Plan for trams on existing lines

7:45am Monday 31st March 2008

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By Jack Blanchard »

TRAMS could soon be shunting people around Worcester and St John's under radical plans which would revolutionise city centre travel.

Your Worcester News can reveal that Worcestershire County Council's transport chiefs are currently investigating the idea of bringing experimental "tram-trains" to Worcester - continental-style trams that can travel on existing railway tracks, rather than requiring their own rails.

The idea is based on a scheme soon to be tried out in Sheffield, where five new trams have been bought in by the Department of Transport to run along a 37-mile stretch of railway line.

Now Derek Prodger, Worcestershire's councillor in charge of transport, says his team is assessing the feasibility of a similar scheme in the Faithful City.

Coun Prodger said: "We are being very proactive about a tram-train system for Worcester that would run on the existing rail tracks.

"It would run, I hope, from a new railway station up at Norton Parkway, down to Shrub Hill, across to Foregate Street, out to the old Henwick Halt in St John's and maybe further, and then back again.

"That's a piece of transport I want to introduce as part of the wider transport plan for the city. "We are seriously looking into this. It's very early days but that's a vision for the future."

Unlike normal trams - which use narrow-gauge track - tram-trains are standard gauge, allowing them to share track with mainline trains.

The Sheffield trial will run from 2010-2012, and if successful is expected to signal a number of similar schemes across England.

Transport minister Ruth Kelly said this month the trial "could herald the start of a new era in public transport".

Coun Prodger stressed Worcester will not see trams in the next three years, but said it was "a definite hope" the city would bid for Government funding for such a scheme after 2011.

The news will be particularly welcomed by residents of St John's, who earlier this year were thrilled to learn Worcester City Council was looking into the possibility of putting a small railway station on the old Kay's factory site at Bransford Road.

That plan was dropped this month due to a lack of support from the other rail authorities, but it appears trams may now be a more realistic long-term transport solution for the people of St John's.

• COMMENT: Trams idea certainly on right lines

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