TOTO is GO – Tap on Tap off on trams will be in effect in two weeks' time
The new tap on tap off service on Edinburgh Trams will begin in two weeks' time on 19 May.
The Flowbird system has now been tested alongside Lothian Buses to ensure it works properly.
Customers will be able to tap on with a contactless device or card using the Platform Validators – the machines at each tram stop. The difference is that the passenger must tap on and then tap off at the end of the journey.
The system has a daily capped rate whether the passenger uses a bus or a tram for their journey. The only requirement is that the same card is used on the day to ensure that the cap comes into effect.
In addition the card or device must only be used for an adult fare. If travelling with children then the tickets must be bought from a vending machine on the platform or using the Bus & Tram app.
In the same way as the contactless payments already accepted in the city by Lothian Buses, the new system calculates the cheapest fare based on the number of journeys made and then debits the card that the passenger used in the early hours of the following morning.
All concession card holders can continue to use them as before.
Sarah Singh, Head of Service Delivery, said: 'We are delighted to be able to share the launch date for this new payment system, two weeks from today.
'The delivery of this project reflects months of hard work from colleagues across the business and Lothian Buses.'
Transport Convener for Edinburgh Council, Councillor Stephen Jenkinson, said, 'Integrating this new ToTo system across both Edinburgh Trams and Lothian Buses is a significant milestone for our public transport network and I'm excited that we're only a couple weeks away from launch. This will allow residents and visitors to travel more efficiently and at the best value with ticket prices automatically capped at the cheapest daily and weekly rate.
'Our excellent public transport services is the most inclusive form of travel; it provides an alternative to car use especially for people on lower incomes or with mobility issues. Our integrated public transport system is something we're very proud of here in Edinburgh – compared with similar sized cities we are an example to be celebrated and followed. Low carbon travel is also a key element of our wider climate ambitions and I'm sure this development will encourage greater use.
'I'd like to thank colleagues at both organisations for their efforts, and as a regular user of both bus and tram, I look forward to testing out the new system myself. I'm proud of the Council's influence in delivering this key step through its ownership status of the operating companies and via direct investment. We're committed to keeping Edinburgh moving and delivering the best possible public transport services for all.'
Further information and FAQs about contactless payment can be found on a dedicated page on the Edinburgh Trams website, here.
Like this:
Like
Related
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Cleaner, greener and absolute reliability': trams make UK comeback
In a sidestreet in central Coventry, a possible vehicle of the future has been making its first public foray: a 60-seat, battery-powered miniature tram. On smooth, almost silent, test runs, its pioneering wheel system allows it to round the corner without slowing – a small bend for this tram but a sharp turning point for tramkind. The embryonic Coventry very light rail (CVLR) is riding a bigger wave; suddenly, trams are go again. British cities trail Europe but once led the way, before retiring the hundreds of street trams that once flowered under horse and steam power. And although the likes of Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham re-established tram networks, the number of modern revivals were almost matched by the list of cancelled projects, with schemes for Liverpool, Bristol, central London and Leeds dropped. But now the dreams are back – and funded. In the run-up to next week's spending review, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, confirmed £15bn for cities to develop urban transport. That money will be spent partly on new tram lines in the West Midlands and Greater Manchester, as well as developing plans for a possible tram line from Bristol to Bath. Notably, it includes £2.1bn for the biggest city in Europe without a fixed transit system – Leeds. For the West Yorkshire mayor, who has long campaigned to get the city its tram, the announcement was critical. 'This gives us absolute certainty and security that we will have spades in the ground by 2028,' Tracy Brabin says. While Brabin has championed enhanced bus routes and services, two tram lines – one running from Leeds to Bradford – will be the backbone of an integrated mass transit system. 'There is a reason why European cities have trams,' Brabin says. 'They can carry three times as many people. They are often segregated, so they are reliable. And you can time your journey. It's absolute reliability: you go to the tram stop, and the tram is there in a few minutes. It's also cleaner and greener.' Brabin says the Leeds-Bradford line will benefit 675,000 people. 'That's massive – not just for people on the line, but to also unlock areas that have really struggled. The tram connectivity will absolutely unlock housing and development,' she says. Perhaps the tram, or light rail, has suffered as neither fish nor fowl: never boasting the speed of a train or the solidity of a railway station for the passenger; nor, for the public purse and politicians, the lower infrastructure investment and higher flexibility of a bus network. Yet this halfway house has multiple benefits – and modern innovations may provide the answer. So why don't more people want them? David Andrews, the chair of the campaign group Tram Forward, says: 'The cost is one thing but mainly the disruption. People don't want trams because they worry about the disruption, and it's true that in Edinburgh it went on for years. But if you can just lay it on the surface, you can do it overnight.' Battery-operated trams are starting to appear around the world, from Florence in Italy to Doha in Qatar, potentially cheaper than installing and maintaining an overhead wire network, although Andrews says that concerns that the lines are unsightly can be overblown: 'In Vienna, you've got the cables pinned to the side of the Grand Opera House and people don't notice them.' The bigger element of the cost and disruption of laying a tram network is what lies beneath the road: the pipelines for gas, electricity, telecoms and water. Traditionally, for a heavier tram, installing rails has meant digging down several feet and having to divert utilities. It is a slow and costly process that helped push the price of building Edinburgh's 11-mile tram line to more than £1bn, and drove residents and businesses to distraction over years of construction delays affecting the heart of the city. Engineers now believe much of that can be avoided, by laying concrete slabs with embedded rails over the roads: excavating only 300mm from the surface and leaving the pipes in place. The lightest footprint yet may be found in Coventry, where the public can try out a local innovation bringing its automotive tradition and new battery developments into what it terms Very Light Rail. Using a smaller, composite vehicle – carrying about 60 people but weighing less than half the tonnage of a normal tram – the CVLR team says the cost of installing a track can be halved, down to about £10m a kilometre from typically £25m (costs have reached £100m a kilometre on some projects). Pioneering bogies – the wheel-axle system underneath a tram or train – allow the vehicle to make much tighter turns, permitting routes through narrower city streets. Riding the prototype, the city councillor, Jim O'Boyle, says: 'The vehicle itself can go around 15-metre radii. But the alchemy is the track beneath.' The concrete slabs and rails were installed with a fraction of the disruption of a traditional tram line. The 220-metre test track here was laid within weeks – not much more disruptive than resurfacing a road, the engineers claim. Running on battery, there are no overhead wires. Yet for a tram this size, why not simply run a bus? Nicola Small, the CVLR programme director, says: 'It's permanent infrastructure. People can see that the tracks have been laid and that it's here to stay. They know where the route's going because they can see it and that gives them confidence – and it also gives businesses confidence to invest in the area, because they know that there's going to be that connectivity.' Intriguingly, research shows that while car drivers avoid buses, there is no such stigma about the tram. Small says: 'From looking at statistics, most bus users are non-car owners, so they are using the bus because they have to. Whereas when you look at people who travel by train and tram, many of them have left a car at home so they are making a choice.' The other saving that the CVLR scheme could offer is through autonomy – or driverless vehicles, minimising staffing costs and allowing more trams to run on fixed routes. The city hopes to license the technology and produce the vehicles, joining the West Midlands' automotive legacy with plans for a gigafactory, as well as build a better transport network for Coventry. The publicly funded pilot project is being delivered by a consortium of partners, including local industry and academia. The tram will run at a maximum of 19-25mph (30-40km/h) – though O'Boyle claims to have got it up to 37mph when allowed to drive on another test track. For now, the vehicle of the future is doing little more than 12mph on its brief foray down Greyfriars Road. A couple of seconds around the corner, the brakes are applied and we are at the end of the track. And the 50-second ride is over? O'Boyle shakes his head: 'The ride is only just beginning.'
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- The Herald Scotland
Regeneration plan for Seafield 'unrealistic' landowners say
The authority's latest 10-year development plan, running through to 2032, designates the 40-hectare area as a 'potential housing site' and a masterplan has now been drawn up. Alongside new properties, a school, GP surgery, shops and cafes, it shows a new waterfront park and promenade to connect with the one at Portobello. Hundreds of new affordable homes at Seafield will 'help address the city's housing emergency' amid a record 5,000 homeless households in the capital, council planning convener James Dalgleish said last year. Read more from our new investigation, The Future of Edinburgh: However the ambitious project is unlikely to come to fruition for decades yet, largely due to a number of hurdles. Chief among them is landowners unwilling to sell up. The relocation of Lothian Buses' Marine Depot, at the east of the site, also poses a significant challenge. 'They don't necessarily want to move' Iain Whyte, the Conservative councillor for Craigentinny-Duddingston, which includes Seafield, told The Herald: 'The biggest blocker, frankly, to anything happening there is the landowners of a significant chunk of it have tenants in place, a steady income, that suits their financial and business model and they don't want to change that. 'When they speak, they speak on behalf of some of the others that are there as well and I think that means this, if it's a plan that's going to work, you're probably talking 20 years before you see anything significantly change there. 'I just think the biggest problem the council has got is that it allocated that site for nearly 3,000 houses in its plan for the city, the 2030 City Plan for development, to try and find the housing numbers that are needed for the growing population. 'Doing things like that when there's no prospect of it being developed within the timescales they're talking about gives you an indication of why we're not meeting the housing numbers needed — and is the real reason, if any, why they're having to declare a housing emergency.' He added: 'I don't know if anyone's ever asked Lothian Buses where they think they're going to move their depot to. Because I don't think it's easy for them. It's fine for the council to sit there and say 'oh well, car showrooms aren't a very good use of the land' but there's an awful lot more in there and they don't necessarily want to move.' 'Their land should not be considered for housing' Council documents reveal some developers hold concerns about 'timescales and the difficulty of delivering a masterplan when such a small area of the plan is actually capable of coming forward in the short/medium term'. They also show that Royal London, which owns Seafield Industrial Estate covering a large part of the proposed development site, 'do not support proposals for residential development on their site'. In their response to a consultation on City Plan 2030, an agent representing the pensions and investment giant warned that the site 'does not present a realistic option for residential development'. They said: 'The owner [...] has no intention of releasing the land for housing use over the Plan period and their land holding should not be considered for residential or urban area housing led mixed use.' The response went on to say Royal London was not approached by the council prior to the land being identified for consideration for redevelopment. 'The identification of their land holding for this purpose is considered to be inappropriate,' it said. Proposed redevelopment site at Seafield (Image: City of Edinburgh Council) The estate, consisting of 18 fully let industrial units, has been under the company's ownership for over 25 years, is 'one of the larger complete industrial holdings' within their property fund. The agent said 'significant capital investment' has been directed into the industrial units in recent years including 'acquisition of adjacent holdings, replacement roofs, cladding renewal, unit subdivision and road/service yard replacement ensuring the accommodation is fit for modern requirements'. They added: 'Tenants undertake a range of business operations comprising urban industry, trades, distribution and local services which support their local market, of which a significant proportion comprises the established urban area of north east Edinburgh. 'The removal of an established employment area against a backdrop of limited industrial supply and constrained demand will only serve to exacerbate poverty rates in the local area.' Royal London was contacted for comment. Read more from The Future of Edinburgh series: Councillor Whyte compared the plan to proposals for the local authority's ongoing regeneration of Granton Waterfront 'which we were talking about developing 30 years ago and is only now starting to come to fruition'. He said: 'I think this will take a very long time indeed.' Asked about the prospect of the council using Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) in a bid to accelerate work, he said: 'That would be incredibly expensive and the council doesn't have much money. 'We're in the top five most indebted councils in the UK, so would it make sense to go further into debt and have the interest payments to CPO land that private individuals and companies are making best use of in the market at the moment?' However, he added it was 'useful to have a masterplan so you don't get piecemeal development along there'. 'Fabulous opportunity' Cathy Maclean from Action Porty, the community group behind Scotland's first ever urban community land buy out in Portobello, agreed it would be 'quite a while before things get going' as 'a lot of the people who own those sites don't want to sell and have no plans to sell'. But she stressed the site presented a 'fabulous opportunity' as there were so few capital cities with 'a brownfield site right on the beach to develop". Seafield is currently mostly car showrooms and industrial units (Image: Google) She said more housing was badly needed and 'so much' had been built in Portobello in recent years 'with a dramatic loss of amenities at the same'. This led Action Porty to successfully complete a community buyout of Portobello Old Parish Church after the Church of Scotland announced its intention to sell the property. It reopened as Bellfield, a community centre, in 2018. Maclean said if the Seafield redevelopment ever goes ahead it would be 'welcome from Portobello as a sort of sister community, rather than particularly part of it,' however added: 'In practice it will become a part of Portobello because that's the way people are, they enjoy walking along the Prom. 'At some point it's all going to join up between Leith and right the way along Seahaven.' 'There has to be continuity between the two areas' While Seafield's regeneration is clearly still a long-way off, some details in the masterplan are already raising eyebrows. The council's visualisation of what the area could look like one day shows people enjoying the would-be promenade and leafy waterfront park. 'If you look at it it looks amazing,' said Kirsty Pattison, chair of Craigentinny and Meadowbank Community Council, whose boundary includes Seafield, 'but if you dig into the details and look at what the masterplanning is and the height of the buildings proposed, it doesn't correlate with that picture at all.' A visualisation of the council's Seafield masterplan (Image: City of Edinburgh Council) She said in terms of the height of the buildings there is 'tension between what it's supposed to look like and what is actually being proposed'. 'What they're proposing, from the top of the prom if you're looking south-east it gives you expansive views of the beach and you can see Joppa. Some of that might be lost, so it's important to preserve this place.' Ensuring the new neighbourhood is well connected with adjacent communities will be crucial, Ms Pattison said. 'We want to make sure there's improved landscape connections between Craigentinny and Seafield, because Seafield is part of our district. 'There has to be continuity between the two areas so we can preserve popular beach walks. 'There's a beach walk that connects Craigentinny to the western part of the beach and we want that put into the masterplan to make sure it's preserved. That is vital. People use it all the time - it's such a popular connection.' 'There's also issues around rising sea levels, it's all fine and well saying we're going to redevelop Seafield - but what are we going to put in place for flooding?' Ms MacLean similarly raised concerns over the impact of climate change in the future. 'I don't think you can say any flood defences are going to be effective when you don't know what's coming,' she said. 'A lot of the standards these environmental consultants look at are based on what used to be called once in every 200 year chance of flooding. That's changed quite dramatically. Nobody really knows, if the truth be told.' Edinburgh Council said the risk of coastal flooding 'is increasing due to rising sea levels and coastal erosion caused by climate change,' adding: 'This is a key consideration in the redevelopment of Seafield.' Since initial engagement about the plans in 2023 'we have needed to take additional time to engage with a range of stakeholders,' it said. 'This is to ensure that places are developed along the coastline that are resilient in the face of climate change impacts'. Read more: Now, the authority is preparing a Coastal Change Adaptation Plan and said it will 'update the draft masterplan in line with the recommendations'. The 'Seafield stench' One of the biggest constraints historically associated with making the area residential has been the 'Seafield stench' from the waste water treatment plant to the west - the largest of its kind in Scotland. Odours emitting from the works are a longstanding issue. Between 2022 and 2024 Scottish Water and Veolia invested over £10 million to add additional capacity and address concerns around the smells. However, the council said last year the issue 'has not been fully resolved at this time'. It said: 'The Council, along with SEPA, carry out ongoing monitoring of odours relating to the Works. However, the council does not have the ability to force all odours to be stopped. 'Scottish Water has committed to developing a new facility to replace the Seafield facility after 2030. This should be considered alongside the timescales of the masterplan as it is likely to reduce the impact of odours around the facility. 'Odours relating to the Works are not a significant issue for the bulk of the masterplan area. However, if odours persist, this is likely to shape how development of the northernmost part of the area comes forward.'
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- The Herald Scotland
What is West Town? How 'UK's biggest urban extension' will take shape
It could see a major difference to the capital and offers a hint at what the city could look like in the future. Speaking to The Herald, Edinburgh Council chief executive Paul Lawrence said: "West Edinburgh is the largest potential urban extension in the growth, employment growth in West Edinburgh which is huge; we gave planning permission to more than 11,000 homes in the last three months of last year." But what is West Town and where exactly is it? What has been approved already? It is hoped the proposals will create a mixed-use development as part of a homes-led neighbourhood that will provide employment, commercial and community amenities and facilities required for a 20-minute neighbourhood. It has been highlighted as an essential part of the vision for west Edinburgh to become a 'vibrant, high-density mixed-use extension to the city with a focus on place-making, sustainability, connectivity and biodiversity.' In April 2022, a £500 million housing development in Edinburgh was given final approval by the Scottish Government. It included 1,350 new homes – of which there would be 330 affordable homes – as well as a primary school, nursery and shops. It had originally been approved by the council in 2016 but was called in for review by MSPs who then approved it a lot further down the line. It was followed by a total of 10,000 new homes being approved in two separate developments in December last year. Read More The Herald revealed that plans for the new town had been approved for 7,000 new houses as well as two schools on a site just south of the Edinburgh Airport. The masterplan, which also includes a doctor's surgery, offices, hotels, shops, pubs and restaurants, has been designed around the council's '20-minute neighbourhood' vision to have all local amenities within walking distance. It was a major milestone for the development of west Edinburgh where thousands of additional new homes are set to be delivered over the next decade through separate developments. Within weeks, another development of 3,000 homes was approved and would be constructed on a 29-hectare site that includes a former runway for the airport. 'Edinburgh Elements' will also include a school, shops, office space, active travel routes and a green urban park. Location The plans for West Town are, unsurprisingly, in the west of Edinburgh and is located on 205 acres between Ingliston Park & Ride and the Gogar Roundabout. Proposals already approved near Edinburgh Airport include sites near Cammo, East Craigs and South Gyle. Transport provision will focus on a new tram stop in the centre of the development linked to the Edinburgh Tram route running directly through the site, together with an integrated bus service.
