Has the Tram Bubble Burst?
We dont look in front of our noses in the UK. Back in the 1960s, bigwigs decided that the old, outdated tram systems across the UK needed to be ripped up and placed with more a more flexible transport system - buses.Now down the line we find our cities conjested with traffic (usually compromising of a single person sitting in an SUV) with people complaining that public transport is smelly, filled with undesireables and too expensive.
One way about tackling this is to reinvent the tram (now branded as 'light rail') and put it back into our cities, get cars off the road and cut pollution. Right?
Well, that was the intention anyway.
Proposed Light rail Schemes have been falling like flies recently, with Merseyside, Hampshire and Leeds being denied funding, while the Manchester Metrolink has been given funding by the Government, but due to price rises in construction costs and inflation, cannot build them without cutting back some of its proposals.
It has even been sugged by the Department for Transport to build segregated, high frequency bus routes instead for the cities! Obviously Mr Darling has lost his head thinking that buses will coax people out of their cars and onto buses - especially when the buses get caught up in the same trafffic, with people then blaming that the buses are unreliable!
It is shown that trams do pull more people out of their cars and buses and onto trams due to a smoother ride and priority over other traffic. The most recently opened tram (2004), in Nottingham now draws higher than expected numbers onto them, around 8 million passengers per year. Could this be done by buses? Probably not.
One of the reasons for this backtrack by the government is that the projects expences run over budget - how come there is a 'blank cheque' for roads then when their costs overrun?
Answers on a postcard please...
posted by Rob @ 12:02 AM
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