The new Edinburgh Trams timetable which was introduced on Sunday 1st December – which included the addition of extra trams at peak periods – has led to increased journey times with one local campaigner claiming that is now no faster to take the tram than it is the bus along Leith Walk.
Edinburgh Trams had said that the new timetable would improve reliability, with trams regularly losing time as they made their way along the extension to the extent that some service were turned short. This led to industrial relations issues with strikes threatened over the lack of breaks that this allowed on-board staff. Eventually after negotiations this was solved, presumably helped by the promise of the longer journey times.
In the Edinburgh Evening News, Robert Drysdale, a former planning consultant, puts the longer journey times down to the fact that trams still don’t have priority at junctions and claims journeys will now take up to 10 minutes longer that the initial proposals for the line. He also stated that these increased journey times show why any future extension should concentrate on fully segregated alignments.
An Edinburgh Trams spokesperson said in response: “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.”