Richard McComb: Why a street car is desired
Somewhere between Götaplatsen and Kungsportsplatsen, I saw the future – and realised it was the past.
I was travelling on a tram along one of the main thoroughfares in Gothenburg, returning from a night out at a restaurant. The temperature outside was -50C, or thereabouts, but inside the sky-blue-and-cream tram it was warm and toasty, clean and unthreatening. Methadone-free companions.
Why don’t we have something like this in central Birmingham?, I thought.
Like everything else I experienced in Gothenburg, courtesy of a visit with Marketing Birmingham, this tram, like all the others, ran with ruthless efficiency. Lay on this sort of affordable, efficient service in Brum and the travelling masses would bite your hand off.
It was my first experience of riding a tram. I think there is one in Birmingham that runs to Wolverhampton, but who wants to go to Wolverhampton, unless one has a court appointment or wants to bet on a nag? Put trams in places people want to get about in, like the city centre, and it would be a different matter.
A former colleague on the Birmingham Post, Terry Grimley, used to go into raptures about the wonders of tram travel. Terry, of course, was our dear arts editor so he was prone to emotional outbursts. When he explained, as he often did, sometimes through tears, that trams “represented the sparkling quintessence of humankind’s enduring right to a democratic fluidity of movement” I quietly scoffed and jangled the keys to my gas guzzler.
But I saw the light on Kungsportsavenyen; it was my Grimleyfication; I’ve gone overboard for getting on board. Swedish trams run frequently. Electronic boards tell you when the next one is due, and the one after that.
Unlike the digital boards at West Midlands Travel bus stops, the timings are accurate rather than concocted by a work experience lad at the central depot, one eye on Hollyoaks.
The Gothenburg trams even have names celebrating local legends, so if we had them here commuters could jump aboard Cat Deeley, Robert Plant or Ed Doolan.
Sadly, trams rely on the honesty of passengers for payment and I fear English travellers would take them for a ride. We need a cultural revolution before trams will work here.
