Riding the first Edinburgh Tram from Newhaven! 

Was the TPE train on time? or was it delayed as usual

I made the silly decision at 5am to come, while still at work. Was worth it though.

You were actually on a TPE train that was running? You must have had luck on your side.

Honestly Jen, the sacrifices you make to keep the rest of us informed and entertained is nothing short of fabulous...very well done. As ever, take care, Jon B.

Lol😂

Bit of a nightmare to get back! But safely home now!

Stop, you’ll make me blush 😂😂

Maybe you should make a video on it 😛

@@JenOnTheMove bit late now 😂

I'm definitely paying the price this morning!

Glad you enjoyed it! The ding just doesn’t sound as good as the metrolink toot though!

The toot is the iconic sound of Manchester

We had space 😉 Since we left at 12 on the dot, I suspect this may have been the very first tram on the extension, unless you left seconds before 12?

Great to meet you too!

Not long made it home! I’m going to sleep for a long time!

You should!

Train and tram are closest to each other at Haymarket

Thankyou!

I have to grudgingly accept that the City of Edinburgh Council is pretty switched on when it comes to bus services and has been for as long as I can remember - so going back to the 1960s. It has been a discussion point with friends and family over the years as to why this is the case and one of the key catalysts seems to be the comparative lack of car parking in the city centre, which in itself is a result of city council decision-making. I can remember the uproar when the Castle Terrace car park was opened in 1964., as it was deemed by many to be a blight on the well-preserved architecture of the city centre. Another factor may be that Edinburgh is not a particularly densely populated city, once you escape the inner-city area, and so the suburbs are quite distant from Princes Street. Being a bit pedantic, Lothian Regional Transport changed its name to Lothian Buses in 2000 not long after the Lothian Region was abolished following the last reform of local government.

Just a flying visit I’m afraid!

Thanks so much!!

I suspect they mainly exist because it serves the airport to be honest

The luggage racks get pretty heavily used by people going to the 4 train stations served by the tram too.

@@JenOnTheMove Makes sense, although I reckon the Midland Metro could do with them too, especially once its commectimg the HS2 station in Brum, even just to make transfers from there to Birmingham New Street easier.

Thanks so much! 😊

I’ve seen a video from it and I’m reassured that I made the right choice to start at newhaven!

Trams are cool!

Ikr

It’s been a bit of a Starbucks day for me!

I’m not too up to date with Bristol but I know that they just need to get on with building some meaningful things!

Thank you!

Croydon was one of the later modern tram networks to open, it didn't open until 2000, whereas Manchester was 1992, Sheffield was 1994 and Birmingham was 1999 🙂 It's only Nottingham and Edinburgh that were built after Croydon!

@@JenOnTheMove Gosh were some that early?! I guess I have spent too long walking and not enough time riding! Happy to be corrected.

We’d been chatting all journey don’t worry!

@@JenOnTheMove that's good. 🙂

Hope you do get to try it one day!

Yay! Thank you!

Are they that bad? Didn’t get a chance to look in detail!

If you did a cycling video on them you'd need to play "that music" a fair bit!

Thank you!

Mostly locals out for the ride. I’m reasonably confident I was the only non local

And aren't very segregated; for most of the length there's just a painted line on the ground separating the cycle way from the pedestrian part of the pavement. There are also numerous places where people getting off buses step off into the cycle way and have to cross it to get to the pedestrian part.

Every city needs to start somewhere! Manchester started with Altrincham - Bury and look at it now!

@@JenOnTheMove Agreed, but the original plans for Edinburgh were much greater, but sadly politics and money got involved .. don't they always ! My local network (Tyne & Wear Metro) initially stopped at Bank Foot, less than 3 miles from Newcastle Airport, which everybody thought was strange. Just checking and of the 60 stations, this is the 4th least used station, so it was always pretty pointless. It took another 10 years for that short section to the airport to be constructed.

@@JenOnTheMove Granted. But just stretching it out to the other side of town is still a single line. Edinburgh did have larger plans, if I recall correctly. But it has been cut back to just this one line. Sad. Yes a start, but for it to be really successful it needs other lines to other places/parts of the city.

@@Jules_Diplopia The Newhaven line was meant to be the first section (Line 1A), with the Airport being the third section (Line 2)

@@Jules_Diplopia The original plans, which I saw at an exhibition for the planned tramway years before they started building, had a central loop which ran from, if I'm remembering correctly, Haymarket Station, along Princes Street, down Leith Walk, along the coast through Newhaven and Granton, then back to Haymarket. A spur came off the western edge of the loop out to the airport, and another spur headed south from the eastern edge of the loop down to Cameron Toll. With what opened today we've now got around 2/3 of the loop (so not yet a loop) and the airport spur.

The digital displays were also working, so not sure why they had the wooden boards!

Every network has to start somewhere. When it first opened, Manchester Metrolink was a single line and now look at it! You can't build a network without first building the first line

I have seen these one-line networks in a number of European cities, notably in France, which have never developed. Although Edinburgh had a quite well-developed suburban railway network in the past, most of that disappeared with the Beeching cuts in the 1960s. The upside is that many of these old lines have been converted to cycle tracks and I suspect no-one on the council would be brave enough to suggest changing them into tram tracks, as was suggested in the early 1970s by a University of Edinburgh professor (whose name I have unfortunately forgotten and can't find on the internet). I am not sure how good modern trams are at climbing and descending long inclines but Edinburgh is a lot hillier than Manchester in general. Sheffield is pretty hilly as well but has only essentially got three legs (with some short offshoots) going out from the city centre; the trams have been operating in Sheffield since 1994, so that would normally be expected to be enough time for a more complex network to have developed. A friend of mine who has lived in Sheffield for over 40 years has never used the tram there, because there is no tram line anywhere near where she lives.

@@user-mn4cc6bb7t Exactly. The Innocent path,which is now a cycle path could have been used as it was part of the old rail network that served the wider area of Edinburgh, it would have cost far less too. Either that or they could have just re opened the old suburban railway stations. Edinburgh has too many hills and narrow streets. The parking bays down Leith Walk are too narrow for cars to park and for a tram then to get past let alone delivery lorries,it's just such bad planning....

@@royharpershat8059 The Innocent Tunnel was a one of the elements that the professor stated should be exploited in his proposal 50 years ago. Being a bit of a hypocrite, I find the cycle track that skirts Niddrie and Craigmillar and then goes through the Innocent Tunnel very useful and wish it had been available when I was younger. Not only is it flatter than my alternative route following the A1 but you don't have cars and buses and their fumes to contend with. I agree with your comments about Leith Walk. The design looks as if it was procured off-plan by someone who knew something about computer-aided design but didn't know that part of Edinburgh very well and assumed that the locals all drive a Volkswagen Up! (or similar) and that SUVs are a phenomenon yet to reach Auld Reekie.