IT ISN’T so long ago that trams were considered, well... a bit old-fashioned. They were torn out of the heart of almost every major town and city centre with foolhardy gusto during the 1920s and 1930s as Britain spent most of the last century convinced the motor car would forever be the future of transport.

How wrong we were.

As Worcester residents know all too well, our addiction to cars has left today’s city streets a congested, polluted mess, with the environmental impact of so much burnt-up petrol now becoming depressingly clear.

And so it is that, almost exactly 80 years to the day after Worcester’s last streetcar made its final journey from the old tramway depot in St John’s, trams are experiencing an unlikely urban renaissance.

Powered by electricity, they emit no fumes and are viewed by the public as a modern, comfortable and quicker alternative to the bus.

The revolution began on the continent and arrived in England with Manchester’s Metrolink in 1992, which has proved so popular that the service was extended in 2000 and is about to see its capacity doubled with three new lines.

Manchester was followed by Sheffield, Croydon, the Black Country/Birmingham and Nottingham, with further schemes now under way in Edinburgh and London.

So it should not have come as a complete surprise when Worcestershire County Council’s cabinet member in charge of transport, Derek Prodger, revealed in a recent interview that the county’s transport chiefs are considering trams as a possible solution to Worcester’s own congestion problem.

Worcester’s new generation of trams, however, would come with a very significant twist.

“We are being very proactive about a ‘tram-train’ system for Worcester that would run on the existing rail tracks,” Coun Prodger said.

“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.”

‘Tram-trains’ are at the cutting edge of passenger technology, a hybrid form of light rail that can also run on normal train tracks.

Pioneered in Germany, they have the flexibility to enter cities along normal rail routes but then divert on to high-street rails to take passengers to their precise destination.

The Government is beginning a trial of the technology next year along a 37-mile stretch of railway between Sheffield and Huddersfield, which transport minister Ruth Kelly said “could herald the start of a new era in public transport”.

But is it a realistic vision for Worcester?

Paul Rowen, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the all-parliamentary group for light rail at Westminster, is convinced it is.

“It’s the way forward, because it works on the existing infrastructure,” he told your Worcester News.

“Clearly it’s not going to be right for every single place – the days of a tram system in every town centre are gone. But in conurbations like Worcestershire it would make perfect sense.

“Where you have a fairly large town or small city surrounded by countryside, and you have under-used rail tracks, it makes sense to use existing lines to get into the city centre.”

Mr Rowen said tram-train systems have the advantage of being far cheaper to introduce than a whole new transport network.

“The costs of building an entirely new set of infrastructure is obviously extremely high,” he said. “But if you can use a lot of the existing heavy rail track and just add to that, then clearly it’s a lot more affordable.”

The initial proposals being considered at County Hall do not appear to include extra tramlines to bring the service off the main line rails, offering instead a frequent service between the current city stations and further stops to the west of the centre – perhaps as far as Malvern.

“I think it’s certainly worth pursuing,” said Geoff Lusher, deputy chairman of pressure group TramForward.

“The initial trial up in Sheffield is only running on existing rail tracks.

“The solution for a city the size of Worcester would often be some sort of bus priority scheme, but when the streets are as narrow as yours there’s often no room for a bus lane.”

Any future attempt by County Hall to extend a tram-train system onto Worcester’s streets could run up against the same problem.

Indeed, the construction of Worcester’s first generation of tramlines in the early 1900s caused havoc across the city, disrupting communications and trade for several years and eventually earning the moniker the Worcester Electric Tramway Siege.

Something for the council to bear in mind, perhaps, when it makes its final decision on Worcester’s transport future.