Extra minutes added to Edinburgh Trams journeys 'make them no faster than bus'

The move, which was introduced on Sunday, is to "improve reliability" and add more peak services, but a transport campaigner said some journeys would now take nearly ten minutes longer than initially planned because trams were not given priority at junctions.

The longer journeys comprise trip times between Haymarket and Picardy Place at the east end of the city centre increasing from 12 to 13 minutes, along Leith Walk from seven to nine minutes, and between Ocean Terminal and Newhaven from three to four minutes.

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Former planning consultant Robert Drysdale told The Scotsman: “With traffic signals still causing delays along the route, it’s not surprising that Edinburgh Trams has had to add four minutes to the run time from Haymarket to Newhaven, now up to 33 minutes, which is nearly ten minutes slower than the estimated timings given when the tram proposals were first revealed more than 20 years ago.”

He said the 33-minute journey time compared to 23.5 minutes when the planned tram line was going through the Scottish Parliament in 2005.

Mr Drysdale said the lack of priority for trams at traffic lights was a particular problem on the city centre to Newhaven extension of the line from Edinburgh Airport, which opened last year.

He said: “It means the tram is no faster than the bus down Leith Walk, averaging only 7.5mph - hardly the ‘rapid transit’ that Edinburgh needs so badly.”

Mr Drysdale said the problem underlined the need for trams to run on separate lanes on street sections of the planned north-south tram line between Granton and the Edinburgh BioQuarter.

He said: “It’s now obvious that, if trams have to run on-street, they need their own dedicated tram-only lane along most of the route, and absolute priority at junctions, neither of which the Newhaven trams have.

“It also raises yet more doubts about the idea of taking the Granton tram extension on-street from Crewe Toll to the city centre, as there’s no room for tram-only lanes, and the narrow 200-year-old Dean Bridge will be a huge capacity constraint on efficient tram operation and traffic flows.

“If the Granton tram isn’t allowed to use the already-approved fast, off-road route through Craigleith [along the Roseburn path], at much lower cost, we should just make do with the existing frequent bus service.”

An Edinburgh Trams spokesperson said: “Although it will take a few minutes longer to travel from one end of the system to the other, the timetable adjustment has enabled us to introduce extra services at peak times while further improving reliability, comfort and convenience for customers.

“At other times, services will still run from every seven minutes, so customers will not have to wait longer at stops.

“These changes to the timetable are the first since the launch of services to Newhaven and have been introduced in response to feedback from customers, employees and other stakeholders as well as current traffic conditions along the new route.”