Yes, they probably do if the tram offers a better service. It is interesting coming through Mitcham Junction in south west London. There side by side you have the platforms for Croydon Tramlink and Southern and First Capital Connect services.
They feel like platforms in different worlds. The rail side is an old Victorian, enclosed building where the heavy, main line trains rattle and wheeze to a halt. The tram side is open and modern and the trams whizz in and out, quickly picking up speed. Interesting the trams run on a track bed of an old railway line. Maybe that thinking needs much more radical expansion?
The moves towards continental-style tram trains in the UK have been painfully slow. However, conversion of rail track to light rail use can have it’s advantages as the success of the Croydon tram shows.
The Wimbledon Loop services in the area are mooted to all now terminate at Blackfriars once the new Thameslink service pattern comes in. In an ideal world all or at least some would continue to offer journey opportunities through London. However, capacity constraints loom large.
What will the Wimbledon Loop get in return for its severance? More trains? Faster trains (it is chronically slow at present) or, more radical – tram trains and totally revamped stations to go with them?
Passengers who travel with their bikes will certainly care. The tram-train trial in South Yorkshire will not carry bikes, and this is likely to have a knock-on for future conversions, where bike-rail users, who may well have been the mainstay of the semi-rural lines which are likely to have been converted, will find that they can no longer travel by this mode. (bearing in mind that the more isolated stations on these lines are not good places to leave a bike locked up) Passengers on other lines that have been converted from heavy rail, such as the Manchester Metrolink, have had the right to travel bikes removed. Even those who travel with folding bikes such as Bromptons will find that the storage space for these on trams is limited.
One wonders about the attraction of “open and modern” platforms on a wet winter morning. The main negative feature of trams is the lack of bicycle carriage.
There is one notable failure for every light rail system introduced in the UK, despite hollow promises not to disenfranchise commuters and others combining a rail journey with a cycle connection for the first and final mile. No surveys on the Oldham line to assess the numbers on the old rail service, and certainly nothing considered for the North Woolwich-Stratford (DLR) or the Croydon Lines (Tramlink) nor the T&W Metro – especially the Sunderland extension where ironically traincrew lost the facility to use bikes to get to their depot using the trains for those living further away. Presumably this latter created a car parking problem at the depot as drivers switched from bike & rail.
The UK trams operation is almost the inverse of what happens almost everywhere else in the world, where the bicycle is recognised as the way to deliver passengers to the tram stops. A review for Manchester’s Metrolink, managed to miss a report presented to them by local campaigners, along with 2 significant reviews from the US – covering practice wiorld-wide and then mis-interpret figures from other documents in a way that practically pre-determined the outcome when it was presented to the councillors considering the issue. Manchester will soon have a homogenous fleet of the same type of trams that carry cycles in substantial numbers in Koln and other cities with no problems reported, and yet another rail route on which many used to travel with cycles, but still no sign of change or trial of cycle carriage – but those trams are not that full outside the city centre cordon for much of the day.
Even more incredible is the fact that TfL actually commissioned a report from TTK, the Karlsruhe consultancy recognised as a leading authority on trams and tram-train operation, and in 2007 TTK recommended a pilot scheme for cycle carriage on the Croydon system. 5 years on nothing has happened, and the newly built Bergen trams, which were diverted to Croydon, to provide an early delivery (they were not immediatley required for Bergen), are designed for and do carry cycles on the Bergen network. The original vehicles delivered to Croydon are the same basic model as used in Koln, and the new delivery are the same trams as delivered to Bergen, so what is stopping the option of a trial?
Some well known figures riding bikes have been refused travel on T&W Metro, voicing their incredulity at being refused the use of a practically empty train. Local kids however do seem to be able to get on board with their BMX machines, and enjoy independence from parental transport that this provides.
DLR likewise has cut the cycle on rail access to North Woolwich, but also opened 2 convenient river crossings – not available for cyclists, but with the Greenwich foot tunnel closures and work no one even thought to offer cycle carriage between Greenwich and Mud Chute. Likewise the Woolwich-Silvertown connection offers a useful crossing potentially offering a wider spread of service, and a contingency for the Woolwich ferry.
Of course this total block also discriminates against a number of PRM who actually use cycles as mobility aids, making them independent of the need to call on vehicles and drivers to reach rail, tram and even bus stops, and the cost – to their personal budget of a dial a ride booking , and through the cost to the provider of maintaining a fleet and drivers available for use. Whilst the case can be made that a cycle entirely meets the specified detail of a Class 1 Invalid Carriage when adapted and used by a disabled person, it does become a tedious argument to keep pressing rail (and bus) operators to treat the machine as equivalent to a wheelchair, as long as it can fit in to the space provided for same. By contrast a cyclist with just one leg flagged down by a police officer in a pedestrian zone in Germany was immediately waved on when it was clear he had just one leg – with the comment “Ah Rohlstuhl” (wheelchair) With luck we might see some change wrought by the next fortnight as the nation wakes up to how much can be independently achieved by almost anyone given the right tools for the task.
Trains have inherited a lot from their former role as common carrier, and if trains are to be trams for shorter local routes trams should embrace similar features.
There is still much talk about an “integrated transport system” in the UK but it is all a myth……….passengers who want to use cycles to get to/from the train/tram station will certainly prefer TRAINS, because they should be able to travel with their cycle (at least outside peak periods) on trains. The trams around Croydon (now run by that huge but unaccountable juggernaut, Transport for London [TfL]) still ban NON-folded cycles at ALL times, despite these trams drifting about with only a handful of passengers outside peak periods.
Speed is also an issue with trains much faster than trams despite many tramlines using former railway trackbeds. For example, I can catch a ‘proper’ train from East Croydon stn* which can take me 11 miles non-stop to London Bridge stn in only 13 mins (av. speed = 50 mph). If I catch a tram from East Croydon stn, it will take approx 30 mins to travel the 16 stops to Wimbledon (only 8 miles, so av. speed = 16 mph).
Croydon trams DO work in terms of having step-free access on and off the tram vehicles, which makes wheelchair/pushchair access easier (and would make cycle access easier if only they weren’t banned from carriage on trams !), whereas trains still require advance notification to get some staff person to use a manual ramp to get (usually wheelchairs) passengers on or off a train at a station.
Trams seem to nearly always provide an inferior service for anything more than a 10 minute journey.
Certainly the Manchester Metrolink routes running on old heavy rail routes provide a slower, quickly overcrowded, uncomfortable (even if you are very lucky and get a seat), more expensive sxervice than the trains they replaced. This is in addition to the access problems for the disabled and cyclists.
When travelling to Manchester I drive 5 miles to a mainline rail station instead of 2 miles to the nearest tram stop to save 15 minutes on my journey time and about 15% of the cost including fuel and parking for an infinitely more comfortable journey.