Edinburgh City Council's decision to go ahead with a shortened version of the tram route at an additional cost of £273 million flies in the face of reality, and has produced the worst of all options ("Council votes to go ahead with tram project", The Herald, July 1).

I sincerely hope the SNP Government will refuse to hand over another penny of Scottish taxpayers' money to the council to fund the ill-conceived and unwanted trams project, which should have been abandoned four years ago.

I also hope the citizens of Edinburgh will never forget the current fiasco is the result of petty political posturing. In 2007 the new minority SNP Government tried to cancel the trams contract, but was outvoted by an unholy alliance of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MSPs, determined to flex their voting muscles and put these upstart Nationalists in their place. They should all hang their heads in shame. The problems have been made worse by poor drafting of the original contracts, continuing acrimonious disputes and hopelessly inefficient management and cost control.

The finance director advised councillors in all seriousness that the vast extra cost could be partly financed by the trams making an annual profit of £2 million – a highly optimistic forecast – and that selling 10 of the now unwanted trams might raise £25m. These together would pay off the debt in just 124 years.

Alternatively, he said the funding gap could be plugged by Edinburgh council tax increasing by well over 100%. The remaining option is for government help with capital grants and/or loans, with all the financing charges and repayment costs putting a huge burden on city ratepayers for many years.

The council also refused to take the democratic step of asking Edinburgh citizens what they wanted to do.

I think they would have got a pretty clear answer, I have yet to meet a single person from Edinburgh who is in favour of the scheme, and their anger and frustration are understandable. Even we Glaswegians feel sorry for them.

Edinburgh City Council should have heeded the advice, never more appropriate: "When you are in a hole, stop digging."

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court,

Glasgow.

So the tram project is to be completed at an estimated cost of £773m – note the word "estimated".

That sounds ominous in the light of previous forecasts. It will run from St Andrews Square to the airport, roughly seven miles.

The Chinese have just opened an eight-lane bridge at Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay, stretching 26 miles across the sea, the longest sea bridge in the world. It cost £1.4 billion, well under twice the estimated tram cost. It was completed in four years.

I wonder what conclusions we can draw from this?

Barry Laurie,

56 Palmerston Place,

Edinburgh.

When I visited my daughter in Nancy in France a few years ago I noticed that the trams effectively became trolley buses once they had left the city centre. The overhead lines remained but the rails disappeared. I have also used excellent modern trolley services in Budapest and Vancouver in the last few years and wondered why Edinburgh City Council embarked on such a costly scheme involving the removal or repositioning of underground pipes and cables.

The council might save us all a lot of money and perhaps rescue its reputation by considering a scheme which involves both trolley and tram services: all future development outwith the existing tramlines could be confined to overhead lines only without having to excavate the roads.

Perhaps it should consult its counterparts in Nancy to see how they achieved it.

Robert Jenkins,

13 St Leonard's Road, East Kilbride.

It is staggering that a minority of Liberal Democrats could manage to force through a proposal to continue the ill-fated trams project in spite of opposition from the other parties, except the Greens.

What has happened to democracy in Edinburgh?

If we look at the realities of continuing the project, it will mean a massive further injection of more than £200m from somewhere, or the city will have to borrow the sum required. With interest rates low this could just be sustainable, but would mean severe cutbacks in many other sectors, although when interest rates rise this will effectively bankrupt the city.

Added to this, the devastating effect the trams will have on Lothian Buses will mean Edinburgh will end up with a second-rate public transport system instead of the highly efficient bus service we have at the moment. The ongoing subsidy from the buses to keep the single tram line running will cripple the bus company.

One hopes the Scottish Government does not cave in to pressure from Edinburgh City Council and give it more money to squander; there is no guarantee that £200m-plus will be the final bill as the most challenging engineering problems lie ahead. For instance, it is understood that there are something like 300 fibre optic cables under Shandwick Place alone, which will need exceptionally careful treatment – otherwise tram works could bring down the banks and cripple operations.

Meanwhile, the pollution time bomb has been conveniently kicked into touch. Even the Greens thought the trams would help to avoid fines from the European Commission, but the fines will come because of the excessive pollution that has been created by the tram traffic diversions through residential areas. Council chief executive Sue Bruce has talked about CO2 but what about the problems with nitrogen dioxide and particulates?

All of this will come back to haunt the city, and councillors who voted for the tram to continue beyond Haymarket, for years to come as legal actions start to appear. This was a shameful decision based on misleading and inadequate evidence which the city executives have carefully manipulated to confuse and mislead.

Allan Alstead,

49 Moray Place,

Edinburgh.