Tram wonder

Published on 20/07/2012 00:00

Like Dickens’s Mr Gradgrind, I am attached to facts, so found some of Ken Houston’s statements in his “bus into the future” article (18 July) odd.

These include France overdoing trams in the 1990s “before the then president, Jacques Chirac, called a halt to government funding in 2001”. Hmm.

Only three traditional trams existed in 1980, in Marseilles, Lille and St Etienne. A further five were added by 2000.

By 2014, 31 systems will be in operation, plus 13 routes in Paris suburbs.

A plethora indeed, and that’s not counting the tram-trains – pioneered in the German city of Karlsruhe – which are taking over and boosting regional rail.

Buses have their place. Diesel-belching “bankers’ tanks” must be taxed to subsidise them. Mr Houston cites 24,000 daily passengers on a Nantes busway. Good. But Tramline 1 in Montpellier, opened in 2000, shifts 120,000.

Being electric, trams can be powered by clean hydro, solar, wind, tidal-power and even by 
regenerative braking. Scotland pioneered electric rail; its trams were once the wonder of the world. What went wrong?

Christopher Harvie

Scottish Association for Public Transport

High Cross Avenue

Melrose