4 ms·

Now, if only the tram lines would be rebuilt things would be a lot smoother (at least from a public transport perspective).

by pieter1976 10y ago

PaulRobinson 10y ago
Of course, many cities do have tram lines - Manchester's network is substantial, reuses abandoned railway lines in part, and has received a lot of investment in recent years including a project right now to put a second line across the city centre. Many are surprised to hear London has a tram line (South of the river, near Wimbledon), or that other towns have light rail schemes put back in within the last 20-40 years. Guided bus routes have also started to emerge: smooth, segregated routes that run every few minutes using relatively cheap, replaceable and potentially entirely green vehicles with less up-front planning, consultation and construction than a light or heavy rail solution. It's interesting to me that we seem to be going into an age where people value public transport more and more, but I suspect that's because VED and other costs associated with running a car in the UK have risen so sharply in recent years.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Only about 11 currently operating, apparently [1]. As for London, Wimbledon is one of four termini. The vast majority of the system is in Croydon, including loops through the town centre. There's regularly proposals for new extensions, but at the moment it looks like all of them are on ice down to lack of funding. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_town_tramway_systems_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_town_tramway_systems_i...
gsnedders 10y ago
In Scotland at least the abysmal project management of the (new) Edinburgh trams has likely killed any chance of more new tram lines in Scotland (I don't think any party has new tram lines in their manifesto for next month's elections). For those who don't know, it was budgeted at £375 million, and eventually opened in a cut-back scheme (with about half the route cancelled) at £776 million.
- pjc50 10y ago
  It was something of an administrative nightmare in that it was paid for by Holyrood and project managed by the local council. There's an inquiry into the causes of the failure which has also run over budget, absurdly. But I don't think it's entirely dead, there are still noises about extending it into Leith sometime in the next decade. Meanwhile the Borders railway appears to have opened successfully - and is immediately full at commuting times. I hope they left enough space to double track it.
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    > Meanwhile the Borders railway appears to have opened successfully - and is immediately full at commuting times. I hope they left enough space to double track it. Not for all of it was — there's certainly provision in places, but there's also parts where doubling would be incredibly expensive (the viaducts especially, where the maximum dimensions of the trains it has been built for are larger than it was originally built for, are inherently single-track now).
    - takno 10y ago
      Several of the completely new bridges were built with single track capacity as well. I suspect the government thought they were being a bit clever forcing Network Rail to shave a few million off the cost this way, but actually just not laying the second set of rails doesn't really save much so actually the savings came in places where they will cause a lot of pain later
    - martinald 10y ago
      There's passive provision (ie: at not a lot of extra cost - perhaps no real new infrastructure, not entirely sure) to run a 4tph service to Gorebridge + continue half of them to the rest of the line. I think a 4tph / 2tph service pattern is fine and future capacity could be gained by platform extensions + longer trains. I'd rather they 'value engineer' it to that level now than build a double track railway at significantly extra cost, and spend the ~£100m (educated guess) on other railway improvement projects for other areas (eg, the quad tracking of the ECML near Musselburgh to allow them a 2tph service - will cost around £100m for the various improvements).

Now, if only the tram lines would be rebuilt things would be a lot smoother (at least from a public transport perspective).

PaulRobinson 10y ago

Of course, many cities do have tram lines - Manchester's network is substantial, reuses abandoned railway lines in part, and has received a lot of investment in recent years including a project right now to put a second line across the city centre. Many are surprised to hear London has a tram line (South of the river, near Wimbledon), or that other towns have light rail schemes put back in within the last 20-40 years. Guided bus routes have also started to emerge: smooth, segregated routes that run every few minutes using relatively cheap, replaceable and potentially entirely green vehicles with less up-front planning, consultation and construction than a light or heavy rail solution. It's interesting to me that we seem to be going into an age where people value public transport more and more, but I suspect that's because VED and other costs associated with running a car in the UK have risen so sharply in recent years.

vidarh 10y ago
Only about 11 currently operating, apparently [1]. As for London, Wimbledon is one of four termini. The vast majority of the system is in Croydon, including loops through the town centre. There's regularly proposals for new extensions, but at the moment it looks like all of them are on ice down to lack of funding. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_town_tramway_systems_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_town_tramway_systems_i...

gsnedders 10y ago

In Scotland at least the abysmal project management of the (new) Edinburgh trams has likely killed any chance of more new tram lines in Scotland (I don't think any party has new tram lines in their manifesto for next month's elections). For those who don't know, it was budgeted at £375 million, and eventually opened in a cut-back scheme (with about half the route cancelled) at £776 million.

pjc50 10y ago
It was something of an administrative nightmare in that it was paid for by Holyrood and project managed by the local council. There's an inquiry into the causes of the failure which has also run over budget, absurdly. But I don't think it's entirely dead, there are still noises about extending it into Leith sometime in the next decade. Meanwhile the Borders railway appears to have opened successfully - and is immediately full at commuting times. I hope they left enough space to double track it.
- gsnedders 10y ago
  > Meanwhile the Borders railway appears to have opened successfully - and is immediately full at commuting times. I hope they left enough space to double track it. Not for all of it was — there's certainly provision in places, but there's also parts where doubling would be incredibly expensive (the viaducts especially, where the maximum dimensions of the trains it has been built for are larger than it was originally built for, are inherently single-track now).
  - takno 10y ago
    Several of the completely new bridges were built with single track capacity as well. I suspect the government thought they were being a bit clever forcing Network Rail to shave a few million off the cost this way, but actually just not laying the second set of rails doesn't really save much so actually the savings came in places where they will cause a lot of pain later
  - martinald 10y ago
    There's passive provision (ie: at not a lot of extra cost - perhaps no real new infrastructure, not entirely sure) to run a 4tph service to Gorebridge + continue half of them to the rest of the line. I think a 4tph / 2tph service pattern is fine and future capacity could be gained by platform extensions + longer trains. I'd rather they 'value engineer' it to that level now than build a double track railway at significantly extra cost, and spend the ~£100m (educated guess) on other railway improvement projects for other areas (eg, the quad tracking of the ECML near Musselburgh to allow them a 2tph service - will cost around £100m for the various improvements).