Southwark Tram

[LUYMun]

Trams might work in Stratford or Wembley/Watford areas (if a gap in the tube coverage can be found), but Central London needs the heavy metro levels of capacity and frequency.

Your suggestion of trams in the Watford area sounds like the resurrection of the former Northern Heights plan to Bushey Heath as a light rail/tramway. Probably some business study needs investigating first, such as needing new residential areas around Edgwarebury and Elstree in order to justify costs. You could throw in the old Croxley Green branch line and an extension to Finchley for good measure.

 

[zwk500]

Your suggestion of trams in the Watford area sounds like the resurrection of the former Northern Heights plan to Bushey Heath as a light rail/tramway. Probably some business study needs investigating first, such as needing new residential areas around Edgwarebury and Elstree in order to justify costs. You could throw in the old Croxley Green branch line and an extension to Finchley for good measure.

In no way was it meant to be taken as an acutal suggestion - just the kind of area (considering local connections, population density and travel patterns) where a tram system might be viable. I feel that discussion of where it could go if it was proposed is more for speculative ideas than this thread.

 

[mwmbwls]

Trams aren't the right option for Central London - the volume and frequency demanded is just too high. Croydon works well as it's an economic hub in it's own right, fills in a notable gap in other public transport provision and connects into 2 major interchanges for onwards rail connectivity. The Bakerloo extension to Lewisham and then Hayes will give far more benefit. Trams might work in Stratford or Wembley/Watford areas (if a gap in the tube coverage can be found), but Central London needs the heavy metro levels of capacity and frequency.

I am inclined to agree that trams are not the right option for Central London. That has certainly been the experience in Paris. Following on from the undoubtedly successful Croydon experience - I always wondered why it was not taken up elsewhere. For example: Watford=St. Albans. On a larger scale is their scope for another DLR in the United Kingdom?

 

[Busaholic]

It already interchanges with the Mid Kent Line at Elmers End.

True, but not directly from Addington,
,

 

[zwk500]

Following on from the undoubtedly successful Croydon experience - I always wondered why it was not taken up elsewhere. For example: Watford=St. Albans.

Like Manchester, Nottingham, or Sheffield perhaps?

On a larger scale is their scope for another DLR in the United Kingdom?

A question for a separate thread.

 

[Mikey C]

The West London Tram was a thing once. Shepherd's Bush to Uxbridge.

Nice and straight road, to replace the 207 bus, but of course a very busy road.

The argument was that the tram would cause traffic congestion, however the counter-argument was that it would reduce it as people moved to use the tram and away from cars.

But not consistently wide though, so there wouldn't be room all along the route for cars/buses/vans as well as segregated trams

And while the West London Tram would have been a great replacement for the 207/607 bus routes, there are lots of other bus routes in the area which used the Uxbridge Road for part of the route, which would have been badly affected. And drivers would have ratrunned along residential roads instead

 

[Dr_Paul]

Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, but that part of London was well served by trams. Imagine if they had left it all intact and just upgraded as and when required rather than just rip the whole lot up. Shame.

The problem with the trams in London is that for the most part the tracks were in the centre of the road. That's alright when there are just horses and carts around, but it became dangerous when motor traffic appeared and then increased, as tram passengers were obliged to cross the path of motor traffic when getting to and from the tram. The routes with a dedicated off-road tramway were few and far between (the Victoria Embankment and Hanwell to Southall being two examples). To make the tram network safe to use, the tracks would have had to be resited to the sides of the roads, a massive operation even if it was decided to convert the trams' electricity supply to overhead lines from the costly under-street system.

 

[zwk500]

The problem with the trams in London is that for the most part the tracks were in the centre of the road. That's alright when there are just horses and carts around, but it became dangerous when motor traffic appeared and then increased, as tram passengers were obliged to cross the path of motor traffic when getting to and from the tram. The routes with a dedicated off-road tramway were few and far between (the Victoria Embankment and Hanwell to Southall being two examples). To make the tram network safe to use, the tracks would have had to be resited to the sides of the roads, a massive operation even if it was decided to convert the trams' electricity supply to overhead lines from the costly under-street system.

The entire system would be new build, there's nothing remaining to be resited or converted.

 

[Dr_Paul]

The entire system would be new build, there's nothing remaining to be resited or converted.

I agree; the old tram network has been gone some 70 years and any new tram network would have to be built from scratch. But the original post was regretting the passing of the old tram system: 'Imagine if they had left it all intact and just upgraded as and when required rather than just rip the whole lot up.' I'm convinced that the old tram system, or at least a great deal of it, would have had to be completely rebuilt to have enabled safe operation, as the huge growth of motor traffic rendered increasingly unsafe the boarding and alighting from a tram in the middle of the road.

 

[Mikey C]

I agree; the old tram network has been gone some 70 years and any new tram network would have to be built from scratch. But the original post was regretting the passing of the old tram system: 'Imagine if they had left it all intact and just upgraded as and when required rather than just rip the whole lot up.' I'm convinced that the old tram system, or at least a great deal of it, would have had to be completely rebuilt to have enabled safe operation, as the huge growth of motor traffic rendered increasingly unsafe the boarding and alighting from a tram in the middle of the road.

The London Tram and Trolleybus network was quite patchy too, not entering Westminster or going across the City, but really dense elsewhere, as being built commercially they clearly avoided routes where the rail/underground competition was too strong. I was surprised by the lack of services in NW London too

Trolleybus & Tram Routes (1947) – Mapping London

mappinglondon.co.uk

And enlarged

https://mappinglondon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/trams1947.jpg

 

[Busaholic]

The London Tram and Trolleybus network was quite patchy too, not entering Westminster or going across the City, but really dense elsewhere, as being built commercially they clearly avoided routes where the rail/underground competition was too strong. I was surprised by the lack of services in NW London too

Trolleybus & Tram Routes (1947) – Mapping London

mappinglondon.co.uk

And enlarged

https://mappinglondon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/trams1947.jpg

The lack of N.W. London services was, I suggest, because of the existence of the Metropolitan Railway. just as the absence of S.E. London underground train services were more due to political pressures from the London, Chatham and Dover Railway than the oft-quoted arguments about digging through London clay. The City of London Corporation didn't allow more than the most minor incursion of tram tracks into their territory, so it was never an option.

 

[Austriantrain]

The problem with the trams in London is that for the most part the tracks were in the centre of the road. That's alright when there are just horses and carts around, but it became dangerous when motor traffic appeared and then increased, as tram passengers were obliged to cross the path of motor traffic when getting to and from the tram. The routes with a dedicated off-road tramway were few and far between (the Victoria Embankment and Hanwell to Southall being two examples). To make the tram network safe to use, the tracks would have had to be resited to the sides of the roads, a massive operation even if it was decided to convert the trams' electricity supply to overhead lines from the costly under-street system.

Oh come on, please. All historic tram networks - and there are a lot of them still around, in Europe and elsewhere- have tram tracks in the center of streets, and it works fine.

Just as in may other countries Trams in the UK were abolished because it was a fad at that time and Bus producers lobbied hard. Everything else was an excuse.

While I often despair of my country‘s slowness in adopting change, sometimes it works in a positive way. Vienna would certainly be a less nice city - with a much less effective public transport system! - without its trams, many of them in the middle of the road sharing it with cars, lorries and bikes.

 

[Doppelganger]

Oh come on, please. All historic tram networks - and there are a lot of them still around, in Europe and elsewhere- have tram tracks in the center of streets, and it works fine.

Just as in may other countries Trams in the UK were abolished because it was a fad at that time and Bus producers lobbied hard. Everything else was an excuse.

While I often despair of my country‘s slowness in adopting change, sometimes it works in a positive way. Vienna would certainly be a less nice city without its trams, many of them in the middle of the road sharing it with cars, lorries and bikes.

Basically this.

 

[Mikey C]

Oh come on, please. All historic tram networks - and there are a lot of them still around, in Europe and elsewhere- have tram tracks in the center of streets, and it works fine.

Just as in may other countries Trams in the UK were abolished because it was a fad at that time and Bus producers lobbied hard. Everything else was an excuse.

While I often despair of my country‘s slowness in adopting change, sometimes it works in a positive way. Vienna would certainly be a less nice city - with a much less effective public transport system! - without its trams, many of them in the middle of the road sharing it with cars, lorries and bikes.

I bet those streets are a lot wider than many of London's streets though

 

[Austriantrain]

I bet those streets are a lot wider than many of London's streets though

Some of them yes, some no.

Have a look at this picture from the Austrian city of Graz:

http://www.public-transport.at/murgasse-4.jpg

 

[A0wen]

Some of them yes, some no.

Have a look at this picture from the Austrian city of Graz:

http://www.public-transport.at/murgasse-4.jpg

But Graz is geographically spaced out with a (by UK city standards) relatively small population.

Graz 49sq mi, 295,000 people

Coventry 38 sq mi, 371,000 people

 

[Mikey C]

Some of them yes, some no.

Have a look at this picture from the Austrian city of Graz:

http://www.public-transport.at/murgasse-4.jpg

That looks like a quiet side street. Removing traffic from such a street in the UK wouldn't be an issue

The bigger problem, especially in London, is that many of the main routes into and out of London aren't very wide, so there isn't the space for traffic tram lines while still maintaining at least a lane each way for everything else.

 

[Austriantrain]

That looks like a quiet side street. Removing traffic from such a street in the UK wouldn't be an issue

The bigger problem, especially in London, is that many of the main routes into and out of London aren't very wide, so there isn't the space for traffic tram lines while still maintaining at least a lane each way for everything else.

Yeah, it happens in all cities and is such cases, cars and trams simply share lanes. It is not ideal - of course, trams will have separate lanes where feasible - but no reason not to have trams, if alone because buses would have exactly the same problem.

BTW: I am *not* arguing that London should have trams in the center, but the reasons put forward here by some why it cannot be so can be easily falsified by looking at what happens elsewhere (and if European cities don’t impress you, look at Melbourne).

But Graz is geographically spaced out with a (by UK city standards) relatively small population.

Graz 49sq mi, 295,000 people

Coventry 38 sq mi, 371,000 people

You obviously didn’t read the rest, this was a discussion re „you can’t have trams because streets are so narrow“.

 

[edwin_m]

Yeah, it happens in all cities and is such cases, cars and trams simply share lanes. It is not ideal - of course, trams will have separate lanes where feasible - but no reason not to have trams, if alone because buses would have exactly the same problem.

BTW: I am *not* arguing that London should have trams in the center, but the reasons put forward here by some why it cannot be so can be easily falsified by looking at what happens elsewhere (and if European cities don’t impress you, look at Melbourne).



You obviously didn’t read the rest, this was a discussion re „you can’t have trams because streets are so narrow“.

But if buses would have exactly the same problem, then why spend millions on a tram?

Many cities on the Continent have historic tram networks that have been upgraded over the years and remain very comprehensive. So people tend to use the convenient tram system rather than trying to drive on roads where the trams are getting in the way. In the UK all our trams disappeared and driving became the default choice for many in the second half of the 20th century. We also have many buses and taxis in city centres, when you see far fewer in most Continental cities. So this sort of sharing of trams with light traffic is probably only viable in a city with comprehensive public transport, and London would have to build dozens of tram routes to get to that position. Hence trams tend to be built only if they can have their own roadspace for the vast majority of a route. In France, which also practically abandoned tramways before restoring them, they only build one if they can totally avoid sharing lanes with traffic in the same direction (signalled intersections are allowed).

 

[EllieAquitrain]

I just don't understand the hand-wringing about bus routes which currently use a corridor suggested for a tram route. Any corridor sufficiently busy for a new tram line will already have frequent bus services, often on multiple routes - this is true in other countries than the UK. If it's such a hardship to reshape the bus network* around new trams, how do other countries manage?!

*I do accept the particular difficulties in the UK's fragmented bus market - but that doesn't apply in London!

 

[Busaholic]

Some of them yes, some no.

Have a look at this picture from the Austrian city of Graz:

http://www.public-transport.at/murgasse-4.jpg

I have respect for your viewpoint, but it was becoming a problem in postwar London that was only going to increase greatly with the end of petrol rationing for cars, the steady increase in vans and lorries and the wishes of a lot of the population to visit green spaces outside the London County Council area, but within the range of 'red' bus services which provided hordes of extra buses and extended routes on Summer Sundays (sometimes Saturdays too) with a flexibility that was obviously impossible with a tram network. The centre-road-boarding was one of the reasons why the London Passenger Transport Board had elected to replace all trams with trolleybuses in the late 1930s, a process that was well underway before outbreak of the Second World War. Trolleybuses in London had pavement stops, as did buses of course, though they weren't often shared, I can remember, admittedly only vaguely as I was very young, the tram stops at Eltham Church and Lee Green, together with the terminus at the south side of Southwark Bridge (no further because of City of London intransigence) which all disappeared with the remaining tram routes in July 1952. It was certainly true that some roads did lend themselves better than others to tram tracks e.g. Blackfriars Road, the Victoria Embankment, Mile End Road, but many others (e.g. Brixton Road and Lewisham Way) didn't. After the war the transport authority had a rethink about trolleybuses and found the advantages outweighed by the disadvantages. I don't think allegations of short-sightedness can realistically be levelled at those authorities, unless their clairvoyance to concerns of the 21st Century is expected! It was the right decision at the time: now, whether more tube lines should have entered the mix as well is another matter entirely!

.

 

[Austriantrain]

I have respect for your viewpoint, but it was becoming a problem in postwar London that was only going to increase greatly with the end of petrol rationing for cars, the steady increase in vans and lorries and the wishes of a lot of the population to visit green spaces outside the London County Council area, but within the range of 'red' bus services which provided hordes of extra buses and extended routes on Summer Sundays (sometimes Saturdays too) with a flexibility that was obviously impossible with a tram network. The centre-road-boarding was one of the reasons why the London Passenger Transport Board had elected to replace all trams with trolleybuses in the late 1930s, a process that was well underway before outbreak of the Second World War. Trolleybuses in London had pavement stops, as did buses of course, though they weren't often shared, I can remember, admittedly only vaguely as I was very young, the tram stops at Eltham Church and Lee Green, together with the terminus at the south side of Southwark Bridge (no further because of City of London intransigence) which all disappeared with the remaining tram routes in July 1952. It was certainly true that some roads did lend themselves better than others to tram tracks e.g. Blackfriars Road, the Victoria Embankment, Mile End Road, but many others (e.g. Brixton Road and Lewisham Way) didn't. After the war the transport authority had a rethink about trolleybuses and found the advantages outweighed by the disadvantages. I don't think allegations of short-sightedness can realistically be levelled at those authorities, unless their clairvoyance to concerns of the 21st Century is expected! It was the right decision at the time: now, whether more tube lines should have entered the mix as well is another matter entirely!

I respect your viewpoint as well, of course!

From where I stand though, the explosion in car traffic happened in all the major cities on the continent as well at more or less the same time. Those that were - at that time - considered progressive got rid of their trams with exactly the arguments that you bring. The slower ones kept them (not entirely of course, loads of tram routes in Vienna were closed, but the process was so slow that at some point, trams came back en vogue before everything closed). And we are very happy about it (mostly, some car drivers obviously still complain - contrary to what has been said here, roads are very often not broad enough to have separate lanes for cars and trams, so if you drive, you will regularly be held up by a tram at a station stop), even though in continental cities streets in general are not automatically wider than in the UK, so that has nothing to do with it.

The best example in Europe is Berlin. The West got rid of trams, the East didn’t and nobody would think to close them now (I admit though that Berlin generally has wide streets, but this is not typical for most continental cities).

Actually the same happened in regard to city motorways - those were, as everywhere, planned in Vienna as well. But as always, we were so slow in building them that a change in transport policy towards „the car is not everything“ came first and they were cancelled. As a result, we have very few motorways within the city borders and none of them reach the center. And we are - again, with the exception of some motorists, mostly those that commute from outside - very happy about it.

But enough said, I think. It doesn’t change a thing anyway, because those tram networks are gone and if you build new ones, obviously decision criteria and standards will be different.

 

[leytongabriel]

Trams are the right option for orbital routes. The Croydon network is pretty much exactly what you'd want. It connects up a reasonable chunk of south London suburbs into the rail hub that is Croydon. There were existing rail lines which could be cheaply taken over to provide a core for the network. This meant some upfront capital cost of the network could be justified by cutting operational costs on these lines (as trams are cheaper to run than trains). Relatively little expensive on-street infrastructure was required, and whatever was built had strong network effect benefits from day one.

Could Stratford work in the same way? I'd dream of a Stratford - Ruckholt Rd - Lea Bridge - Walthamstow Central tram or tram-train going on up to Chingford with a few extra stops. And perhaps Stratford - Barking with a stop at Little Ilford and onto Barking Riverside or down the Longbridge Road. Both on existing lines.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Could Stratford work in the same way? I'd dream of a Stratford - Ruckholt Rd - Lea Bridge - Walthamstow Central tram or tram-train going on up to Chingford with a few extra stops. And perhaps Stratford - Barking with a stop at Little Ilford and onto Barking Riverside or down the Longbridge Road. Both on existing lines.

Why would you do this? You're essentially describing the Hall Farm Curve and some tweaks to the heavy rail service. Tram-trains are only really useful when you're enabling new capabilities. The added benefit of tram-train over arbitrary light rail is that you can continue to use a route for occasional freight or non-regular passenger train runnings.

 

[Cricketer8for9]

I tend to think that, had trams survived the 1930s and 50s (and yes, I do mean 1930s - look how many Lancashire trams were abandoned in the 1930s) then running in the middle of the street would have continued, but with traffic islands with light controlled access at stops, and some form of “trambahn” to provide some level of protection, maybe by raised curb from motor traffic. There may even have been the odd tram subway; there were flickers of ideas for the Streatham St Leonard’s Chruch area even before trams were abandoned.

Whether the concept of free transfers would have arisen is unclear. Where I am in Croydon the main route north could easily have been tram only, the route south via and past Purley was very different, with numerous bus routes continuing along the Brighton Road along with the trams from Purley to Croydon.

All in all it’s a lot easier to retain than put back; once the tram tracks have gone motorists will fiercely resist “their” space being removed. Unfortunately the tram’s defenders were not as successful many years ago.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Modern tramways serve a very different purpose to the trams of old. The replacement for most Gen 1 tramways was the double-decker bus. Trams are technologically easier and earlier than buses because pneumatic tyres and internal combustion happen later than railways and electricity. During the Industrial Revolution, tramways were the most efficient way of moving people about, and urban expansion wasn't possible without being in walking range of public transport. Rich people had been able to live further out because they could afford a horse and carriage.

Post-1900 suburbs intended for the lower- and middle-middle classes started to chip away at the viability of trams as more rails and routes would be required to serve the same number of people. Trolleybuses developed as an intermediate solution that used the novelty of the pneumatic tyre on the newer, wider suburban roads while re-using much of the electrical infrastructure of tramways. Smaller towns would have converted wholesale to trolleybuses if their population density and scale wasn't enough to justify trams.

After WW2, the plans to shift even more people out of the centre of towns and cities meant the economics for trams collapsed. Trolleybuses were only really viable because of the shared infrastructure (e.g. power generating stations) with tramways, so they died too. The suburbs were to spread even wider, making the benefit of internal combustion too great over the cost of trolley wires. When cities were completely black with soot from coal fires, the benefit of electric traction over internal combustion in denser areas wasn't relevant. It's only really since cars have exceeded other sources of environmental pollution in urban areas that we've had any real reason to care. Therefore, ideas like hybrid trolleybuses that used electricity in the cities didn't make sense either.

Modern tramways are about the level of transport provision beyond a double decker bus, but short of an underground Metro line. There's a wonderfully wide spectrum there that includes everything from modern bendy (trolley)buses to the DLR. Street running tram technology can handle the widest range of that spectrum of any technology, hence why it's popping up again everywhere.