LOCALS TO QUIZ COUNCIL ON EAST END TRAMWORKS TONIGHT

Submitted by Editor on Mon, 02/07/2012 - 08:02

Patrick Hutton, New Town and Broughton Community Council's outspoken Transport Convener, has been scathing in recent weeks about the state of the tramworks.

He says the simultaneous shutting of the Mound and Broughton Street smacks of bad planning, describing it as a 'pain in the posterior' and proof that 'the spirit of tie lives on'.

He disapproves of the diversion via East London St, through the chicanes outside St Mary's Primary, then Annandale St and Leith Walk in language we tremble to reproduce in full.

'I just don't buy the need to start on the BT duct diversions [at York Place] that urgently, if they have so many other things to do,' he adds.

'One of the big problems with the [choice adjective deleted] tram project is that it has been so badly managed at all levels all the way through. It is a source of wonder that some few hardy souls still support it.

'If CEC thought a wee bit about the PR damage that stupid decisions like this make, then it might help to get folk back behind the project. The completion of TL0.5 may be set in huge amounts of ferro-concrete, but it is going to take a hearts and minds campaign to get the rest finished to Leith and Newhaven.

'Unnecessary additional disruption is not the way to go about it.'

Hutton and other interested or concerned members of the public will have a chance to quiz Colin Smith, a consultant surveyor on the tram project, at tonight's meeting of the New Town and Broughton Community Council.

The meeting starts at 7.30pm in Broughton St Mary's Parish Church (on the right and down the back), Bellevue Crescent. All welcome. Agenda and CEC note attached. See also Breaking news (13.6.12).