Although I agree with Elaine Greenwood’s statement that “there is a serious lack of understanding and knowledge of light rail in the UK”, I take a more positive stance on its prospects. I don’t agree that the heyday of light rail in the UK was in the 1980s and 1990s, although this was indeed the period where (in Manchester) the protracted and difficult beginnings started.
Firstly, we should understand what issue is being addressed, and secondly, is light rail the optimum solution? In Manchester there were two run-down lines (to Altrincham and to Bury) that were obsolescent in terms of infrastructure and rolling stock, just at the time the city was contemplating a more familiar metro (the Picc-Vic scheme). Light rail arose as a cheaper way of achieving the metro city centre linkage than a tunnelled metro, and fortunately the two corridors chosen were robust enough to support rail transit. I would contend that this was the right solution for the wrong reasons.
Similarly, in London’s Docklands, light rail was chosen as a cheap way of facilitating the Canary Wharf development, with simple linkage from the periphery of central London at Tower Gateway and from Stratford. As in Manchester, former rail alignments were used. This was way under scale for the job envisaged, but it did start the ball rolling, demonstrating a key strength of light rail - you can keep adding to it incrementally provided that the central core retains sufficient capacity. Both Manchester and Docklands have since required major surgery in the central sections, and in both these cases the rebuild has been nearly as big as the original scheme, yet (interestingly) achieved with far less fuss in terms of planning and funding.
Two themes emerge. Firstly, once a system has been established and its benefits shown, it is far easier to extend it than create a new city startup. More recently, the question starting to be asked is: “What do you want to achieve?” This question was clearly not addressed to the satisfaction of the inspector in the case of the failed Leeds Trolleybus scheme, but it is the key question. The choice of technology is secondary, more a function of potential volumes.
The two key concerns for cities are the economy of the city and social inclusion, defined as the ability of the city to function in terms of access to employment and housing. A further issue concerns the built environment in terms of public space and pollution.
These questions arise in cities where the economy is strong and needs to be sustained (such as London), but also where the regeneration requirement is strong. In London the economic argument justified Crossrail (Europe’s largest metro rail scheme), and the social inclusion argument justified the London Overground East London Line project (a heavy rail scheme).
The choice of light or heavy is a function of potential volumes, although Docklands has demonstrated that light rail can, with the right technology, carry huge volumes. For instance, Docklands carries far more passengers than Liverpool’s Merseyrail system. A far better solution for Merseyside would be replacement of the Merseyrail system by light rail, potentially serving a far wider catchment area and potentially a huge increase in ridership.
Light rail comes with the handicap that it needs new alignments. Heavy rail already has these in place, albeit often grossly underused and in need of replacement. Light rail needs to evolve to capture this opportunity, by adapting itself to run on the main line network as well as on its own alignments and on street (often referred to by the unattractive name of “tram-train”, depicting something rather inferior and certainly slower than a train). Neither needs to be the case, and Network Rail’s digital revolution should change all this by freeing up infrastructure capacity and avoiding the nightmare of fusing to different technologies that needn’t be separate.
Why is this all seen as “too difficult”? It is only difficult if you don’t know how to do it. Cities have not been equipped to promote, fund and develop light rail systems, hence the false starts. Heavy rail is state-procured and comes with structures to deliver service and projects - light rail is not. This is changing, as systems such as Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Docklands have built up strong client teams to procure and deliver light rail without the pain experienced when they first started. The Transport and Works Act planning process is no different for any kind of rail, but learning it every time a system is in prospect is the hard way to do it.
This has recently been augmented by the advent of UK Tram, designed to use the resources in these systems (including lessons learned) and to make this expertise available to new promoters. We should not have to repeat every mistake with every new system, as was the case to some extent in Edinburgh, Main line governance structure such as safely regulation and standards is now in place for light rail, as it has been for years in the heavy rail industry.
There is clearly now a worldwide market for light rail, given the many new and evolving systems. Interestingly the United States - a country that killed off light rail owing to vested interests and corruption in the motor, oil and rubber industries - is now at the forefront in the light rail revolution. Every city wants one.
Light rail has not been an industry in the UK, with all the standards and governance needed at devolved city level to make it a success. But if we add recent successes such as in Edinburgh (once the system opened), in Nottingham and in Birmingham (now with trams in the city centre), there will be more dawns. The question this time is whether the day will follow. This could well be the case with other cities such as Leeds, which surely cannot get this wrong yet again.
US experience suggests that other smaller UK cities with good economies and the need to grow sustainably, such as Bristol and Cambridge, may well join the club of seven UK on-street systems, all of which are developing against economic, social and environmental needs - and did I mention transport, too?
