Trams...

I've lived in cities with trams. They're very nice. However to suggest that trams are immune to traffic congestion is idiocy at best. The merest block on the line holds back the tram. I've actually been on a tram that hit a car turning across the tram track. It was a perfectly legitimate manouvere by the car, but the driver stopped for oncoming traffic and underestimated how long it would take the tram to stop. Collision! Only one winner too!

I've stepped of trams with tracks going down the middle of the road, only for car drivers to ignore the open doors and endanger our lives.

I've been stuck on trams going slower than walking speed due to traffic congestion, where the street was not broad enough that the tram track could be given a lane of it's own.

Don't get me wrong, they're very pleasant and a whole lot cleaner than the diesel fumes that pollute our cities, particularly where buses congregate, ie Union street in Glasgow, but to suggest that trams are some sort of panacea to our traffic problems is an utter nonsense. The politicking from Edinburgh and Labour on this issue is pathetic.

PS The claim that we have to continue because we've already spent £100m is a nonsense too, when not a single track has been laid. Where has the money been spent? Land & Surveys. Land can be sold to recoup outlay and the surveys should be worthy in their own right... otherwise, why were we paying for them in the first place?