Building the Edinburgh streetcar wasn’t easy, but a lot of people ride it now

I recently took a trip to Scotland, where I rode on Edinburgh’s new streetcar. Much like DC, Edinburgh struggled to get its first line open, and scaled back initial plans. But now that streetcars are carrying passengers, Scots view it much more favorably.

Edinburgh’s streetcar system, known as the Edinburgh Trams, runs for about nine miles from the airport to the city center. It has its own right of way near the airport, then runs along the rail corridor that links Edinburgh to Glasgow.

Before now, the last time streetcars ran in Edinburgh was 1956. Throughout the rest of the 20th century, various plans to bring them back surfaced. Plans for what the city has today started in 2001, and construction started in 2008. Edinburgh’s city council had wanted a rail link between the city center and the airport for a long time, and one plan it considered was an underground train station.

As Edinburgh’s streetcar nears the city, it runs in the street. Its final section, along Princes Street, is part of a transit mall that’s also used by a number of the city’s bus lines as well as trains running to the Waverly Place station. The streetcar also stops at a number of other railway stations on Edinburgh’s western edges.

The Trams’ construction was plagued by delays and cost overruns that nearly doubled the price of the project. Edinburgh’s city council even considered cancelling the project midway through. While today’s route obviously survived, plans to build a multi-line system were scrapped. Scotland’s Parliament is still investigating what went wrong.

Despite the mishaps, first-year ridership on The Trams has exceeded predictions with nearly five million riders in its first year, or about 13,000 riders per day. With ridership strong and operation running smoothly, officials in Edinburgh have warmed up to the idea of another line or extension that would run from Edinburgh to the neighboring waterfront town of Leith.

Edinburgh has a lot of transit overall. There’s an extensive network of bus lanes that extend far out into the city’s edges as well as along its older streets in the medieval section of Old Town, and bus ridership is among the highest in the UK. Also, the transit mall on Princes Street is both one of the city’s major shopping areas and within site of the city’s famous castle.

There are certainly similarities between Edinburgh’s and DC’s streetcar plans. Both were ambitious at the start but wound up getting curtailed as construction issues cropped up and costs rose. Some other issues are similar as well, like complaints from local businesses who had to deal with long bouts of construction work and dangers for cyclists who try to ride over the streetcar tracks.

Props to Edinburgh for getting its streetcar running and carrying passengers before DC’s. Still, from our region’s perspective, it’s encouraging to see a similar project where ridership is so brisk.