then you’ve got to add on the running costs, maintenance, wages etc during the life of the project, so you will have to sell even more tickets….

Stupid, stupid idea.

I just have this vision of these empty trams clogging up the roads! They'll have to make them cheap and easy to use ultimately, otherwise there's absolutely no point.

They need to have an Oyster Card style system so regular users can hop on and hop off without fuss - and they must be competitively priced (the airport bus should be the charging model for comparison).

If they expect people to pay £10 for a single journey, whilst they might trap a few tourists in the summer, in the Autumn and Winter (other than New Year) they will be completely empty.

Final, final rant- there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Airport bus! £7 return, takes 30 mins max from Princess Street, is comfortable and you get free Wifi.

Completely agree, and if there's 4 or 5 of you, a taxi hardly breaks the bank either (£20 to the centre of town so less than £5 each), and there are usually plenty of cabs.

The trams are a vanity project, badly designed to solve a problem that didn't exist.

As this thread now seems to have a life of it own

Tunnock's Tea Cakes

or

Tunnock's Caramel Wafer?

It doesn't even go past bleeding Waverley. What's the point?! I've just got off the train from Newcastle and am off to the airport, so I have to either lug my worldly belongings up to St Andrew Square or the national gallery, or I'll need to change train to go to Haymarket/Edinburgh Park to then try and find an elusive Tram. How useful.

Ticketing really irks me. I don't understand how we do it so badly. An Oyster type system would be great, or alternatively a simple system to buy tickets from machines (like the ones they introduced then scrapped a couple of years ago) without scrabbling for change. Every other bleeding country in Europe manages to have ticket machines where you can buy your ticket in advance and then validate it when you get onboard, why are we so hopeless?

Mind you, at least we know how much the buses are in Edinburgh to prepare our exact change. In Glasgow I have no idea, and ask the driver how much to just be shouted at that I need exact change. I'd give the exact change if you tell me how much...

highland_scot wrote:Mind you, at least we know how much the buses are in Edinburgh to prepare our exact change. In Glasgow I have no idea, and ask the driver how much to just be shouted at that I need exact change. I'd give the exact change if you tell me how much...

But hang-on, isn't Glasgow supposed to be really friendly, unlike "stuck-up" Edinburgh.....

Cotter's favourite film is Priscilla Queen of the desert so be careful he's part trammy.

Riskysports wrote:As this thread now seems to have a life of it own

Tunnock's Tea Cakes

or

Tunnock's Caramel Wafer?

Caramel Wafer any day of the week. A caramel wafer and a tin of Iron Bru constitutes utopia!

From the Guardian...

"There was another milestone reached in December when the last of the city's twenty seven trams was delivered. However, as only a fraction of that number are required, perhaps as few as seven; those 27 were originally bought to service to two tram lines, not one truncated line.

The rest will have to be run round the test track by a team of drivers to stop the wheels from settling – yet more costs as the council has failed to sell the surplus vehicles. It tried to lease 10 which were surplus to requirements to Croydon council in 2011, but failed."

Riskysports wrote:From the Guardian...

"There was another milestone reached in December when the last of the city's twenty seven trams was delivered. However, as only a fraction of that number are required, perhaps as few as seven; those 27 were originally bought to service to two tram lines, not one truncated line.

The rest will have to be run round the test track by a team of drivers to stop the wheels from settling – yet more costs as the council has failed to sell the surplus vehicles. It tried to lease 10 which were surplus to requirements to Croydon council in 2011, but failed."

Surely there's a tourist attraction in the making here - tram racing!!

I get the airline bus every day there and back, have paid £40 for a bus pass which saves me hunners - it's cheap, very fast and is used by most people. Of course it makes sense to replace it would a non-working, potentially overpriced, road blocking, hack-job of a blo0dy mess. As a student I one day hope to ride it for free to the rugby, what do I not pay taxes or tuition fees for? eh?!

That was my initial reaction as well - might be handy and quick for Murrayfield if the weather is too horrid to walk in. At £10 though it's roughly the same as a cab, and I suspect it won't be as easy to procure, or drop me off at the gate and pick me up at my flat.

I can't see these things generating huge profit, and certainly not at the expense of locals who have had to pay through the nose for the sodding things in the first place. There should at least be a discount for locals paying council tax.

Hi everyone,

First time poster here, long time reader. Kind of makes me sad that its the trams that make me want to post for the first time as well, says a lot though!

I lived in Edinburgh for four years, the year after I moved back to Glasgow they started on the trams. My god is Edinburgh a mess now, every time I find myself in Edinburgh it shocks me how much of a blight the tram works are, and all for what? To make Edinburgh the new san fran?

I saw Alex Salmond outside of murrayfield signing autographs after the Scotland vs NZ game, I wanted to go and ask him if he walked from the parliament to the ground and had a look at the mess he has made, but decided I didn't want to get into trouble for causing damage to the most horribly smug face of all time...

AirHOrse - welcome!

You've got to explain that user name??

Somehow it is quite easy!

I am a computer science graduate at Edinburgh uni, in the computing labs there they give the machines stupid names. First machine I sat at was called AirHOrse, it became my nickname through circumstances I cant remember!

Every year I go back I always ask who is working on the damn thing ? A project like this if properly resourced could be completed and operational in max 3 years including all the m and e stations etc.

Whoever let the contract had to have no idea as there should be no room for cost overruns and penalties for late delivery .

Some 1 has firked up big time

AirHOrse wrote:in the computing labs there they give the machines stupid names. First machine I sat at was called AirHOrse

You crazy comsci's! Whatever next!

Welcome on board - the more Scots the merrier!

I moved to Edinburgh in the year they started the works. I wouldn't recognise Edinburgh if it wasn't covered entirely in roadworks!

To be fair to King Salmond I think this started before his reign.....as much as it pains me to say!

RDW_Scotland wrote:To be fair to King Salmond I think this started before his reign.....as much as it pains me to say!

You'd think he'd have stepped in though by now. Truth is he doesn't want to touch it, or even be associated with it. Now that's leadership!

Tramptastic wrote:I moved to Edinburgh in the year they started the works. I wouldn't recognise Edinburgh if it wasn't covered entirely in roadworks!

Me too, moved here in 2008. Briefly saw Princes Street one Hogmanay before they dug it up again, having done a shoddy job.

Anyone actually know when the revised completion date is due? I can't seem to find anything official.