RobinYour claim that the West London Tram was environmentally friendly should not go unchallenged. It certainly would not have been environmentally friendly to much of the area alongside its route. Buried in the (very) small print of the proposal, and absent from the initial proposal, was the fact that the Uxbridge Road would have to be permanently closed to all east-west traffic other than the tram in six or seven places along the route, mainly in Southall, Ealing and Acton. The environmental impact on all the north-south side roads in these areas having to take, I think the figure was an extra 11,000 vehicles a day, did not suggest a very serious environmental impact assessment. The consequences would have been horrendous.The proposal was described as a tram. It was more like a train, 400 tons from memory. The rebuild of the ‘permanent way’ of the Uxbridge Road to be capable of running a two track ‘tramway’ would have had immense consequences for all the electrical, gas, water, sewerage, telecoms and other services criss-crossing underneath in many hundreds of places. The tram service would have been vulnerable to a single breakdown unlike, say, a trolley bus. This latter was suggested as an alternative but not followed. The cost to the tram service of, say, a burst water main under the track would have been to bring it to a standstill.It may have been backed by Labour and the Greens, but was opposed by an ordinary – not unholy – alliance of the majority of people and all the local authorities along the route from Uxbridge to Shepherds Bush. If there was an unholy alliance, it is more likely to have been between the then Mayor, Ken Livingstone, the developers of Westfield at Shepherds Bush and the promoters of the tram.It is to the considerable credit of the Lib Dems that having assessed the consequences of the Kew Bridge bus lane that they scrapped it – it was an unmitigated disaster, especially for buses.
David Biles ● 6150d