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It's all well and good to start wanting the latest whizz-bang technology but to take advantage of it you need a decent underlying infrastructure.

If you drive from Edin-Glasgow-Portsmouth on the UK motorway network the 3rd world state of the Scottish end is stark compared to the 3 lane system which starts south of Glasgow and continues uninterrupted to the other end of the country.
Meanwhile, unwanted local projects like the half-a-billion Edinburgh tram folly get pushed as the way forward, but the Edinburgh bus system was already one of the best in the entire country.
So the tram system consumes a vast chunk of the transport budget while the two lane donkey track between Edinburgh and Glasgow is left to rot because it's "not trendy".

Meanwhile, energy-hungry systems like the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖi-player, which consume vast amounts of energy for the service they provide get plugged as "good".
If technology is "good" and "efficient" then it should be functioning well on no more than one MB a second, not 20MB a second, lol.
A fascination with the internet equivalent of 6litre V8 gas guzzlers instead of 1 litre runabouts is natural, but surely not the smartest way forward, especially since energy efficiency will become critical over the following decades.

This is a transport issue.

Whether it is traffic on the new Forth road bridge, passengers on the tram in Edinburgh or information speeding (or otherwise) across the internet.

Traffic on the Forth road bridge, new or otherwise, is powered by oil.

Edinburgh's tram system and the internet is powered by electricity.

World crude oil production peaked in May 2005, has been on a bumpy production plateau ever since, and will soon enter relentless decline.

Renewable electricity generation is on the up in Scotland and set to expand further.

It would seem prudent to invest in systems that make use of the expanding energy source rather than the one about to enter contraction.

That means electrification of transport (Edinburgh trams, electric rail etc) and investment in electronic communication technology.

Building a new Forth road crossing may be hugely popular - but not useful for very long.

Transport is ALL going to be powered by electricity eventually, including road transport.

Hydrogen, which emits a pollutant called water will very probably be the fuelling system used, although battery technology just keeps getting better.

As far as half-a-billion pounds spent on a tram is concerned:

If that money had been put into a big pot and used to subsidise the Edinburgh bus service, a pound for a day ticket for example, a huge chunk of Edinburghs population would have chucked their cars away.

Instead, we now have a tram system which will probably never even be completed, and if it ever does run it's unlikely to ever make a profit.
A tram is like a train, it costs a fortune to run.
The brutal reality is that the current price of train tickets, even though there are government subsidies to help defray various railway costs, is becoming astronomical.

Ady #1 - Doesn't the M74 drop to 2 lanes just after Motherwell for about 30 miles? Having driven (due to traffic volumes) in low gear on one occasion all the way from Thelwell Viaduct (M6) to Great Barr Interchange (M6/M5) means that even the Motorway system in England can be slower than Highland A roads. I can also give plenty examples of very poor main trunk roads in England as well.

Douglas - you assume that the government should be involved. Look at the antiquated mess of mechanical exchanges that the old nationalised post office left behind.

If government is involved it will be far too slow. Technology moves faster than Whitehall or Holyrood will. Getting real broadband to remote areas by any land line is always going to be expensive and I suspect 3G (or better) mobile broadband is the only potential way forward.

I got 4 of us down and back from the south coast for 160 quid, and it's not really a very efficient car.
The same return train journey, 2 adults 2 kids, costs 320 today...and then when you get there you've got additional transport costs/hassle.

The cheapest most flexible most convenient system by miles, is the car.

And from looking at the gigantic car park for the Scottish Executive at Ocean terminal, stuffed with row upon row of cars, I'm not the only person who thinks that way.

Broadband, I wish!!! From the upstairs bedroom window I can see the sprawls of Glasgow and just what sort of broadband speed comes into our house? 0.25mps or if you like paint drys quicker! No-one is remotely interested e.g. Providers BT / Talk Talk etc as I have long line issues. And even after taking it up direct with NO 10 aka former PM, still nothing but silence. Don't even talk about Mobile Broadband (Expensive Option) unless I'm sitting in the loft, the signal fails. Crikey my house is on a reasonble sized hill, but after cross sectioning the signal I appear to fall into a dead zone! Ironic that family that lives in East End Council property have no problems.....

@1

Your point on broadband speeds is actually not correct. Bandwidth is a physical limitation (think of it like trying to get xlitres/second of water down a pipe) Simply put, fast speeds are needed to download larger files. Also, I think that you are implying a 1Mbps connection speed as opposed to a 1MBps, which is a totally different thing altogether. 1MB=8Mb. Secondly, a faster internet connection is far more environmentally friendly. Imagine you are downloading a 1GB file (not unreasonable these days). At 1Mbps this would take you 2.2 hours. On a 20Mbps connection this is reduced to less than 10 minutes. What is more energy efficient now? Half a megabit per second is fine for mostly text based websites and e-mails (as a text e-mail will rarely be larger than a few kB) but for anything more demanding, such as images, then a faster speed is pretty important. Why don't we run an undersea fibre cable round the coast, feeding off to various islands and coastal communities? That would cover a huge number of the population who cannot get good internet speeds and, if we use decent quality fibre, should last for years.

One key problem I can forsee, is that with the SNPs opposition to nuclear power, and an increased reliance on electricity for transportation, we could face some pretty major problems in the future. Yes tidal power is reliable, but wind power isn't, and how many communities are opposed to either windfarms on their neighbouring hill, or pylons from tidal generation points to major population centres? Unless some compromises are made, Scotland's huge energy generation potential will be wasted through battling with too many 'not in my back yard' groups.

The bias against cars is incredible...they were a major agent of social freedom and mobility in the 20th century, but there isn't a management discipline I can think of that has the inbuilt assumptions driving it that Transport planning has, and has had for a number of years.

The main assumption being that personal freedom to travel is bad and should be stopped.

All the main roads in the Uk were built in the 1960's and 70's (in the main) and since then we know that we are a small island, with no spare land, and that roads built simply attract more cars to use them..... as if that means we shouldn't build any more roads.

If not building any more roads is the answer why not go one better and start shutting some we already have---get rid of the motorways and people will soon start getting rid of their cars

The post that mentioned train ticket prices, is right on the button---- the pricing of railway tickets is a near disgrace, no longer really controlled, the price of rail travel is both absurd and absurdly complicated---- but I guess it's a minor disgrace amongst so many other disgraces in this country, all linked by complacency and poor planning or excution.

The A1 road through Northumberland and around Eyemouth is like the kind of road the old Soviet union would build to dissuade journeys....with the result the M6 is even more hammered than it should be. The cost of rail travel from Scotland into England, and especially London--- is a tax on business that has a real effect.

The tin lid is put on it all by the Edinburgh tram system... a crazily over budget vanity project that struggled for any justification in the old debt-happy boom times, badly conceived and even more poorly executed it now rattles onward, burning cash the City doesn't have because nobody has the brains or resolve to stop chucking the money down the manhole.

Even now when as Liam Byrne pointed out the money has all gone.

So because the transport planners have nothing to do with it---my choice as 'best-buy' would be the Broadband network---and the more serious reason being that cheap and easy video or voice conferencing...and inexpensive data movement capacity.... act to dissolve traffic use and people movement; whether by 'work-at-home' or amalgamating 30 or more 'supermarket shopping trips' into one (hopefully electricity powered) truck; or many more ways.

Obviously if Transport planners are put in charge they'll come up with a ssytem that would meet any demand----- other than what people actually wanted and needed in the 21st Century; but hopefully they won't so we will get something that makes people's lives better and easier and just plain nicer--- something good planning is supposed to be all about.

The key question is what will drive forward our economy. In my view with Scotland's natural resources and historic manufacturing we need good transport links before all else. Before we can achieve this then the focus should be on getting rid of bureaucracy that is really holding back the country.

Personal transportation by road vehicle is not going away ever, nor should it. People are demonstrably willing to pay a lot of money for cars and petrol, and accept a lot of time sitting in congestion. This shows how much benefit people get from an independent, dry, clean and safe means of transport that will take you exactly where you want to go, when you want to go, with yor relatives and friends, and with a fair amount of cargo. Anti-car camapaigning is simply fantasy football, and doomed to failure. I have the good fortune to live close enough to my place of work to be able to walk there and back, but if my office was relocated to an industrial park on the edge of town the car would come back into service. If carbon emissions are the problem, a change of engine technology is the solution.

The movement of real goods requires physical transport infrastructure. Despite the continuing PR profile of the internet and IT industries, the physical world is rather more important (food deliveries, goods shipped from manufacturers, people going to work etc). Just how much of Scotland's GDP is derived from Facebook or Twitter, exactly? How many jobs?

Some advocate everyone sitting in their houses, engaging virtually with work colleagues (and all other members of society, apparently). Philosophically, this would lead to a grotesque dystopia. But taste aside, this is also just fantasy football. People need to interact physically with other people, and workplaces, schools and universities rely on the benefits of human interaction.

And people sitting in their houses at night may wish to download music, or view films online (ahem!) but these entertainments are hardly the number one priority for the country's infrastructure.

Broadband or by Tram, which is the quickest way to deliver your Messages?

Carrier-Pigeon, perhap they WILL succeed and suck-seed, over and over again!!!

There's a view within inner circles that the only way to achieve faster broadband speeds is to use expensive fibre based infrastructure, this is simply not true. The usual carriers such as BT, Cable and Wireless and Virgin Media will always promote the technologies which are most effective for their commercial gain.

There are and for the past 10 years have been technologies available to bond the existing copper infrastructure that is in the ground. In simple terms by bonding multiple copper pairs (telephone lines to you and I), speeds of up to 40Mbps (symmetric) can be achieved. The technology is called EFM (Ethernet in the First Mile) and has been in the market for some time now.

I say invest in the roads and get the most of the infrastructure in the ground to enhance the broadband options in rural locations.

Scotland should adopt some of the Asian practices, e.g start putting internet speeds as part of the sales information on houses and as one of the factors towards the council tax rate. This will force councils starting to consider ways to improve the situation. Scotland's problems are it's poor health (Smoking and drinking) and associated costs and a huge number of NIMBYs that want to keep it as some 19th Century industrial museum and object to all developments

There are masses of highly laudable infrastructure projects in Scotland...the big issue is how they are to be paid for.It's all very well the Scottish Parliament wanting to hold onto Scottish water as a public body,but the sale of this to the private sector could pay for the new Forth Crossing.Don't presume that Scotland can go running to Westminster any more for these sums,they are broke too,partly as a result of bailing out a Scottish banking system that went seriously out of kilter!

Rather than the conventional and very expensive notion of installing fibre optic cables for fast Broadband,there are cheaper alternatives that would work well for Scotland,benefitting more users,such as wireless systems.In the USA,many cities such as Philadelphia provide this for free,paid for by advertising.

Sometimes the bullet has to bitten and you have to pay now for future benefits,the Edinburgh tram system being a case in point. There needs to be a Public Enquiry into the this though,to stop this kind of mess happening again.