Editorial – South Wales Evening Post – 25 October 2006
Swansea Council insists on calling them Street Cars.
To the rest of us they are bendy buses. The leader of the Labour opposition at County Hall says they are trams in disguise. Whatever you call them, they are attracting controversy.
They could hardly do otherwise when half of the city centre is torn up to accommodate them. And now it is claimed all the pain will result in precious little gain.
Labour, looking back at its own feasibility studies for a city tram system, says the new scheme is sure to fail financially. It also raises questions about the city’s physical ability to handle the leviathans of the road.
Unsurprisingly, the council insists the scheme will prove to be a success. By which, w presume, it means the buses will encourage a lot more people living along the route from Morriston to Mumbles to travel by pubic transport, thereby reducing the number of cars on these roads.
Of course, we hope that it is correct, and that the bendy buses go on to play a full role in a sustainable and integrated city transport system.
And that is where we echo some of Labour’s concerns about this one scheme attracting a disproportionate amount of funding, at the expense of other parts of the system.
