People say nothing works in Britain. That we cannot build anything any more. We hear about a decade of form filling before a spade is in the ground. Then, when we finally get going, only our grandchildren have a hope of seeing it actually built. But that’s not true everywhere.
On March 14, digging started on a busy Coventry street to build a tram line. An experimental project aiming to do everything differently: modular pre-made sections of tracks; fast-tracked planning; and – crucially – a construction process so gentle that it would not touch the jungle of cables and pipes snaking beneath our streets. This ‘keyhole surgery’ approach to building the tram meant regular traffic was still running along the remaining lanes on the street.
Four hours later, 30 centimetres of asphalt was removed ready for the track to be laid. Most tram projects would dig twice or three times as deep, knocking into every pipe, cable and sewer on the way, all of which would be dug and laid nearby. But when I visited recently, shallow concrete slabs with track in place had already been laid. Trams could have been running.
On May 19, just eight weeks after work began, trams will flow up and down the street alongside normal traffic. To put that into perspective: Edinburgh took six years and Manchester four years to build their systems. That is not even counting planning time.
The other benefit? It is cheap. The track is expected to cost around £15 million per kilometre, far less than the £100m-plus that many British projects are coming in at. So how have they achieved delivery at a fifth of the cost and on a timescale that would make Edinburgh’s engineers wince?
The answer is twofold. First, they bypassed the traditional planning red tape that burdens many tram projects by avoiding a Transport and Works Act Order because they already own the streets. This approval process costs millions and delays schemes by years. They also did away with major street redesign. As Hamish, the lead contractor, told me: ‘This is about putting trams into the street, not redesigning the entire street for trams.’
This light touch approach avoided prohibitive drainage regulations. In another project, an eight-metre-deep tank had to be installed simply because the surface area of the tram scheme was large, even though the existing area was already a six-lane road. Engineers will tell you ten more stories like that, each with six-figure consequences.
The second secret sauce is the track itself. Using a specific type of concrete and patented construction methods, only 30 centimetres of road is dug away to lay track. Not a single utility was moved. And if the water company needs access in five years’ time, that is no problem. You just lift a single module and work overnight. Worst case: you get a replacement bus the next day.
Coventry City Council owns the intellectual property. Hopefully it can export the technology across Britain and to Europe and beyond. It could be a rare British success story. All components are currently made here.
With 1.5m homes to build and cities up and down the country seeking growth, installing sleek, reliable and efficient transport should be top of the shopping list for mayors and council leaders. We should be grabbing the chance to build trams at a fraction of the cost and on a timescale measured in weeks, not years. Let’s send mayors and council officials to Coventry to learn how.
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