Trams
The purpose of this post is to start a discussion on trams.
The reason is that I am utterly conflicted in my opinions on trams and would welcome you, dear Freewheeling reader, helping sort me out.
On one hand, I absolutely love trams. I think part of the reason is that same as Bill Bryson, who, in his first travel book, describes the joy he experiences travelling on trams in Europe as part of the exoticism of Europe as distinct from the US. I first saw a tram in Rome when I was seven years old. Throughout my childhood and youth, trams were associated with exciting places. Trams meant Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Stockholm or Rome (twice more). Even Brussels had trams. London did not.
To me, trams mean holidays
Since then, various tram networks have re-emerged in the UK but I still regard Nottingham and Croydon as being that bit more exotic than they would otherwise be because they have trams. And I continue to feel a particular frisson of excitement when visiting Milan, Berlin or any other of the growing list of European cities that, unlike East London, have trams.
Croydon = exotic
But with my public transport hat on, trams feel like something of an enigma.
The majority of tram lines have a whole series of benefits:
1) They frequently have their own route alignment so avoid traffic
2) But, unlike metro systems or train lines, they are well integrated into the urban landscape so can be accessed quickly and easily
3) They are generally smooth to ride, avoiding many of the sharp turns and sudden braking of bus journeys
4) They appear on metro maps and street maps, so are highly visible. It’s obvious where they go
5) They generally have off-vehicle ticketing systems so short dwell times, speeding up the journey
The thing I can’t get my head around is that all of these benefits could exist with buses but generally don’t.
The concept is well known: it’s called Bus Rapid Transit.
The BRT Standard defines a bus service as being BRT if it has:
1) A dedicated right-of-way
2) “Busway alignment” (basically straight and fast)
3) Off-board fare collection
4) Intersection treatments (i.e. priority across junctions)
5) Platform level boarding
The problem is that this almost never happens.
My experience of BRT in this country consists of the Runcorn Busway (which I discuss here) and the Leigh busway in Manchester.
And the Leigh busway is a great illustration of why it’s not a tram.
The journey from Leigh to Ellenbrook is absolutely superb - fast, direct, smooth - everything a BRT ride should be.
If we do a quick review against the BRT Standard, we find:
1) A dedicated right-of-way YES
2) Busway alignment YES
3) Off-board fare collection NO
4) Intersection treatments YES
5) Platform level boarding YES
But as soon as you get to Ellenbrook, it collapses for the journey into Manchester (i.e. the more popular and crowded bit):
1) A dedicated right-of-way NO
2) Busway alignment NO
3) Off-board fare collection NO
4) Intersection treatments NO
5) Platform level boarding NO
Yes, there are lots of bus lanes, which is great. But it feels like a slightly better bus (the kind that tends to get labelled as Platinum or Sapphire by different operators in different places); not like something that fits on a metro map. Which is, presumably, why it’s not on the Metrolink map. And the bus lanes are often in the bits where they’re less needed, not the bits where they are.
Being blunt, if the way of connecting Leigh to Manchester had been a tram, there is no way that it could have been given the current half-arsed solution from Ellenbrook for the simple reason that the tram lines can’t suddenly vanish for half a mile.
Here’s the approach to the main bus stop of the Leigh to Manchester “Vantage” route. The bus route goes up the slipway to a roundabout, so there is frequently queuing traffic. As it’s only one lane wide there is, of course, no bus lane:
Buses can have alignments that start and stop. A tramline needs to do 100% or it is worthless.
So it feels like the key public transport benefit of trams is that they are a source of discipline: by building rails, you force the town planner to accept that there has to be a dedicated public transport corridor all the way from Place A to Place B; and not just where it’s easy.
But it also feels a bit bonkers, doesn’t it, that we have to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a whole load of unnecessary rails just to ensure we do a decent job of the alignment.
So my end conclusions on trams are:
1) I adore them because they make me feel like I’m on holiday.
2) But as a public transport solution they don’t really do anything that buses couldn’t do
3) But buses are never given the chance
