I spent many years in the rail industry believing that light railways in all their forms were: a) Vanity projects for local/regional authorities: and b) Not PROPER railways - they were toy trains, not real ones. In other words, I was part of the exact cultural prejudice that is referred to in the article.
My views have changed radically over the past few years. Firstly, working on the Olympics I saw the Docklands Light Railway in action, and saw its virtues, its flexibility and its business model. Then secondly, I joined SNC-Lavalin, which has a proud history of building and operating light rail transit schemes in Canada. In fact, our teams have now been involved in light railway and tram systems in Australia, France, USA, Kuala Lumpur and the UK, as well as Canada. I am now officially a convert.
I now see such light rail schemes as an integral part of a modern and integrated transport system for an increasingly urbanised world. They lead to growth, redevelopment and reduction in congestion. They are a ‘Good Thing’. The point made by James Hammett of UK Tram is exactly the point I made in a recent speech on HS2 - we must exploit HS2 with light rail to improve overall connectivity. It is a pattern worldwide of growth in High Speed Rail connecting city regions - but then allied to urban transit schemes for the internal connectivity.
The local or regional nature of the investment is the great strength of the light rail transit schemes. It allows bespoke design to fit specific circumstances and (importantly) bespoke financing. The direct relationship between who benefits and who should contribute is much clearer in a local system than a national scheme. So in many respects I think that ‘devolution‘ of powers and devolution of responsibility and accountability will hasten the development of future schemes.
There is always an argument about money - no democratic system is ever going to allow any infrastructure to be built without someone saying: “How much? Why here? Why bother? Not fair!” Globally the challenges look very similar. “Who pays for the utilities works?” is an argument everywhere, with almost universally the same result… the light rail scheme pays, often with a blank cheque required and a long-awaited utility upgrade built into the cheque! The fact is that the closer to the locality the benefits accrue, the easier those arguments are. ‘National Interest’ is always somebody else’s problem.
The important thing is that once they are built, they are used and they are popular. Transport Focus announced at the end of May that customer satisfaction across the six tram networks surveyed in the UK had risen significantly to 92%, and that sort of statistic is replicated across the world. Local flexibility - the ‘horses for courses’ argument - is exactly why I think they are popular and why the future is looking bright.
It seems to me that the discussion in this article about trams, tram-trains, light rail, supertrams, very light rail, etc, is exactly the reason why this type of technology is simply going to become even stronger. It is not a ‘one size fits all’. Light rail can fit the market flexibly, and that’s good for everyone - even old railwaymen like me!
