LIGHT RAIL
Making the case for light rail
A fringe event was held by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Light Rail at all three party conferences. RTM reports from the event held at Manchester Town Hall during the Labour conference, which heard from Centro and UK Tram chair Geoff Inskip, Stuart Kerr of Vossloh Kiepe, Jim Harkins, who provides secretariat support to the APPG, Labour MPs Graham Stringer and Clive Betts, and Transport for Greater Manchester chairman Cllr Andrew Fender.
At
a massively over-subscribed fringe event at the Labour conference, when around
80 people turned up in a room set out for 35, the case for light rail was resoundingly made by speaker after speaker.
The event started with Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, who chaired the meeting, saying he hoped visitors to Manchester had a chance to use Metrolink – though noted that some transport problems on the day slightly undermined that message, as former transport secretary Lord Adonis found when he took to Twitter to praise the system only to be deluged by unhappy commuters.
Admitting that Labour’s time in offi ce was hardly a halcyon period for light rail,
John
Stringer said: “In 1997, Prescott said we would
“We should see trams at the heart of a public service – a public transport system, integrating transport, working with the bus services and park and rides and getting people out of their cars.”
Trams are the best way to achieve modal shift, he said, adding that some people who may have prejudices about buses and refuse to “be seen dead” on one, are nonetheless happy to try the tram. It’s quick, clean, green, and a nice form of transport to use, he said.
The benefi ts of larger networks
But planning ahead is a key problem, especially since there have been some unenthusiastic
the fi rst part of the route of the tram? Or that people should get on the tram from Sheffi eld, go halfway to Rotherham, then get off and onto the guided bus? They were never too clear about that.
“The DfT has never been comfortable with trams.”
Over-engineering
have 20 tram systems: many of us thought that was not enough. And we haven’t got anywhere near that. But if we want to invest in good public transport in our local areas, we need only to look to Manchester and Sheffi eld, which have had enormous success both environmentally and in terms of modal change.”
Lack of integration
Clive Betts, MP for Sheffi eld South East and chair of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, noted that the sheer number of people at a light rail fringe event was a step change on the situation a decade ago. “Seeing is believing”, he said, noting the success of most existing UK tram systems when people had a chance to see them in action and try them out.
He noted that in Sheffi eld, the trams were always meant to be integrated with the buses, but that over-deregulation meant that competition damaged both modes. He called that situation “an absolute nonsense” and said it was “disastrous” for the Supertram in the early years.
50 | rail technology magazine Oct/Nov 12
‘The DfT has never been comfortable with trams – keep them out of the process’
ministers and offi cials at DfT, with a lack of long-term thinking. “We need long-term vision and long-term policies to do that.”
Every section of tram network extension improves the cost-benefi t analysis, he said, since a larger network benefi ts both new passengers and existing ones.
He added: “One or two home truths: can we get the DfT out of the process as much as possible? It’s an obstacle.”
He said a classic example was what happened with the original plan to extend Sheffi eld’s tram system to Rotherham, when the DfT announced that guided bus was better value for money. “The only problem was, you’d already got the tram running halfway from Sheffi eld to Rotherham: so in deciding that a guided bus from Sheffi eld to Rotherham would be better, were they saying that the guided bus would run all the way and therefore duplicate
toilets.
He criticised the standards and “over- engineering” in UK light rail systems, imported from heavy rail, contrasting them with cities like Amsterdam where trams often run with much less distance between them, he said.
He noted that a major cost of new tram systems is always the utilities works – but said the utilities companies needed to take more responsibility for the costs.
He said the recently announced South Yorkshire tram-train pilot was similar – he noted that the idea was fi rst raised around 2006, but it will be 2015 before the pilot properly begins. “Nine years, to get the fi rst tram running – and on a pilot? Go to Germany, look at them now, they’re running and working. We’re going to have nine years to actually get a tram on a train track, then three years of evaluation to see if it works.”
He also criticised the Sheffi eld- Penistone pilot plans, saying the proposed diesel vehicle was so over-engineered, it was basically a heavy rail train just with no
© TfL
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