The Edinburgh Tram

Meh. Underwhelming.
Perhaps I’m at a disadvantage, or not the ideal tram user, as my flat is a bit off their route. But honestly? The buses get me there quicker. With such a fast and comprehensive bus service here, I rarely feel the need to get the tram.
It’s also surprisingly slow — and takes what seems like an age to get from one end of princes street to the other. And air con? Forget it. Just don’t go on a sunny day, unless you like being in a moving greenhouse…
On the plus side, they can be a novelty, and are supposed to be more environmentally friendly, so there’s that. But with such limited scope for journeys and slower journey times than any bus, I’m not entirely sold.

I’m not that great a fan of the tram.
Regularly run short and finish at Haymarket rather than York Place.
More expensive and take longer than the airport bus to the airport.
Ran ridiculously over budget and most of the city centre was chaotic for years.
Still, it’s relatively regular and easy to get on with luggage, buggies or wheelchairs. There is free wifi and it tells you which stop is next so it’s easy to get off at the right one.

After years of delays and millions overspent, the trams finally arrived in Edinburgh. Unfortunately, due to the increase in spending, the line was cut short, now only going as far as York Place and not to Ocean Terminal. This means the line is neither useful nor practical. Sure, the trams are modern, efficient, and fairly clean, but there is really no point in taking them. To get to the airport, it costs more than the already expensive Airlink express bus, with no time benefit of note. It’s a pity, as a tram system could be very useful in Edinburgh, but it really needs to be more extensive, and needs to have clear advantages over using the bus service.

A quick, easy, clean, affordable, and efficient way to get to central Edinburgh in 35 – 40 minutes.
5 GBP for a one way ticket from the airport, or…
8 GBP for a Return (roundtrip) ticket to get you into central Edinburgh.
Pick a hotel near one of the stops like West End or Princes Street and you’re golden! :)

Enjoyed the novelty of taking the tram on a recent trip to Edinburgh. Wish we had one in Belfast! It’s a super smooth journey and an easy way to get from airport to central Edinburgh. Very frequent service, with one seeming to turn up every 10 to 15 minutes. We purchased return journey tickets at £8 each, which we thought a good enough price. We didn’t travel at peak times so found we got seats immediately and the tram wasn’t packed at all. It’s not the quickest journey, but its environmentally friendly and a novelty if you’re from a city which doesn’t have one. Will definitely use it on my next trip to Edinburgh.

Not a bad ride overall.
So I had the experience of using the Edinburgh Tram for a nice little journey to Gyle Centre to head out to UPS where they were holding a parcel for me. The fastest way out there was to take the tram.
I have to say, the interior is certainly nicer than the one I use back home. The seats are nice, cushioned, and plentiful. On my journey out, the tram was a bit crowded but it emptied out a few stops before I made it to my destination.
About an hour after after my arrival to Gyle Centre, I waited at the tram stop and it seemed to take a while before it arrived. When it did, it was nearly empty. The ride back was quiet, but a bit slow and long for some reason (maybe I was just tired).
I also heard that as far as using the tram to the airport goes, the Airlink bus is actually still faster than it. This confuses me as to why the tram would go there if the bus is still faster. But in the end, I still think the Edinburgh Tram is a reasonable alternative to the bus when there is a need to head out to somewhere that’s not far off from the tram line.

I was super excited to ride the tram. I’m from Glasgow OK, this is a novelty. Toot toot! *Weegie Tourist Alert!*
I do feel though for the Edinburgh folks and the crap that they had to go through to eventually have this, forced on them, tram system and it’s not even the full line promised.
After all the nonsense and heartache it’s caused, it actually works. It was easy to access from Princes Street, I wasn’t too sure of times but when we saw one, we ran for it. Angela B. and I had bought a £3.50 Dayticket which we had used on several Lothian buses already and knew we could also use on the tram, as long as we weren’t airport bound. That’s much dearer!
The tram was bright, clean and the ticket man was lovely. He had noticed us running for the tram and made a wee joke. Caught! Red neck!
We were like a couple of wee lassies, pure excited. Selfies much?! The seats were really comfortable, they looked like driving seats. I can see why it cost so much and that’s before a street/​business was destroyed.
We were Krispy Kreme bound and Edinburgh Park Station is right next to it. I wasn’t too sure how many stops we were away but it had the stations displayed in the carriage and announced so we had no problem knowing when to alight for our doughnuts.
I would say it is more of a novelty, great for the tourists, than a lifeline for Edinburgh. If you haven’t ridden the tram yet, I would definitely have a wee ride and selfie to the max.

There was no love lost for the Tram story this year and somehow «Disappointment» turned into a pleasant surprise how convenient this Tram can be. Its easy to hop on and off Haymarket to travel to the West or the East.
Even I am a fan when it comes to the practicality of not stopping every 2 minutes I cant deny that the number of people boarding the Tram is huge and sometimes you can be squeezed into a small space not being able to breath. Ah well, when it comes to the worst I just jump off and on the 100 Bus or any other bus nearby.
Getting the ticket is easy. At each Tram station you will see a ticket machine and you have a few choices to pay. Its always good to have exact money not to be disappointed. A friend of mine tried to board the Tram, but was not able to get a ticket in time, such decided to take the train instead.
The ticket vendor machine also accept cards.
A single fare is £1.50 and a full day ticket £3.50, These tickets are also valid on all the Lothian Buses. Tickets to and from the airport are more expensive and costs £8.
I also love that the display shows me when the next tram is supposed to arrive and the Trams come pretty frequent.
Personally I would not take the Tram to the Airport as the full ticket price is still more expensive than if taking the 100 Bus, which is even faster. However, in general the Tram from and to the Airport is just an awesome, safe and convenient way to travel to and from the City Center.
One day the Tram might even be extended to Leith!

It’s got 99 problems.
About 6 months in and I have to make a few revisions — this includes 1 additonal star as they now have WiFi.
The novelty is waning and the people of Edinburgh have resigned to the fact that the tram is disrupting services. Especially on the Princes Street leg of the journey.
It is however still quite busy during the rush hours in the morning and evening.
Still on quieter times the journey to the airport still takes longer than the airport link bus.
In the past couple of months I have encountered many more delays and technical problems. Mostly the door, those bloody doors, due to the internal pressure sensors the doors may sometimes not close properly. This will delay services. Also the pylons where you need to validate your travel cards are many atimes not working. They fix it quick mind you. but a couple of days later it gives out again.
I do prefer it still over the use of the bus, if only for it smoother ride — you are not being flung through the carriage on breaking.
Tram Edinburgh is still on my watch list.

It’s quiet, green, smooth and quick. But it doesn’t really go anywhere you’d want to be unless you work for RBS or the Scottish Government. Will revise my opinion when it reaches Leith, or even better, the Southside.

It’s a Tram and does what it says on the tin.
You pay, get on, get off and in-​between you either stand or sit. If you can get over the construction costs, then there’s no reason to give this big metal thing a bad review. It’s clean, cheap, fast and stops at the places it says it stops. What else do you want from Public Transport?

They live! They actually live!
Yes folks. many moons ago, there was a Big Bang and everything came into existence. Planets were formed, galaxies were created, and about that time, Edinburgh decided to build some trams, and finally, they’ve arrived.
Running from York Place in the centre of Edinburgh, all the way out to the airport on a regular timetable, they’re not bad at all. Still shiny and new, how long that lasts? Well, we’ll see.
£3.50 buys you a day ticket to use at every stop except the airport, that costs a little more. I can’t say it’ll make a big difference to the everyday life of your average Edinburgh resident, but tourists and airport commuters will love it.
Plus, it gives taxi drivers something else to complain about.

So since it’s initial conception around ten years ago, the Edinburgh Trams are up and running, bringing me this morning from the airport into town. It’s been a couple of days since startup at the end of May 2014, and some five months since training began for tram staff.
They persuade you to buy a ticket before boarding from automated ticket vendors at each stop and it seems prices are £1.50 for a single trip, though not sure if you can pay once on-​board without a ticket. I only had to wait 5 – 7 minutes between one tram and the next. On boarding and as I look around the carriages only one other person had joined this journey; well it was quite early (6am) after all and peak hour was a while away.
The good folks of Edinburgh have endured years of ‘when are they running’ and ‘not more tram related roadwork-​questions’. They are of course outraged it’s taken so long for the network to pick you up. The people of Edinburgh stated for a long time you’ll have more chance of getting on a spaceship, than the trams being finished. They were constantly mocking the idea as another big white elephant, thus the trams stayed firm until late Springtime.
On the half hour journey into city centre from airport you will get the best views of the castle and gardens when you sit or stand on the right hand side. If you require more info on tram usage, local transport hub seems to be on the corner of Market Street/​Waverley Bridge. Locals, visitors and tourists should obtain tickets from machines or try their website (Transport for Edinburgh). There is even a phone app you can use with android.
One thing though on some seating there isn’t a lot of legroom but there are plenty displays telling you which stop is approaching, clean smelling, fantastic looking, quite comfortable with slight bumps as you travel just like a train would. The only flaw I found was it felt a bit claustrophobic, and the automated destination voice named stops in the wrong order, stations we’d just left as the arrival stop for the entire journey; this would no doubt confuse tourists. Will they be successful or not it seems only time will tell if the turnover will outweigh the cost. So it seems Edinburgh trams are most definitely here to stay with future track laying to the South-​side and possibly Leith being planned now?

Ou est le tram?

Pretty impressive. Very polished and hi-​tech.
Staff on the tram are very well-​informed and enthusiastic. They can talk you through all the vehicles features and answer questions about the ongoing work.
Like most new things in Edinburgh, the trams have thier critics (mostly the local press!) but this visit has won me over for sure. Looking forward to catching one of these to work someday.
Free entry.

I love trams. I love unearthing old tram lines in Glasgow and Edinburgh, I love the pace of them, I love how they still carry an air of superior public transport status from the bygone days of the «trolley buses».
Most European cities and Blackpool all have trams, so Edinburgh (who haven’t had trams since 1956) have decided to bring ‘em back. In theory, this is a wonderful idea, adding another dimension to Edinburgh’s reliable, clean city transport and increasing interest from tram fanatics.
Unfortunately, the reality is grim. This is where things get grizzly, and I will appear grumpy. But I hope you see my point! The trams are taking ages, which is causing upheaveal, disruption and general grievances to the people of Edinburgh. There seems to have been a hold up on production, and the project is taking an era to complete. They have quoted 2012 and I realise there has been a dip caused by the global recession, but it’s still a bit irritating.
Moreover, and it really, really saddens me to think this way, but considering the project is funded by the city council and the Scottish Government, then surely at the moment there are better ways in which we could be spending our money? Politics and reviewing should rarely if ever entwine, but I feel that we have too many cuts to deal with at this moment in time to pour money into something that’s surplus to requirements. I don’t know as much about the project as maybe some locals do so please enlighten me if I am wrong. But buses travel to most areas in the city, there are trains, and at the moment Scotland is being faced with some serious blows that may send us spiralling back to the not-​so-​hallowed days of Thatcher. Time will tell on that one, but I digress…
…so much to my dismay, I am inclined to feel that at this point in time, this project is frivilous. There are cuts here, there and everywhere that inevitably will affect not only museums and attractions that we enjoy, but also severely threaten the physical, mental and financial health of the country at large. Admittedly Cameron is Thatcher in a skirt, so although I am expecting to see a second blow thrown from the next Hammer of the Scots I don’t know if his reign will be as severe as the bitter economic winter that she brought in behind her. Let’s hope not, but to get back to it, I currently feel as though our money could be invested into something safer and more necessary for this point in time rather than on a project that, although wonderful in its own way, is perhaps the least of Edinbugh’s worries in the years to come.
For someone who didn’t want to bring politics into it, I’ve not done a very good job at keeping them out. Oops. No offence is intended and debate is welcomed should you disagree with my opinion — it is just an opinion, after all.

If you ever find yourself stuck for a conversation piece when talking to a taxi driver, or perhaps any local over the age of 35, piping up with a «what about those trams?» or a «whit aboot them trams eh?» depending on what part of town you’re in will fix the problem in seconds.
You’ll get a lengthy, grumpy monologue covering topics such as holes being dug and excess traffic congestion, during which you’ll likely get enough tidbits about the rambler’s life to drag on the conversation with another few minutes of small talk.
The whole project is a bit of a joke, but for services to uncomfortable silence, it’s a winner.

The tram project in Edinburgh! Most people think they will be a good idea, however almost everybody cannot stand the annoyance and delays surrounding the works.
The tram line is supposed to go from the airport to Leith. However, after only a couple of years, work is slow and progress is at a snail’s pace. Last year Princes Street changed remarkably due to the noisy works blocking off cars and buses from the street. Indeed, the west end of the city seems to be undergoing constant works every time you pass it.
I’m sure the trams will be brilliant when they are finished, and Edinburgh will have caught up with other European cities. However one does feel that the money could have been used to improve the already great bus service. I’m sure when they are finished, we will all like the tram system but that I am sure is a long way away.

I will readily admit this is a strange thing to review. Because it’s not really complete yet. But it exists at the moment, parked on Princes Street, being completely futile.
I’d heard rumours of its existence for a while. I mean, I always knew there were plans. I was Photo Editor for the Student newspaper in Edinburgh Uni for a couple of years and for some reason this was one of our hot topics. So, I had to trek down to Princes Street and find the infamous tram and molest it with my camera.
I figure for a tram to be defined as a tram, it better start taking people from A to B soon. So maybe we could view this as a quasi-​tram. Because it’s done nothing in the past few months but have its arse parked on Princes Street disrupting traffic.
I apologise if I sound resentful, but it seems everywhere I ever live, the big people in their high places decide to build trams to modernise their cities. As a pedestrian, I resent this: because they disrupt my route. They disrupt the buses’ routes. And they make loud drilling noises when I’m around. All of the above are infuriating.
So, let’s just wait until this pseudo-​tram gets off its arse so that we can give it more stars. Right now it’s just a fat caterpillar, puffing helplessly at its smokeless pipe by the National Gallery.