Earlier this year, a small tram travelled along a 220m section of freshly laid track in Coventry. This was the first instance of Very Light Rail (VLR) operating in a UK town or city and came nearly ten years after the concept was first mooted.
The Very Light Rail scheme is perhaps the boldest attempt yet to reshape how a medium-sized British city can deliver sustainable, modern public transport. For Councillor Jim O’Boyle, the man who has been involved from the start, the project is about more than just transport – it’s about identity, innovation and local pride. It is rooted in Coventry.
“I was appointed Cabinet Member for Jobs and Regeneration in 2016,” he explains, “and I got on to the issue of HS2. Under the original plan HS2 would run from London and the first station would be in the Solihull/NEC area, just outside Birmingham. Not unsurprisingly the rest of the Midlands thought ‘what do we get out of this?’”
In the early stages, Coventry was considering a ‘Sprint bus’ – a guided bus system designed to improve connections to HS2. But the newly-appointed O’Boyle wasn’t convinced and, at a meeting that completely changed the course of events, he asked for alternatives. Very Light Rail was mentioned but it didn’t actually exist beyond two decades-old vehicles trundling up a 0.8 mile track in Stourbridge.
Notwithstanding, the seed was planted for what would become one of Coventry’s most ambitious transport projects. The city teamed up with engineers at Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) to create a transport system that could combine the benefits of light rail – predictability, comfort and permanence – with the flexibility and affordability of a bus network.
O’Boyle’s pride in the local innovation is clear. “This is the first generation vehicle, designed and built here in Coventry. This isn’t just a transport system, we’re creating a manufacturing, design and engineering ecosystem to build this.
“We used automotive lightweighting for the vehicle because Coventry was the birthplace of the UK automotive industry. We’ve used lots of parts that would otherwise go into road vehicles. Putting them into a tram system is a world first as well.”
The real selling point of VLR lies in its cost and versatility. “Traditional tram and light rail systems are notoriously expensive to install,” he says. “When you start digging into the road in any city centre, what do you come across? Lots of wires, sewers, water pipes, lots of everything. And moving those utilities can cost hundreds of millions of pounds”
The VLR completely avoids such pitfalls, indeed the cost for installing the tracks is just £10m per kilometre. This is due to a specially designed track that sits shallowly in the road, just 30cm deep. “The slab track system uses special strengthened concrete which can actually hold weight way above the actual load that a fully laden VLR vehicle could produce.”
That shallow design makes the track fast to install and far less disruptive than traditional rail. The 220m demonstrator track was installed in just eight weeks. “It’s a bit like a road surface,” O’Boyle explains, “you take the first layer of tarmac off, sit the slab tracks down, bolt them together, concrete it over, then re-tarmac. When it’s done it just looks like any other tram track anywhere in the world. The alchemy being that it hasn’t had to go more than 30cm into the road, meaning we haven’t had to move the utilities.”
The tracks also lend an unusual versatility to the installation process as, unlike any other rail-based system, they can operate around a 15m radius. The demonstrator track has a 30m radius around which the tram ran quite comfortably at 20mph.
This year’s public trials marked a major milestone for the project and their success was undisputed. “We had over 3,000 people booked in to take a journey on it, and the response was overwhelmingly, absolutely positive. There was nothing I saw that was negative, and I have to say in 18 and a half years on the council I’ve never ever come across that, it was quite remarkable.” For the demonstration, a driver was required by law, but autonomy is part of the long-term vision. “We had to have a driver because of the law, although the plan is for it to be autonomous in the future. That will bring down the cost as well of course.”
The next phase of the project will see the installation of 800-metres of track allowing the VLR to work in a live traffic environment. “This will be part of the first route out to our investment zone, which is absolutely key to the economic growth of the city,” O’Boyle explains. “The next demonstrator track will actually become part of the eventual network, it’s not going to get taken up at the end of it. Nor will the track that we laid down for the first demonstrator, that will also stay in situ.”
While sections of the eventual network are taking shape, O’Boyle is not ready to announce specific routes too soon. “We’ve been a bit coy about saying to people exactly what roads it will go down once the routes have been agreed, because I think it’s important to take people with you. Back in the 80s they wanted to bring Midland Metro to Coventry, and people just imagined, this big horrendous T-Rex coming down their road, with fumes and noise. That’s another purpose of the demonstration – to let people see it. This thing’s not much bigger than a big minibus, really. It can go up and down roads quite comfortably and you wouldn’t even know it was there.”
When asked if the scheme resembles what he imagined nine years ago, the Councillor enthusiastically confirms that it does, but with one caveat, how long it’s taken. “I never envisaged that it would take as long as it has. The initial plan was for its first route to be up and running once HS2’s first station opened. Although because HS2’s been mired in so many delays and overspends we’re probably ahead of the curve now.”
The other, perhaps more fundamental, reason for delay lies in the novelty of the scheme itself. “Of course we’re inventing something that literally doesn’t exist anywhere else. Because of that the transport legislation doesn’t recognise it. We have to go through this whole legislative framework that is costly and time-consuming.”
The original plan was to start laying down commercial tracks in 2026 has slipped. “That’s next year, so that’s not going to happen,” he admits. “We’re looking at the demonstrator for next year and into 2027, and I’d like to think laying down the track for the first route would happen fairly quickly after that.” He hopes private investors will come on board as the system matures. “As a city, we own the intellectual property to this, so in effect we can sell this. Once we have a product that is recognised as a transport system in the UK, that then becomes a very valuable asset.”
The Coventry Very Light Rail project is, at its core, an act of confidence – a belief that innovation can and should be led from the local level. It may still be in development and there will be obstacles ahead, but the ambition behind it feels unmistakably Coventry: practical, forward-looking and just a little bit daring.
Leave a Reply