The government has been urged to prioritise the reintroduction of trams in the UK’s towns and cities by introducing planning reforms and devolving the approval process to elected mayors.
While trams were commonplace at the beginning of the twentieth century, by the 1960s they were considered outdated. Many of the routes were shuttered as part of the post-war push to modernise the UK’s transportation systems.
However, in recent years, cities across Europe have started returning to trams as an affordable mass transit solution that fits into efforts to lower the carbon impact of transportation. However, despite their advantages, only a handful of cities have been able to introduce trams in the last 25 years.
One of the main barriers to installing more tram systems in Britain is the cost, and building new tram systems domestically is now more expensive than almost anywhere else in the world.
According to the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT), which is leading the new push to build more tram...