Horse Trams Ensure Prom Scheme Will Rumble on For Years to Come

Good news for fans of the Douglas prom scheme, it will be a few years before it will actually be finished.

Speaking in Keys today, DoI Minister Tim Crookall told members that he won’t be looking to finish the horse tram tracks in the next year or two.

The issue of the horse trams have become a bit of a spin-off to the abject failure that is the the prom scheme and the tracks currently sit, looking rather derelict, near the bottom of Broadway while they await completion.

When the tracks are ‘finished’ in their current guise they are meant to end around the war memorial. However, when the scheme was backed by Tywnald, members said they must reach the Sea Terminal.

Speaking today, Mr Crookall said the DoI wouldn’t be bringing forward funding bids for the £1.5m needed to get the horse trams to the Sea Terminal for up to two years as the prom ‘needs a rest’.

Instead of getting on with the job, this means holidaymakers and residents will instead get to look at the backwards facing benches and mud that was laid along the prom earlier this year that now has patches of grass growing along it. However Mr Crookall said he will ensure the area is tidied up, which may include the planting of Manx wild flowers.

Mr Crookall said: ‘Given the amount of work that has gone on on the prom and the disruption of the last three years, I think we need time to settle down and when we do go back to do that, there may well be other works, I don’t know, but there may well be other works that need doing to put things right.’

He added that he does feel the disappointment of members, people and businesses along the prom and that the whole area needs time after the previous few years.