All track works around St Andrew Square in Edinburgh city centre have been completed with the area returning to public use from Friday 26 April. This is the first of four major city centre worksites which will be completed during 2013 and is another sign of recent progress as plans to return trams to the city start to come to fruition.
It is planned that road and track works between Shandwick Place and Haymarket Junction will be completed during the summer before the works on York Place are finished by the end of the year. Once road and track construction is completed further works to install overhead and underground cabling will be carried out although exact details of this work
have yet to be revealed.
Cllr Lesley Hinds, Transport Convener at the City of Edinburgh Council, said: “Good progress is now clearly visible across the city centre and the removal of barriers and fences at St Andrew Square will be a welcome sight to traders, residents and visitors to the area. This is the first of four major city centre work sites to be completed in 2013, all of which are on course to be finished in line with the revised schedule by the end of the year. We want to remind people that a programme of overhead and underground cable installation will be carried out in the coming months. This will be planned in a way that limits disruption as much as possible and we’ll make details available once they are confirmed. I’m confident that all on-street works and cable installation will be completed by the end of the year, meaning that we can start full line tram testing and driver training along the whole route soon after. 2013 has been a very productive year so far for the project and I expect that to continue.”
The project remains on the latest schedule which should see passenger trams running by summer 2014. It is planned that a rigorous testing programme will commence in early 2014 before services commence. A full update is due to be given to the Council by the tram project team in September this year.