Letter: Trams chaos

Your reports on the utter chaos of the Edinburgh trams project (9 October) highlight for us all the appalling shambles that the City of Edinburgh Council has created.

Taxpayers are being required to sit and watch as public money is poured down the city drains - as you so forcibly point out in your leader. And to make it worse, not once has there been any glimmer of regret or apology.

We cannot know what Bilfiger Berger's point of view is as the council and Tie have most conveniently, from their point of view, silenced them with a contractual "gag".

It is high time that individual councillors act in accord with their conscience and used their common sense to demand a change of leadership of the council and of Tie. No one knows what the final bill for the trams may be; it could be near the 750 million suggested a year ago, or it could well top 1 billion - even more if all the lines are eventually built.

With already 90m to find, even before cuts by central government are announced, the project should be mothballed and restarted when money becomes available. The last thing we should allow the council to do is to bankrupt the highly-efficient bus service by making it subsidise the failed trams project.

ALLAN ALSTEAD

Moray Place

Edinburgh