‘Trams should no longer be a relic of history but a lesson in possibilities’

Bristol’s extensive tram network was doomed even before German bombing raids in the Second World War destroyed many of the lines and power systems that the vehicles relied on to travel across the city.

If your daily lockdown walk takes you in the vicinity of St Mary Redcliffe, head to the churchyard off Colston Parade.

A tram rail has been embedded here since April 11 1941 when it was thrown over houses after a bomb exploded nearby in the infamous Good Friday raid.

At its height, more than 200 trams ran on Bristol’s tram network stretching from Knowle in the south to Horfield in the north, from the Portway in the west to Kingswood in the east.

One route went from Redland to Eastville, another from Cheltenham Road to Staple Hill, another from Bristol Bridge to Bedminster Down.

Bristol’s tram network in 1911 – image: Bristol Archives

This is what Bristol’s tram network would look like today:

Were these trams criss-crossing Bristol more than 100 years ago the peak of our city’s transport infrastructure?

Before Dr Beeching’s sweeping cuts in the 1960s, there were 13 more railway stations in Bristol than there are today including at Ashton Gate, St Phillip’s and Fishponds.

The short-sightedness of many of these cuts can be seen in the current planning to reopen railway stations.

By 2023, a new Ashley Down station could be built on the site of the previous Ashley Hill station; campaigners have formally submitted a bid to reopen St Anne’s Park station; while funding has been secured to reopen the Portishead line with a new £10m station at Henbury also forming part of the MetroWest Phase Two project.

If we do not want to see our city grinding to a halt in the decades to come, bold ideas need to be put forward.

Bristol mayor Marvin Rees should be commended for recently revealing that motorists will be charged after all to enter a Clean Air Zone (CAZ) in the city centre.

The CAZ will cover a small area of central Bristol in which older, more polluting commercial vehicles and polluting private cars will have to pay to drive.

It is currently unknown how much drivers would be charged to enter the zone, which if deemed a success is only likely to expand outwards.

Improving Bristol’s transport woes will also save lives. There are illegal levels of air quality where I live in the city centre, so any reduction in polluting vehicles will undoubtedly save lives.

Bristol’s transport network needs a radical rethink. Introducing a CAZ is one way to do it and there are many others which cannot please everyone but which will improve the lives of us all in the long-term.

Bring back trams, reopen railway stations, build more segregated cycle lanes, charge drivers to enter more of the the city centre.

Any new infrastructure must extend into neighbouring South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Bath & North East Somerset because transport schemes cannot stop at unitary authority borders.

Bristol’s tram network should no longer be a relic of history but a lesson in the possibilities of transport interconnectivity across the Bristol area.

Martin Booth is the Editor of Bristol24/7. Main photo: Bristol Archives

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