City’s buses and trams both named best in the UK
Edinburgh has achieved a remarkable public transport double with the city’s buses and trams both being named the best in the UK.
Lothian Buses has been recognised as the UK’s best bus operator and Edinburgh Trams separately triumphed in the light rail category at the National Transport Awards in London. It is the second time in three years the capital has carried off both these titles.
The achievement is all the more impressive as the awards compare the performance of publicly-owner and private operators, rather than just comparing local authority services.
The success was largely driven by growing passenger numbers on both the buses and trams, as well as investment in electric buses and service improvements such as the trams’ Tap On, Tap Off payment system.
Sarah Boyd, chief executive of Lothian Group, which oversees both Lothian Buses and Edinburgh Trams, made it a hat-trick by picking up the industry’s Woman of the Year award at the same ceremony.
Anything Andy can do… It’s not all about Manchester. The Bee Network in Manchester has been held up as a model for municipal bus services following Andy Burnham’s elevation to Prime Minister. Its £2 single fare cap is being rolled out across much of the UK, with Edinburgh among the places it is due to be introduced, although no date has yet been set for that. The awards, however, are a reminder that Edinburgh has been leading the field for years.
What makes Edinburgh so special? The capital has consistently achieved some of the highest rates of public transport use in the UK. Around three-quarters of city residents regularly use Lothian Buses for journeys around Edinburgh, compared to half using a car, according to one IPSOS study. Edinburgh was unusual in sticking with publicly-owned bus services when most UK cities went private. That has meant continued investment over a number of years in a high-quality bus network, with the trams now also overseen by the same council-owned company which directs the buses.
In numbers: More than 130 million passenger journeys were taken on the buses and trams last year. That’s more than 350,000 a day, with just over 90% of them taken on the buses. Passenger numbers increased on both networks by around 3%.
Happy customers and well-trained drivers: Transport Focus's 2025 Your Bus Journey survey gives Lothian Buses 94% overall passenger satisfaction. Lothian Buses driver-training school achieved a 94.6% pass rate, compared with an industry average of 61.5%, while training more than 450 drivers in a year.
Record day: Edinburgh The trams have come into their own during major events at Murrayfield, setting a record for the most passengers in a day (just under 77,000) when Oasis played during last summer’s Fringe.
Anything else? Lothian Buses has been praised for its charity work, including promoting Age Scotland’s helpline and loneliness services, and helped raise nearly £30,000 by donating unclaimed lost property to be sold in Shelter Scotland shops.
YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING
SUMMERHALL PLANS: Developers AMA have submitted a pre-application notice outlining plans to demolish some buildings on the Summerhall site to make way for a mixed development, including “an arts centre, cultural, community and venue space”. The rest of the site would feature food and drink, small retail, hotel, student accommodation and flats. The pre-application notice can be seen here and a first public meeting is being held at Summerhall on Wednesday, between 3pm and 7.30pm, with an opportunity to ask AMA representatives about the plans.
FLIPPING TARTAN GIFT SHOP: Eighteen months after city businessman Bindi Singh Landa spent more than £1 million snapping up the Starbucks premises near the bottom of the Royal Mile, it is all change again. The independent coffee shop that opened there has been flipped to become yet another tartan themed gift shop. This one is called McTweeds. (You can read more about Bindi Landa Singh in our interview and profile from last year: The under-the-radar retail king of the Royal Mile)
GOLD GANG: Police are closing in on a crime gang which has targeted wealthy Asian families in the capital to steal gold, The Daily Record reports. The gang, reportedly based in Newcastle, use metal detectors to find jewellery including family heirlooms.
BOTANICS’ £65M PLAN: The Botanics is set to launch a new fund-raising campaign for the £65 milion next stage of its glass houses refurbishment. The Gardens’ Victorian Palm Houses have just reopened after a five-year, £23.5 million restoration. The next phase would see the neighbouring research glasshouses refurbished and a plant health hub created for quarantining species from overseas. The Gardens plans a public appeal as well as hoping for funding from the Scottish Government.
STEEL QUEENS: Women’s elite ice hockey has returned to Scotland for the first time in 32 years with the Caledonia Steel Queens making their Women’s National Ice Hockey League Elite debut. The club has grown from just seven players to 120 in nine years.
MICHELIN STAR ROW: Michelin-starred chef James Murray is appealing against a council decision that would mean removing a £35,000 timber decking from outside his pub on The Shore in Leith. Murray and his business partners at The Keelson were refused retrospective planning application for the outside seating area. He said: “We’ve created 22 jobs here on the Shore, in a community that we live in ourselves.”
BLACK PROFESSORS ‘RIDICULED’: Britain’s first black philosophy professor, Edinburgh University’s Professor Tommy Curry, has warned freedom of speech arguments are being used to suppress academic work on racism and colonialism. Prof Curry told The Scotsman that black professors are “ridiculed for incompetence”, with criticism of “woke” subjects and research in the UK increasingly reflecting the arguments of the US conservative right.
CO-OP FIGHTS ON: Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op boss Alan Nestor has told the Edinburgh News he will “not give up” after management bought some of the business’ stores from administration. Scotland’s longest established workers co-operate entered administration recently, and that has resulted in the closure of two stores in Aberdeen and Canonmills in the Capital, however branches in Bruntsfield and Newcastle, as well as Giant Stores in Edinburgh and Stirling, will remain open.
MORE MORNINGSIDE PAVEMENT: Work to widen the “dreadfully narrow” pavements on Morningside Road is set to begin at the end of the month. Bollards installed during the Covid pandemic opposite Waitrose will be replaced with a wider pavement. The work is due to be completed by March.
MOTORBIKE SHOWROOM TO FLATS: A former motorbike showroom which shut 14 years ago would be converted into eight serviced apartments under new plans for the Leith Links property. M&M Edinburgh Ltd has applied for planning permission for the conversion on Queen Charlotte Street.
LIGHTS OFF: Edinburgh Castle’s popular Castle of Light event has been cancelled after six years. Historic Environment Scotland said the light show within the castle had attracted more than 200,000 visitors over the six years, but a combination of high costs, the extensive planning work required and cancellations due to high winds and storms causing cancellations in previous years had made it unsustainable.
Pic of the week
THE BUSINESS
Finance sector plan to add billions to Scottish Economy
An eight-point briefing plan to ensure Scotland’s vital finance sector maximises the opportunities of the increasing adoption of digital assets and tokenisation in the sector has been prepared by the Scottish Digital Trust Centre of Excellence.
The plan maintains that adopting its recommendations could generate between an estimated £3 billion to £5 billion for the Scottish economy, by a sector that currently employs 151,000 people with more than a third of those based in the Capital.
The sector in Scotland manages around £500 billion in assets.
Based at Edinburgh Napier University, the Centre was founded about a year ago to help connect research, policy and real-world applications to ensure greater trust in increasingly digitally-reliant systems.
The report, aimed at senior stakeholders in government, industry bodies and private sector firms, highlights eight actions to ensure Scotland and its financial sector capitalises on the move towards digitised and tokenised financial assets – including a Scottish Government policy statement, a tokenisation readiness assessment and a digital assets taskforce.
Across the industry, investment assets and payments are increasingly moving onto digitised systems, based on blockchain and distributed ledger technology and says: “While today less than one dollar in every $10,000 of the world’s investments is held in tokenised form, experts believe it could rise to one in every $6 by 2035.”
The report, Scotland’s Roadmap for Digital Assets and Tokenisation, was prepared by Digital Trust Centre CEO Peter Ferry and ENU visiting academic James Ball, with contributions from Sarah Forbes, Emerging Opportunities Lead for Financial Services at Scottish Enterprise, and Head of Policy at Zumo, Daniel Taylor. It was also reviewed by senior figures at banking and digital asset firms.
AWARD-WINNERS: Congratulations to two Heriot-Watt University ventures – TissueMetrics and Recovery PX - which secured four awards between them at Converge 2026 Awards, Scotland’s leading programme for university entrepreneurs and innovators.
AI DATA WARNING: City businesses are being urged to keep a careful eye on AI tools being used by their teams, as unapproved use can see company data leaving the business without their knowledge. Managed Service Providers Mother Technologies maintain “shadow AI” – including free tools staff members may use themselves – can store data and use it to train their own systems. Providing approved tools and clear rules for their use are recommended.
DENTAL FIRM COLLAPSE: Sad news for Edinburgh’s burgeoning life sciences sector. A pioneering dental diagnostics firm with world-leading technology highlighted by the Inquirer early in its development has plunged into administration. Calcivis Limited appointed AAB Business & Tax Advisory administrators, and they said the firm had been “unable to bridge to profitability sufficiently quickly and continued to experience cash flow problems.”
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
PALM HOUSES & PRIME: There is no escaping the fact that two of the biggest events of the week celebrate two of the city’s greatest institutions. It is the first full week of the reopened Botanics’ Palm Houses (you need to book in advance) and of Gail Rankin bringing Jean Brodie to life in the National Theatre’s new production at the Lyceum (book tickets while you can).
ABOUT THE BIRDS: From mallards on the Water of Leith to the spiderhunting birds of Thailand, screen-printer Iona DeSouza and illustrator Sarah Martin celebrate our winged friends at Leith Makers on Leith Walk. Birds Exhibition: Print and Illustration runs on selected days until Sunday. Entry is free, but booking is required.
LANTERN LIGHT: Thousands of illuminated pumpkins, pumpkin carving demonstrations and tasty treats are on offer when Pumpkins after Dark opens on Friday at the Royal Highland Centre. Expect plenty of photo opportunities at the fair which runs until Halloween.
QUICK BITES
DEEP MEMORIES: The Deep Sea on Antigua Place near the top of Leith Walk has closed. The takeaway, etched in the memory of generations of Edinburgh residents who enjoyed a late-night snack at the popular chippy, is to be replaced by Toni’s Pizzeria, which aims to open later this year.
POPPING-UP FOR GOOD: Vietnamese street food festival pop-up Pho & Roll are to make their Jeffrey Street premises opened during the Fringe a permanent feature. It is due to close for a refurbishment at the weekend before reopening in mid-November as their second Edinburgh restaurant, to join their Stockbridge branch.