Ask most people what they know about trams in London, and they'll say...
Erm... I know there's trams in Croydon.
But I think that's it..?
But did you know London used to have the biggest tram network in Europe?
So what happened to it? And why is Croydon the only part of London that has trams today?
♫ ♫ ♫
In oldy woldy times, when pretty much every mode of transport involved a horse
the best way of getting lots of people to the same place was an omnibus.
It was an uncomfortable and bumpy ride.
But a clever solution would be brought to London by an eccentric Victorian billionaire from America
whose name was George Francis Train.
Ha! Really?
Mr. Train's cleverly simple idea was to have omnibuses run on rails running along the street.
Mr. Train called them "trams".
Suddenly horses could carry much heavier loads, and go much faster and smoother
without giving everyone an orgasm.
This also made them affordable. Fares were set at the reasonable price of half a penny.
But other road users hated Train's trams.
The rails weren't recessed into the road, they stuck out good and proper
tripping up other vehicles and causing their wheels to break off.
But Train continued to build his tramways all over London without ever asking permission first.
Until he was stopped in his tracks in 1861 when he was arrested for "Breaking and injuring the Uxbridge Road".
From now on, any entrepreneur wanting to build tramways in...
From now on, any entrepreneur wanting to build tramways in London would have to bury their tracks
nicely into the road out of harm's way, and pay for the maintenance of the entire road surface.
This meant they now had to solve a rather sticky problem.
The average horse produced between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day.
It was famously predicted that if London's horse traffic continued to increase
it would be nine foot deep in horse manure by 1950.
The solution eventually came at the end of the nineteenth century
with a source that was safe, efficient, cheap, clean and reliable.
Electricity.
Electricity could be harvested either from cables above the road, or a conduit below.
Now that horses were no longer required and the trams were totally turd free
the network was able to grow and grow.
The London County Council built new connections linking working class suburbs with industrial areas
to help get people to work, making it the first truly public transport system in London.
They spread particularly far in south and east London
to areas which, by no coincidence at all, continue to be poorly served by the Tube.
Everywhere in London was getting electric trams.
Well, almost everywhere.
If you look at this map of the network, you'll see a vast area close to central London
where tram tracks fear to tread.
These were the posh parts of town: Kensington and Westminster.
Well, that's understandable I suppose. Westminster had historic streets.
And those overhead cables were so ugly.
That was the reason they weren't wanted here, right?
Wrong. Many trams used the conduit system with no visible cables.
So, if it wasn't cables, why were they so trams-phobic?
Trams, for want of a better expression, were for poor people.
Local campaigners complained that trams catered for "an undesirable class of person"
and successfully kept the entire central London area unbetrammed.
- Thank you, Sir.
Because of this, two vast networks north and south of the river remained unconnected.
Not because of the Thames, but because of toffs.
And it would stay like this until 1906, when a big and very impressive tramfrastructure project was built here.
Kingsway in Holborn was built by bulldozing straight down the middle of the slums.
The Victorians used to do this sort of thing all the time
but Kingsway was special because it came with its very own tram tunnel
something never done in London before, or since.
This small but truly unique piece of track linking north to south meant that by 1914
London had the biggest tram network in Europe. - Yaay!
But not for long. - Awww.
After WWI, money was tight, and tram rails were expensive to maintain.
So the tram operators began turning to a newer, cheaper piece of technology - the trolleybus.
Trolleybuses were like trams but on pneumatic tyres.
They didn't need rails, which meant they were quieter and more flexible
and they could overtake things, like this dick.
It was the beginning of the end for the tram. And the middle of the beginning for the trolleybus.
But alas, alack, London's trolleybuses were not long for this world.
One person whose fault this was, was Minister for Transport Ernest Marples
the man responsible for provisional driving licences, MOTs, traffic wardens,
single yellow lines, double yellow lines, Doctor Beeching, and several affairs with prostitutes.
Marples wanted people driving more, partly because the car was a symbol for individual freedom
but partly because Marples's family ran a tarmac company.
Marples got councils to change their streets to make more room for cars
which meant cables had to be torn down.
London's vast network of trams and trolleybuses would need to be replaced by motor buses.
Until then, the idea of getting motor buses to take on such a big job was unthinkable.
Motor buses were small and heavy and noisy and inefficient.
But that would all change... * ding ding * in 1959.
The new Routemaster bus which was super efficient and ran on diesel
could carry almost as many people as a trolleybus, but had two massive advantages.
1. Drivers wouldn't have to worry about the trolley poles coming loose
and 2. They could overtake each other. In fact, they could go literally anywhere.
With diesel fuel now cheaper than ever, it was a no-brainer.
From 1959, Routemasters began replacing tram and trolleybus routes all over London.
The network's capacity was reduced slightly.
but since passenger numbers were dwindling anyway, nobody cared.
Well, lots of people cared and they were really upset about it. But nobody who mattered cared.
It was out with the... *electric motor noise*, and in with the... *diesel engine noise*
So is there anything left of London's tram and trolleybus network that you can still see today?
Well...
There are a few surviving tram sheds, some still with tram tracks in.
Eh.
There's a couple of trolley poles still there that are now used as lamp posts.
Ooh!
There's a bus route in west London that still uses the number 607, the same as the original trolley...
Boring!
And this building in Walthamstow has the word "tramway" on it.
So the answer is no, not really. Nothing impressive.
With one massive exception.
This... this...
This is what's left of the Kingsway Tunnel.
You can still see very very very clearly where the tram tunnel entrance used to be.
Sometimes they open it up for tours, sometimes they use it as an art gallery
but at the moment it's being used to help Crossrail construction.
Down at the other end, the entrance has been turned into the door of a night club
and the middle half has been turned into the Strand Underpass.
And so, the trams and trolleybuses had gone, and London forgot about them.
And so did the whole country.
Cities up and down the UK were ripping up their tram tracks and pulling down their trolley cables.
The only place in the country that kept its tram was Blackpool pleasure beach.
Trams, for decades, evoked images of nostalgia and the olden days.
- I used to take the tram for a farthing.
Even the word "tram" was funny.
- ...straight in front of a tram.
But then, something changed.
Traffic congestion was worsening,
Demand for public transport was increasing,
Pollution became a thing,
and trams, suddenly, all of a sudden, had gradually started to suddenly become appealing again.
Croydon in south London which had a growing town centre and no Tube
was the perfect place for a 21st century experiment.
For the first time in 48 years, trams were coming back.
These trams would be a fair bit different from the 20th century ones.
They were single, not double decker
And they were multiple articulated units. Which basically means they're bendy.
As well as running on the streets, the new trams would make use of bits of disused or underused railways
combining the on-street convenience of buses, with the separate-ness and speed of trains.
The Croydon Tramlink, opened in 2000, was an instant hit, attracting 15m passengers in its first year
and that number's kept going up ever since.
At around the same time, very similar tram schemes opened in Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield,
Birmingham, and Edinburgh. And don't get me started on the resurgence of trams in the rest of Europe.
So trams are very much back in business for the 21th century.
But what about London? Are there plans for any more new tram routes in London?
The Cross River Tramway, planned to open in 2016
was meant to run from Camden Town to Peckham/Brixton.
The route used Kingsway, but bafflingly had no intention of using the old Kingsway tunnel,
instead running on the street above.
The scheme had plenty of support, but not enough plenty of money. So it never happened.
Then there was the West London Tram
planned to run along one of London's busiest bus corridors from Shepherds Bush to Uxbridge.
But two burly men in suits holding a big sign were stood in the way
so this never happened either.
To be fair, a road like this isn't suitable for modern trams, and most of London isn't.
To dig up a street this narrow to build the tracks would be prohibiti-tively impractica-cactical.
Some campaigners tried to save the West London Tram by suggesting a compromise
where they just put the electricity cables up and make it a West London Trolleybus instead.
Personally, I think that would have been a brilliant idea.
A trolleybus is the best of both worlds: Cheaper and easier to build than a tram
but it still replaces noisy polluting buses.
In fact, come to think of it, why don't we do that everywhere?
London's more than 8,000 buses are a huge source of dangerous pollutey air that kills
that kills 9,500 people per year.
TfL have tried to make them greener, but the best they've been able to come up with
is a hybrid bus that uses its diesel engine a mere most of the time.
The bad news is, the technology for a 100% pollution-free bus that doesn't need cables at all
is not coming any time soon. So I say, let's get a groove on and hang those cables back up!
A modern trolleybus would only need cables on two thirds of its route
and those cable wouldn't need to be so spider webby anymore.
There's no avoiding it, those overhead wires would still be fugly
But it's not just technology that's moved on, it's our priorities too.
And if 21st century Londoners finally get to breathe clean air
then those hideous wires might end up looking quite beautiful.
- Hey do you want to hear my new podcast? - No.
Great! It's called "Mates Bants" with an 8 and a Z.
(very muffled, crackly, barely audible male chatting and laughing)
- The audio quality's really terrible. - Oh! I knew I was no good at recording podcasts.
I don't have the knowledge how to do it. I'm rubbish.
There there. I have a solution for you.
Why don't you sign up for a monthly subscription to Skillshare?
Skillshare is an online learning tool where you can take a course about how to make podcasts sound good
or if podcasts aren't the thing you want to get better at
there are courses about music production, or video editing
That's my favourite!
or animation. What's more, if you click the link in the description below
the first 500 of you will get Skillshare for free for the first two months.
Oh my gosh, thank you! How can I ever repay you?
Just under ten dollars per month should do it.
That's how much it costs for an annual subscription to Skillshare.
- When I say "skillsh", you say "air". Skillsh! - Air!
- Skillsh! - Air! - Skillsh! - Air!
... - Air!
- Ah, I didn't say "Skillsh" - Ohh!!