thoss wrote:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 wrote:


On 25 Jan, 11:27, "Richard J." wrote:
The Labour deputy leader on the council was reported as
saying "This [the tram] is something which has been very unpopular and
we accept that it has been a major factor in our defeat. The public have
decided this for all of us and we need to move on."
This leads on to the interesting question - why do people in Ealing not
want the tram, whereas people in Peckham are quite keen on it? Is it:

a. Ealing has three tube stations plus two National Rail stations, and
feels that is adequate
b. Ealing residents are more likely to have cars than Peckham
residents, so the idea of road restrictions has more resonance for them
c. Peckham currently only has a couple of National Rail stations, so
its residents are looking forward to better services
d. The car lobby is more vocal in Ealing, and really there are no
differences in levels of support between Ealing & Peckham

or something else entirely?

Yes, something else. I'd love a tram, but the Uxbridge Road is quite
unsuitable for one.

I think this is a bit of a misnomer. It is true that the Uxbridge Road
is narrow in many places and so there is a lot of competition for road
space between motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and bus users.

However, any high capacity, high quality street public transport service
along this route is going to need more roadspace than is used now for
the conventional bus routes - otherwise it will be impossible to
maintain effective headways, and difficult to encourage some of the car
users to switch modes.

As far as I can see, there are only two ways to go with the Uxbridge
Road. Either more roadspace is taken away from private vehicles for
public transport (whether that is a tram or something else), or road
charging is introduced along it so that a very high articulated bus
frequency can operate.

However, there is a limit to the capacity you can get from such a bus
service without more infrastructure (at very high frequencies, buses
will need to be able to overtake each other easily). Longer vehicles
will be needed (longer than the current bendy buses) - and that brings
us right back to trams or tram-like technology (e.g. optically-guided
multi-articulated buses).

As for why Ealing doesn't want the tram but Peckham does, I would
combine higher car ownership and usage and a different attitude to
roadspace - oddly, much of the Cross River Tram route has more roadspace
available to it than does the West London Tram route, so battles over
roadspace are more hotly contested on the latter. I would say Inner
London residents are also much more used to the need to allocate
roadspace to public transport.

--
Dave Arquati
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London