Unity essential for revived trams says transport boss

Feb 19 2008 by David Bartlett, Liverpool Daily Post

MERSEYSIDE local authorities were warned that “everyone needs to get on board” if trams are to become a reality.

It came as the region’s passenger transport authority voted to authorise for all “necessary and appropriate steps to be taken to revive the scheme in partnership with the district councils”.

The passenger authority also considered last month’s Audit Commission’s report which criticised how £70m was spent on the aborted scheme.

Merseytravel chief executive Neil Scales said: “If the Merseytram project does move ahead we have to have everybody on board – politically and at officer level.”

Merseytram was scrapped in November, 2005, after then Transport Secretary Alistair Darling refused to hand over the £170m the Government had committed to Line One between Liverpool city centre and Kirkby.

The scheme remains one of Merseytravel’s top priorities, and is part of the Local Transport Plan which expires in 2011. Line One to Kirkby has planning permission until February, 2010.

The Daily Post understands that, if a new financing package could be put together, work could start as early as next year with a projected building time of around 18 months.

Work has already started in building up a revised business case.

Last night Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman said: “I am pleased this is being done, and I hope that it’s a genuinely joint approach from the Merseyside authorities and they are going to be consistent in this approach.

“I don’t think we should accept that Liverpool is going to be the only modern European city that’s not going to have a light rail system.

“A lot of the essential work was done before. Last time there was some prevarication among local authorities, they were not speaking with one voice and that encouraged officials in the Department for Transport that never wanted it to happen. Ruth Kelly [Transport Secretary] was interested but she did make it clear the scheme had to come from Merseyside as a whole.”

She pledged to lobby Ms Kelly in future once more parts of the revised scheme are firmed up.

Cllr Peter Millea, leader of the Liberal Democrats on Merseytravel and executive member of Liverpool City Council, said: “We are entirely supportive of the trams. We are all signed up in Liverpool – we have been from day one. We still support the tram, we still want Line One to go ahead.”

The cost benefit ratio of the scheme is now understood to stand at 2:1 (£2 of benefit for each pound spent), which was better than when it was first proposed in 2004.

The main factor in this is Everton FC’s plans to move to Kirkby.

Yesterday the Daily Post revealed how Keolis, the company that would operate the trams, said it was firmly behind reviving the scheme.

davidbartlett