Costs up £10M but Edinburgh Tramway is on schedule

01 May 2008
 
Edinburgh tramway promoter TIE has announced a £10M increase in costs. But its final construction programme, involving a six-month closure of Princes Street next year, is on track for the 2011 opening.

TIE said the increase in cost to £508m for the system was due to the rise of the Euro and the policy of shifting risk to the contractors involved. It said the 18km Line 1a should be in operation in 2011.

'We’ve shifted a lot of the risk to contractors which costs a bit more but which fixes the price and buys us certainty,’ explained a TIE spokesman.

‘Negotiations took longer than we thought, and there was pressure to get the deal right, in terms of risk and the strengthening Euro.’ He said the utility contract with a single contractor, Carillion, had worked well, and utility projects should be finished this year.

Final negotiations on the main contracts had also been concluded, and they should be signed during May, allowing track laying to begin during 2008.

Interest has centred on the proposed six-month closure of Princes Street to enable the track-laying works to be completed as quickly as possible. ‘If we’d tried to do track laying with traffic still running in Princes Street, it would have taken us 18 months rather than six,’ said TIE.

‘The hallmark of our approach is working with the businesses in Edinburgh which have asked us to adopt that approach.’ The scheme’s financial envelope is £545m, and TIE claimed the 2% increase in costs from the previously agreed £498m still left room for manoeuvre.

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