Wednesday, 13 March 2024

Making A Case For New Rapid Transit Lines (Including New Tram Lines) By Increasing Bus Priority Measures

To tackle traffic congestion and pollution, London is in dire need of more bus priority measures and light rail services, including trams (also known as streetcars for North American readers), as it will help improve the economy.

The first generation of trams operated from 1860 to 1952, serving most of the London County Council area except for the west end of London. The type of trams London had were double-deck.

Then came trolleybuses, which served the London Passenger Transport Area from 1931 until 1962, as they were replaced by the diesel-engined AEC Routemaster.

You can read more about the tram and trolleybus history in London on the London Transport Museum website.

It has been reported that the plan to build the Sutton link tramway has unfortunately been deferred once again due to funding issues.

The early proposal for the Sutton link trams and other rapid transit proposals (such as Cross River Transit) was mentioned in the ‘New ideas for Public Transport in outer London’ document back in the mid-1990s, which is also mentioned in my previous article responding to Transport for London’s Bus Action Plan.

Intermediate Modes in London: initial corridors for review

We take a look at the Mayor’s Question Time answers by Ken Livingstone during the early 2000s about the Sutton link.

Meeting: MQT on 13 September 2000
Reference: 2000/0220
Question by: Andrew Pelling

Tramlink Extension

One of the options for extension of Tramlink is a route to Sutton via St.Helier.

Please could you outline, in very general terms, the alignment of such a route.

Answer
Date: Sunday 17 September 2000

There are certainly possibilities to extend the Tramlink system, however at the moment, these are concepts rather than specific routes " there are no lines on a map yet. In the next year, Transport for London will work with both Tram Track Croydon Ltd (the concessionaire) and Sutton and Merton councils to explore the possibilities for extending the system. There would of course be public consultation on the proposals before making any firm decisions. If the system did extend to Sutton, we would certainly consider an alignment which served the people of St Helier."

Meeting: MQT on 23 January 2002
Reference: 2002/0022
Question by: Andrew Pelling

Tram link to Sutton

I was grateful for your comments at the last Mayor's Question Time about your commissioning of a study into extending the Tram to Sutton. Could you advise me as to when the study was commissioned, who is undertaking the study and the likely starting and finishing point of the extension?

Answer
Date: Monday 28 January 2002

Transport for London is examining a number of potential extensions to Tramlink in accordance with my Transport Strategy commitment. Preliminary planning work by TfL, in consultation with the boroughs, commenced in Autumn 2001. Additional consultancy support (Oscar Faber Maunsell) has been engaged this month to complete the study team. The study is designed to enable TfL to advise me of its findings this Summer.

Two potential Sutton tramway extensions are being studied amongst the options. Both would be primarily highway-based alignments. One would link Sutton with Morden Road via St Helier Hospital and Morden station. The other would run via Mitcham Junction and Mitcham town centre to a Tooting terminus.

I have taken a look at High Street, Angel Hill and Rose Hill in Sutton; unfortunately, they are lacking bus lanes and priority measures.

Google Earth view of Sutton with bus lanes

The Sutton Link should start as a Bus Rapid Transit/Transport (BRT) service with bus lanes and priority measures to increase capacity by using tram-style bendy buses, as they proposed in the consultation back in 2019. This will help make the case to convert the BRT service to trams by building rails and overhead wires in place of the BRT infrastructure.

There are also other proposals that I have posted on Twitter/X.

I’d also mention the Speedbus proposal from the 1970s, which I suggested in my previous article, along with reinstating the transit schemes from the 2000s. I also mentioned increasing bus priority measures for the Superloop express bus services.

London needs a proper Bus Rapid Transit/Transport system where the majority of the routes use bus lanes and priority measures, as this is beneficial for emergency services to improve their response times and save lives.

The current structure and responsibility for the roads in Greater London are complicated because TfL has responsibility for the Strategic Road Network and the infrastructure such as street furniture, bridges, tunnels, etc.

TfL’s Strategic Road Network in cyan with bus lanes in red.

The Strategic Road Network, also known as the red routes, is where traffic is not allowed to stop on these roads except in an emergency such as vehicle breakdowns.

You can read the House of Commons research briefing on bus lanes, priority measures and ‘red routes’ from 2010.

For TfL to have full control of the road infrastructure, this will require changes to the legislation in Parliament. Although Section 14B of the Highways Act 1980 (amended by the GLA Act 1999) enables the Mayor to direct TfL to take control of any road "where expedient", but the order has to be signed off by the Secretary of State.

Bus lanes, priority measures, and larger roads, including dual carriageways, can provide opportunities to create new tram lines to increase capacity and improve accessibility.

The expansion of tramways may be expensive, but it can help improve the economy by:
• Increasing supply chains for steelworks (for rails), rolling stock, etc.
• New job creation for manufacturing, engineering, construction, staff for tram services, etc.
• Once built, the new services will help reduce journey times to discourage car usage.
• It helps reduce the strain on the National Grid with the help of overhead lines for trams and trolleybuses.

This is why public transport strongly interlinks with the economy; without it, it can cause serious issues for the economy; hence, it is part of the Critical National Infrastructure.

The expansion of the bus and light rail network for London is needed, which includes cross-boundary connections, hence the reason I suggested restoring the London Passenger Transport Area.

As for other projects, such as the Silvertown tunnel, which is almost complete, and the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge, which has never been built.

I suggest that all new crossings and major infrastructure projects should be prioritised to improve public transport to tackle pollution and congestion. You can read my comment on the National Highways consultation in my tweet below.

To achieve a gold BRT certification by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), the BRT scheme should be fully segregated from general road traffic and meet other requirements such as multi-door boarding, branding, platform-level boarding, etc.

I can't see how it is achievable for London, as it is a city built since Roman times with loads of narrow roads. To build a fully segregated rapid transit service such as BRT or light rail/trams, it will require new infrastructure by elevating the roads or train tracks, or below ground with new tunnels, along with new stations.

The proposal for the West London Trams (Uxbridge to White City) is semi-obsolete because the SL8 (formerly 607) already serves the Uxbridge Road (A4020) corridor. Although I suggest they should use tram-style bendy buses to increase capacity, improve accessibility, and provide faster loading and unloading times at bus stops with open boarding (which will require increased revenue protection).

Tram-style bendy buses with SL8 route branding
 

At present, TfL has revived the Greenwich Waterfront Transit, which is currently proposed as the Bus Transit using dedicated infrastructure from Woolwich to Abbey Wood via Thamesmead, as part of the proposal to extend the DLR to Beckton Riverside and Thamesmead. So far, there is no proposal to reinstate the Thames Gateway Bridge, which would have been useful to link the Superloop routes SL2 and SL3 at Thamesmead.

Advantages and disadvantages of a tramway system.

The advantage is, increased capacity, as trams have larger lengths, and improved accessibility for the disabled, wheelchair users, and parents with buggies.

The disadvantage is that when a tram service gets disrupted, most of the line gets disrupted and delayed. As compared to buses, they can overtake or divert the bus to another road and rejoin the route.

To build a new tram line, not only does it need new rails and overhead infrastructure, but there should also be a place to store the trams and maintain them at their depots. As compared to buses, their depots can be anywhere on the route, but they should be close to the routes they serve to reduce dead mileage.

To conclude, I would like to see BRT and light rail (including trams) proposed and built everywhere, not just in Greater London, to improve the economy.

To wrap up the article, I show you the Mayor’s Question Time answer by Sadiq Khan about dead mileage for London’s buses.

Reference: 2020/0370
Date: Thursday 20 February 2020

Bus operators do not claim back dead mileage from Transport for London (TfL). They work out their overall costs and factor these into the price they can competitively bid to operate a bus route. Higher dead mileage, because of greater distances from garages to the start and end point of routes, may lead to a decision by the operator not to submit a bid for the route in the first place. TfL’s iBus vehicle tracking system looks at live mileage to enable it to understand how well operators perform against their route schedules.

Bus operators can potentially offset some fuel costs through the discretionary Bus Services Operators Grant (BSOG), but this is administered through central Government, not TfL.

I suggest that you read CityTransportInfo's article on Light Rail And Compatibility With Street Traffic.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter/X by searching for @CLondoner92 or by clicking on the direct link to my Twitter/X page here. I'm also on BlueSky and Mastodon.

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