Not motoring
Keeping up with Croydon
Gavin Stamp
The last of Glasgow's majestic double- decker trams ran from Dalmuir West to Auchenshuggle in 1962 and the historian, Charles Oakley, concluded his little book called The Last Tram that 'it would almost certainly be a delusion to suppose that, after the last car has run on route No. 9, tramcars will ever run in the streets of Glasgow again.'
I have quoted this before as events seemed to be proving Oakley wrong: Glas- gow wants to follow Manchester and Sheffield and reintroduce trams into the city centre by building a new, light railway system. But the plans prepared by the Strathclyde Passenger Transport Authori- ty have suddenly been derailed: after a nine-week inquiry, parliamentary commis- sioners have decided that, 'the need for the order has not been established and that the preamble to the provisional order has not been proved.' So perhaps Charles Oakley was right after all. The parliamentary commissioners are not obliged to give reasons for their deci- sion, against which there is no right of appeal. Councillor Charles Gordon, chair- man of the SPTA, was suitably outraged that, 'the city has missed out on the chance of a 21st-century mode of transport which had the overwhelming and enthusiastic support of the public'. And, at first, as a tramophile longing to see rails laid down again in the grand stone street of the for- mer second city, I shared his outrage that four commissioners — three of them peers! — could deny to Glasgow what Birming- ham and even wretched Croydon is work- ing towards. No doubt the all-powerful Scottish car lobby had nobbled them.
But then sanity began to emerge on the letters page of the Herald, pointing out that the good commissioners had not rejected the notion of trams in the streets of Glas- gow in principle, but merely this particular proposal. And while one opponent of the revived tram had been — monstrously the newly privatised Strathclyde Buses company which operates the filthy, ugly, orange vehicles that pollute Glasgow's streets, other objectors had included the Socialist Environment and Resources Association and a numbet of local resi- dents concerned about the impact of the trams on Kelvingrove Park. And it also emerged that the sensible advice of the Scottish Tramway and Transport Society had been ignored. So much for public con- sultation: perhaps it was Councillor Gor- don who was wrong.
I had first assumed that the trams were going to trundle down Sauchiehall Street again, past all the shops and the Willow Tearoom and the McLellan Galleries. But no: the SPTA had decided that they would run along St Vincent Street which largely houses offices. And then there was the unfortunate route through Kelvingrove Park. As in Manchester, part of the pro- posed light railway system was going to use existing railway lines, namely the old Glas- gow Central Railway — a largely subter- ranean branch of the Caledonian Railway to Maryhill and Dawsholm which finally closed in 1964. James Miller's enchanting station with its minarets at the entrance to the Botanic Gardens has long gone, but the tunnel underneath survives and was to be reopened. But why on earth did the SPTA not also propose to use the other tunnel ready and waiting under Kelvingrove Park, so avoiding damage to a fine Victorian landscape?
But the greatest objection to the SPTA tram route was strategic. Presumably the large investment in new trams is to be justi- fied by the ability of a clean and efficient system to tempt commuters to leave their cars behind. Yet, by running from Maryhill in the north-west to grim Easterhouse in the east, the new trams would simply have connected two areas with a low car owner- ship and already reasonably well served by buses, so making comparatively little impact on Glasgow's traffic problems. It is almost as if the SPTA plan was a cosmetic gesture in a city completely in thrall to the private car and to Strathclyde's — now Glas- gow's — all-powerful Roads Department.
After the rejection of what now seem to me to have been flawed proposals for new trams, there were calls for the abolition of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act of 1936 under which they were exam- ined. Certainly, it may seem anomalous that while the (re-)laying of tracks down a city's streets requires the approval of parliamen- tary commissioners — and the construction of even a very short length of new railway needs an Act of Parliament —new roads can be built with comparative ease. Indeed, the extension to the M74 on which Councillor Gordon and his colleagues are so keen and which will cut a swathe through the south side of Glasgow, destroying listed buildings and working businesses, has so far only needed planning permission and may not even go to public inquiry. And, after all, pub- lic inquiries have often proved an unsatisfac- tory forum in which to argue the case against a new road strongly backed by the Depart- ment of Transport.
In fact, I think I have rather more confi- dence in the judgment of four parliamen- tary commissioners under the chairmanship of the Earl of Mar than in that of a single government-appointed inspector at a pub- lic inquiry. Still I hope that the SPTA will not sulk and give up, but bounce back with better proposals. Glasgow needs trams — besides, the city cannot possibly be upstaged by Croydon.
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