What I learned from 15 years of tramworks on my Leith street

I live on the narrowest section of the tram route. The dates of the digs and closures in our part of Leith are mostly vague or forgotten but it pretty much began when we moved in, six weeks after the birth of our first child. For some reason we were so oblivious and lacking in due diligence that we were unaware that the road was about to become a dig site.
For the next 15 years, we would live with the digs, the works cancellation, the threat of its revival, more works and then finally their completion and the delivery to us of a tram route, which, I must confess, I do now enjoy. Occasionally, since it stops just done the road, I call it 'my tram'.
The phases of the works blur into one another, alongside the passage of my children from baby, to toddler, primary school scooter-rider, to teen, but the memory of living in a build site throughout significant sections of their childhood is strong. In a note in a diary I kept from around the birth of my son Max, I observe that I am feeling some stress due to the noise of the tram dig.
Reports suggest that the first work to divert utility pipes and cables in Leith began in March 2007, starting on Constitution Street, though I'm not sure I noticed. The route was finally opened in June 2023.
There were highs over those 15 years; even some entertainment. At various points along the way, sections were shut to traffic, without much action in terms of works, and my kids scootered across the tarmac as if they were living in an open streets area.
There was the coming and going of skeletons, revealed in the dirt at the opposite side of the road, their dark sockets staring out from the depths of time - somewhere round about the plague era of the 15th century - as I would walk my children to school. Later, forensic scientists would recreate the faces of these haunting grave dwellers. One of them even appeared, like some local celebrity, in an episode of Digging for Britain.
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When our part of the route was cancelled, in 2010, it came as a relief, but also a disappointment. All that digging, all that noise and fuss, the impact on businesses, and we weren't even going to get any tram joy.
But the noise lingered. The road surface was poor because we had been left with a temporary fix after the tram work utility access. Traffic was noisier; the buildings would shake as countless buses and trucks passed down our street.
The tram route, on Leith Walk, is now viewed as a success (Image: Gordon terris/Herald&Times)
But, almost a decade later, in March 2019, councillors voted to extend trams to Newhaven and the start of the second works arrived back on our street in November of that year.
It was just four months before a pandemic and a lockdown would see them paused and lives, and local businesses thrown into disarray once more. There was talk of cancelling (again!) but a report found the financial impact of doing so would be greater than allowing it to continue, so the works went on.
What that has left me with is the strong feeling that if you are going to dig up a road, you only want to have to do it once, and you should get everything possible done at that point. If we are moving utilities for a tram track in the coming decade, shouldn't we also be considering whether it's possible to lay the pipes for district heating or even ground source boreholes?
A view of Vicky Allan's street, February 2022 (Image: Vicky Allan)
My husband was on the local community council so kept abreast of tram matters more than I did. One of the issues for us was concern over the fact that we were to be on the narrowest section of the route, so tight that instead of placing, the wires were held up by other cables attached to our building. There was talk of there only being a single track, for which many were advocating, or even an alternative route - none of this happened.
A challenge at times, in a works that was always shifting, was trying to find the best route to our home, or from one side of the street to the other, past the fences that one shop owner described as 'like the Berlin Wall'. Almost as a plus, alarms were not necessary. The dawn chorus of the works could begin at 7am on a weekday, and 8am on a Saturday.
Up on Leith Walk some of the businesses were hit hard. Others seemed determined to stay on the bright side, like Leandro Crolla, of the Vittoria Group, in an Edinburgh Evening News video, who said: 'I'm very positive towards the future. I do think Leith Walk will brighten up. I think the street will look more cosmopolitan. It will look more welcoming. I'm one of these people who think we're taking a hit now for a year or two years. But next 15-20-30 years we'll get the benefits, if it goes ahead.'
Then, finally, it was done. That was 15 years of a tram coming and then not coming, of building and then not building, of roads dug up, the dead peering out through the dark sockets of soil-smeared skulls, HARAS fencing that divided us, neighbour from neighbour, one side of the street from the other, the rattle and vibration of diggers and, and then the ground sealing up again to carry us up in a gleaming pod into the city and what felt like a modern green age.
Now the street is quiet, possibly some think too quiet. Perhaps, you only notice the peace when you've lived through the noise. The tram feels fluid and calm, its rhythmic passing over our window makes little impact on my day, save for the slight buzz it makes that sounds like one of my alerts on my mobile phone, a sound my brain is looking out for. It's nothing like the rattle of trucks that used to pass our door when we first moved in.
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Yes, we are tram converts. But, what would I say to others who might find the latest T-Rex of a proposed tram route, 1b passing their door? Was it worth it?
If I was right back there in the middle of the dig again, I would think not – but the memory is fading and all I see now is a tram that stops at the end of my street and takes me where I want to go.
But if I had a business on the line I might feel differently. Karen Greig, who runs Destined for Home, a gift shop further down my street, has a warning for businesses who may be on the new tramline.
'We got assistance. But did we get enough? In hindsight I would say a year after they should have given us another bit of help because it's not bringing the people that they said. Say they gave us three lots of help, one of them or a fourth one should have been after the tram release.
'The amount of advertising I've done and it's not making an iota of difference. But they could have paid for it with assistance for businesses. The business has not come back. The street is lovely and clean, with beautiful Caithness paving, but I'm not getting the business.'
Businesses in the area have had to battle through a lot in the last six years. When Leith Walk greengrocer, Tattie Shaws, closed down in October 2023, the owner, James Welby, cited a combination of factors, including the impact of the tram works, Brexit, and a decline in footfall due to the pandemic, as reasons.
Some people did experience real damage to their homes, or their livelihoods.
I always find it wearyingly funny when the City of Edinburgh Council describes the extension of the trams to Newhaven as a success, treating it like an entirely separate project from the one that came before, as if all that digging, when my kids were babies, didn't happen.
Success wasn't what the tramworks T-Rex felt like to live through – even if getting on a tram, right now, does feel like a glide into modernity and, yes, success.

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