Policy Background: Trams in the 1860s
In 1860, an American businessman named George Francis Train built the UK’s first tram system. It was only a mile and a half long, and it was in the Wirral, but despite these downsides it was a success. Horse drawn trams were faster and smoother than bumping across cobbles in a carriage. Having proved the concept, G.F. Train built tramways in Liverpool, and then in London. While trying to build London’s first mass transit system, he was arrested for digging up Uxbridge Road without permission.
Trams, however, were popular. G.F. Train’s early horse drawn tramways were the forerunner to a network of trams that by their height in 1928 spanned almost every town and city in the UK and saw around 4 billion individual journeys a year.
Regulatory frameworks were established for building tramways in the 1860s but each line needed a separate Act of Parliament, so development was slow. To speed it up, a standardised system was adopted under the Tramways Act 1870.
The Tramways Act 1870
The Tramways Act established a regulatory framework for the construction, maintenance, and operation of tramways. Its key provisions were:
With the approval of local authorities, tram companies could lay track along public roads.
If a tramway crossed multiple local authorities, the Board of Trade could approve the whole thing if two-thirds of its length were within local authorities which approved.
The tram company was responsible for the maintenance of the road surface between the tracks and a certain distance on either side, and if there were lines running in both directions then for the whole space between the lines.
The tram company was responsible for the restoration of roads back to normal if it decided to remove sections of tramway.
There were plenty of other provisions, however these are the key parts that could be applied to the modern day.
The Tramways Act was not a perfect piece of legislation. It had a key flaw in that tram companies purchased a 21-year concession to run trams, and that at the end of the concession the local authority had the right to purchase trams, horses, and track at its material valuation. This “scrap iron clause” disincentivised continued investment towards the end of the concession.
The Act did work however. By 1880 there were tramways in 57 towns and cities in Britain. For comparison, there are currently seven tram networks.
The interesting point of the Act is the relationship between the tram company and the owner of the road (largely local authorities by the 1870s). The key elements of this relationship are that:
Little consideration is given to the trams themselves, which are not viewed very differently to any other road vehicle.
Tramways do not disturb other traffic, however the tram company is responsible for maintaining the section of the road around their tracks. This requirement ensured that public roads couldn’t be turned into exclusive tramways through gradual surface degradation.
This relationship is very different to the way trams are built today in the UK. For one, all modern tram systems are in some way owned and controlled by the local authority. There is today no sense of trams as just another road vehicle, just one which happens to have rails. The reason for this is manifold but two considerations are that tramways are very expensive today – roughly £35-£100 million per kilometre – and that they are powered by overhead electric wires. Overhead electric power came in around the same time as local council control of trams became the norm. The wires were one of the common aesthetic complaints against trams in the early 20th century, and make it clearer that the tram is different from another road vehicle. The Tramways Act however was designed for horse drawn or steam powered trams.
Very Light Rail
Very Light Rail (VLR) is a new way of building and powering trams which has seen successful tests in Coventry over the last year.
The Coventry VLR uses battery powered vehicles, so does away with the need for overhead electric wires. More importantly it uses prefabricated lightweight track which only requires 30cm foundations. This track can be laid over existing utilities under the road, and is also able to be dismantled and reused in a different location. The cost is around £10 million per kilometre. This is still not cheap, but it is between a tenth and a third of the price of conventional trams.
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Importantly, VLR is more akin to the Victorian tramways. There are no overhead electric wires, and track can be installed along existing roads much more quickly.
How to use the Tramways Act today
Modern tramways in the UK like the Manchester Metrolink or Croydon Tramlink are made up of three different types of line:
Newly built street running, where trams and other vehicles (including pedestrians and cyclists) share a space.
Newly built separated track, where trams run separately to other road users, though often alongside a road.
Existing suburban railway track connected into the system, usually to cheaply expand the network from a city centre into suburbs.
Street Running
Currently, the most expensive form by far is street running. Compared to 20th century trams, modern trams do a lot less in city centres. There are just a couple of lines through Manchester centre, where there used to be several going in different directions.
VLR can bring down the cost of street running considerably. The aspects of the Tramways Act described offer a clear and tested regulatory framework for private companies to build street running trams. The key shift should be towards considering trams a more restricted type of road vehicle, rather than a train in an inconvenient place for traffic. VLR track does not stop drivers or pedestrians, and is only a danger to cyclists, however plenty of cities in Britain and across the world already manage to have both trams and a lot of cycling. With this shift in attitude towards trams, private tram companies installing modular, removable track to provide public transport, and maintaining parts of the road while they do so, is a clear benefit all-round.
The modular sections of VLR track also largely conform to the amount of the road surface that the Tramways Act required tram companies to maintain.
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It’s bullish and Victorian, and a modern Tramways Act would require permitted development rights to be baked into the system to overcome NIMBY council objections. However, technology is improving so that public transport can once again be the realm of entrepreneurial businesses rather than top-down and over-expensive government schemes. If this is possible then it ought to be permitted through easy regulation. So long as trams or their tracks don’t interfere with other road users, why shouldn’t they have permitted development rights? Once the track is there it’s not all that different from driving a car.
Trails to Rails
Not all trams should be street running, because otherwise the Treasury is right in sneering that they are just buses that can’t turn left. The advantage of modern tramways is that they join up to abandoned suburban lines, and in places use new lines that do not follow roads, allowing for faster speeds and no other traffic. Here there is another very clear place where the principles of the Tramways Act can deliver.
The birthplace of modern trams in the UK is a place students and alumni of the University of Manchester will all know very well. The Fallowfield Loop is a former railway in south Manchester which closed to passengers in 1958. In the late 1980s trains borrowed from the DLR were run along it to prove the concept of what in 1992 became the Manchester Metrolink. The line itself was taken up before Metrolink was built, and today it is a cycle and walking path.
Places like the Fallowfield Loop are obvious places to build VLR under the principles of the Tramways Act. There have been suggestions to extend the Metrolink along the Fallowfield Loop for some time now, but building trams should not come at the cost of taking away valuable cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. The concept from the Tramways Act, that track can be put down so long as it doesn’t interfere with other road users, could be used to rebuild closed branch lines which are still rights of way. Tram companies would be obliged to maintain a cycle path, but also be able to run trams. The exact nature of the safety commitments here could be decided upon in a way to benefit all parties – trams and bicycles already share roads, so they should be able to share former railways as well.
Existing Track
The cheapest way to build a transit system of course is to use what you already have and make it work in a different way. This is largely how the Tyneside Metro, the Liverpool Metro, and the South Wales Metro (coming 2026) all work. Not to mention large sections of the Manchester Metrolink. VLR trains have been designed to run on standard gauge and tests were run on ordinary railway track. Removing the need for overhead electric wires just makes the conversion of existing track into a metro system cheaper.
There is no real use for the Tramways Act in this sort of development, however the conversion of existing track can clearly work with the other two types of tram/light rail development described above which could be better regulated under the principles of the Tramways Act. At the very least, street running and existing lines can be used to create through running, a feature missed by most mass transit in the UK.
Conclusion
Several key principles of the Tramways Act 1870 should be brought into a regulatory framework for the private development of Very Light Rail. The useful principles are:
Tramways do not interfere with other road traffic, and VLR does not need overhead wires, therefore VLR trams on street-running sections of track should be broadly considered road vehicles.
Based on the idea that VLR trams are just road vehicles that need tracks, putting tracks in should have Permitted Development Rights under a set of clear maintenance responsibilities for tram companies so as not to impede other traffic.
This should apply not only to roads but to other rights of way, again so long as the intended user of the right of way (i.e. cyclists, pedestrians, etc) remains able to use it with the same or greater ease.
VLR may not yet be cheap enough for private companies to consider it worth the investment. However by establishing a regulatory framework of permitted development, if prices do come down to the point where there is a clear business case for building private tramways, then they will be built. We have already been in a similar situation, and the Tramways Act 1870 provides, in broad strokes, the model for permitting private tramway development.