Guest Comment: Light rail is right for rail

Tramways and light rail systems can be transformative, and can enhance a city or a major town.

As Richard Foster observes in his article (RAIL 1026), there is more chance of a tram system encouraging car drivers to switch from car to tram, rather than the presence of a bus route encouraging them to switch from car to bus.

However, Richard also notes that tramways can be expensive to build on a per kilometre basis, which has often counted against their expansion in the UK.

When the previous Labour government came to power in 1997, the late John Prescott claimed that there would be 25 new tram systems built in the UK while Labour was in power.

Sadly, the cost of building these systems quickly rose, the availability of government funds to pay for the systems was reduced, and most schemes were cancelled.

The new Labour government is more focused on rail and bus, with little said about trams. Yet ironically, we could actually be arriving at the time for light rail to shine.

More focus is now being directed on looking at the wider benefits of a tramway and how costs could be pared back.

If developments in construction materials result in the trackbed requiring less excavation, with utilities left untouched, it would be a game changer - both for the cost of a scheme itself, and in terms of the construction time taken to place the track into the roadway.

Funding for regeneration costs that is often added into a tram scheme could also be reallocated - recoverable from land value capture, levies for access into a city for private motorists, or Mayoral transport precepts (to name but a few possibilities).

Most transport economists predict that a road user charging levy will be required as part of the movement to electric vehicles (and the consequential fall in fuel duty available from the sales of petrol and diesel), so a general concept of motorists needing to pay to access roads may be with us sooner than some think.

However, tramways and light rail systems should not be looked at in isolation from other public transport modes.

Arguably, competition between heavy rail and bus has ultimately not been helpful for either mode.

Tramways work really well when they are part of a wider public transport network carrying passengers on the most heavily used sections of a street-based network.

Their capacity is higher than for the equivalent road space taken by a bus, so when full they are very efficient.

However, at the outer reaches of a city or large town, there comes a point where the bus becomes more cost-effective and should become the mode of choice.

Local authorities need to understand that light rail doesn’t have to be as expensive as some of the headlines suggest.

And once light rail starts to become an option, the next step is to look at how it can take the strain off overloaded key transport corridors, and how effective movement of passengers between modes can take place.

Single ticketing and level transfers between vehicles are important, and designs need to consider the needs of passengers with reduced mobility - all of which are known from current rail and bus design guides.

Current national bus policy in England requires either franchising or enhanced partnerships to be established, both of which emphasise the need to link with heavy and light rail networks.

The creation of Great British Railways is intended to allow for more local involvement, with specifications and some devolution of powers related to passenger services.

Wales and Scotland have local transport devolved to them, but their models are not that different. Linking these different modes and placing light rail literally at the centre of a city's transport plans could make light rail become both a major factor in the regeneration of UK cities, and a key pillar in developing the new infrastructure to support the 1.5 million new homes required by the new government over the next five years.