AT LEAST £50m of taxpayers' cash has been poured into failed transport schemes and studies north of the Border since Labour came to power in 1997.
And to make matters worse for travellers stranded in traffic jams or waiting on delayed trains, key journey times have continued to get worse rather than better over the same period.
Independent transport experts have admitted despair at the scal
e of Scotland's high-cost 'consultation culture', which promised to cut journey times and introduce new services but has delivered little.
When Labour came to power, they promised to put right years of Tory under-investment in the nation's transport infrastructure and, in particular, to offer travellers realistic alternatives to the car.
But an investigation by this newspaper has put the cost of Scottish transport studies, consultations and projects since 1997 at £50m, and it is likely to rise much higher.
Key journeys such as Edinburgh-Glasgow on the M8 and by rail have continued to get longer, going from 50 to 63 minutes by road and 42 to 48 minutes by train since the early 1980s.
Across the rest of Scotland, there has been also little or no progress in cutting average travel times. A rail journey from Edinburgh to Inverness takes three hours and 40 minutes, and Glasgow to Aberdeen is typically two and a half hours. Both times are unchanged since the early 1980s.
One of the most recent - and controversial - attempts to spend money on a solution to gridlock was the abortive plan by Edinburgh City Council for a congestion charging scheme in the notoriously busy capital. Studies and preparatory planning for the scheme cost £9m of public cash, but voters rejected it in a referendum.
In 2001, the council decided to scrap its highly contentious City of Edinburgh Rapid Transit guided busway scheme, after spending £12m in planning.
Ministers' delays have also squandered cash. In 1997 the government put plans to upgrade the infamously slow-moving A8000 on hold.
The six-year preparations for the access to the Forth Road Bridge had already cost an estimated £600,000 in planning and consultants' fees, according to civil service sources.
At that time, the official estimate for the project was £15m.
Earlier this year, ministers finally gave the go-ahead for the same scheme and it is now out to tender. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the bill has soared to £35m, wasting £20m of public money.
The 2003 Central Scotland Transport Corridor Studies proposed several improvements to road and rail services around Glasgow and the west of Scotland. The three-year investigation included no fewer than four detailed rail route studies and is estimated by insiders to have cost at least £2m. But while recommendations for roads have mostly been acted on, many proposals for better rail services have so far come to nothing.
The study proposed more frequent services between Glasgow and Carfin and Holytown, but ministers decided on another review. Proposals for a new half-hourly service between Motherwell and Stirling have failed to be implemented. Detailed plans for a new park and ride scheme at Glasgow Airport were also rejected.
In Edinburgh, a £100,000 study into a proposed new South Suburban Line has so far led to no concrete results.
Launched in 1997, the Campbeltown-Ballycastle ferry service cost £3.5m of taxpayers' money in a bid to boost the Kintyre economy - only for it to be abandoned in 2000.
The bill for aborted and bungled transport schemes is set to rise further.
In 1999, Sarah Boyack, the then Scottish transport minister, put the planned £250m M74 motorway extension in Glasgow on hold, despite it having already received planning permission. The furore led a year later to a U-turn and go-ahead in principle. Plagued by delays, the road was eventually given the full nod in 2004 and has now been delayed by a legal challenge. The cost now stands at an estimated £375m to £500m.
Colin Howden, director of transport analysts Transform Scotland, said: "There is obviously a place for reviews and studies, but it is disappointing so little has come from so many of them. The Edinburgh South Suburban line is a special disappointment: it is an eminently sensible, well-researched scheme and yet nothing has happened."
Ken Sutherland, chief researcher for Rail Futures Scotland, said: "Our railways are awash with a plethora of studies, but there has been a paralysis of action which has stopped the railways being used for the public good."
A spokesman for the Institution of Civil Engineers in Scotland said: "It's often too easy for governments to opt for yet another review rather than bite the bullet and get the projects done. There has been a lack of political will."
No one from the Scottish Executive was available for comment.
Planning blamed for slowdown TRANSPORT lobbyists believe Britain's complex, slow-moving planning process is holding up many improvements.
Large planning applications regularly take years and can cost millions in lawyers' and consultants' fees in order to argue at hearings and inquiries.
Road and rail planners look to the Continent with envy at the relatively simple planning rules, such as those in France, which are seen as effectively allowing the authorities to decide where lines and tarmac should go and impose them with only a minimum of consultation.
Engineers also react with concern to proposals for a "third party" right of appeal which would give greater rights for objectors to block schemes.
But environmental groups argue that allowing more rights for objectors will help stop poorly thought-out schemes and that the system's failing is not that it allows too many views to be expressed but that the inquiries themselves are too cumbersome and lengthy.
Britain's own Integrated Transport Commission recently concluded gloomily that the nation's transport planning system added years to the time needed to finish projects and that it made companies reluctant to risk money because it would take so long to get any return for their cash.
The full article contains 1015 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
