PRINCES Street will be shut to traffic for the first half of next year as part of the second phase of Edinburgh's tram works, it was announced yesterday.
The city's main thoroughfare will be closed between January and July while tram tracks are laid along the centre of it.
The work will form part of the construction phase of the £512 million Edinburgh Airport to Newhaven scheme, which is due to op
en in 2011. This follows the diversion of pipes and cables along the tram route, which is under way at Haymarket.
Princes Street is expected to be the only major road to be completely closed to traffic during construction work. Leith Walk, by contrast, is being closed one carriageway at a time.
Tramline construction is due to start in November, after the first steel rails arrive by sea at Leith Docks next month.
The work programme, which is due to be announced by tram developers TIE shortly, is expected to start with track-laying on the guided busway parallel to the main Edinburgh-Glasgow railway line, east of Edinburgh Park station.
During the Princes Street work, which will be completed in time for the Edinburgh Festival, the road will stay open for pedestrians. It will include the closure of the Mound junction for a time. That junction will also close from Monday for pipes and cable diversion work.
Willie Gallagher, TIE's chairman, announced the details at a transport conference in Glasgow yesterday.
He also urged backing for further stages of the tram network, including part of a loop to Granton, and a third line to the south-east of the city.
Mr Gallagher said a second phase of the network, branching off at Roseburn to Granton, would cost £87 million, much of which has still to be found.
However, he said that not completing it at the same time as the current first phase of the scheme would increase costs.
Mr Gallagher also said freight-carrying trams were being considered. These could be used to remove debris from the demolition of the St James Shopping Centre at the east end of Princes Street in 2011-12. A trial of carrying bicycles on trams was also being considered, he said.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Government's Transport Scotland agency said work was progressing on a tram-train interchange at Gogar, which will replace a previously planned rail link to Edinburgh Airport.
Bill Reeve, its director of rail delivery, said passengers "would not have to walk far" when changing from trains to trams to get to and from the airport.
• The threatened axing of the last public transport link to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and Dean Gallery in Edinburgh was averted when the city council yesterday stepped in to keep a bus route going. The No13 service will be retained until March thanks to a £86,540 grant agreed by councillors.
The full article contains 494 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
