Trams in India
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Calcutta
As in 2023
Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay, Nov 6, 2023: The Times of India
From: Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay, Nov 6, 2023: The Times of India
For years, trams were an indispensable part of Kolkata. In the 1950s, 470 tramcars moved nearly 41 crore passengers annually. But now the city has just 2 tram routes left, down from 37 even a decade ago. Is it curtains for Kolkata’s first mass transit system then? Hopefully not. As the city celebrates 150 years of its trams, Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay takes a quick look at their long history that has as many twists and turns as the tracks that still trundle from Esplanade to Gariahat
On February 24, 1873, a tram service started in Kolkata and quickly endeared itself to the city.
Fifteen years later, Rudyard Kipling would write in The City of Dreadful Night: “There is a steady roar of traffic, cut every two minutes by the deep roll of the trams... From the east goes up to the sky the clamour ofSealdah, the rumble of the trams, and the voices of all Bow Bazar chaffering and making merry.”Kolkata’s early trams were drawn by horses. Their route from Armenian Ghat to Sealdah was just 3.9km long, but it served to transport goods and passengers to Howrah and Sealdah railway stations. Armenian Ghat even had a railway ticket booking counter for Howrah station. A century and a half later, the city’s first mass transit system is still alive (but only just). It has outlived many others to become Asia’s oldest functioning tram system.
Golden Half-Century
The 20th century brought electrification. Starting 1902, Kolkata’s trams were powered by electric motors, drawing power from a dedicated station at Nonapukur. Over the next 50 years, the tram network grew to serve the growing city. When the Howrah Bridge opened in 1943, the first public transport vehicle allowed to cross it was a tram. The 1950s marked the peak of tram services in Kolkata, with 470 tram cars carrying nearly 41 crore passengers annually. However, the system’s decline started soon after. Construction of the Behala Joka and Bidhannagar extensions in the 1980s briefly raised hopes of a tram revival when 75 new trams were built, 60 old trams refurbished, and 105 others modernised with a World Bank fund of Rs 46.2 crore. But this enthusiasm didn’t last long, says tram historian Abhijit Saha.
System Crumbles
Remember how the original tram line had connected Kolkata’s busiest railway terminal stations, Howrah and Sealdah? The decline of the tram system coincided with the abandonment of its Sealdah Terminus in the 1970s for the construction of the Sealdah flyover. The Howrah Terminus closed in 1993-94 over concerns about the health of the Howrah Bridge due to the movement of heavier steel-bodied trams, even though bridges and flyovers are designed to bear battle tanks heavier than trams. The elimination of tram termini at Howrah and Sealdah resulted in a sharp decline in users and revenue. “Successive governments paralysed the trams and… cut off passenger patronage to prove it unprofitable and labour-surplus,” says Debasis Bhattacharya, president of Calcutta Tram Users Association (CTUA), a chemical scientist who has fought against the government’s attempts to dismantle the tram system since the early 1990s. Several sections of the Howrah Tram, including Bandhaghat and Shibpur, were closed down in 1970-71, Nimtala in 1973, and the Ballygunge-Gariahat connection was broken. Disconnection of the Ballygunge trams from the rest of the city was disastrous for the network. The closure of the Behala-Joka route in 2011, due to its separation from the rest of the city by the Taratala flyover, was another grave setback.
Down But Not Out
It’s a miracle that century-old tramcars continue to ply Kolkata’s streets. No other transit system in the world has as many wooden body trams as the Calcutta Tram Company (CTC). This tenacity may not ward off the system’s existential crisis as the transport department has chosen to run trams on only a few heritage routes while layering over the remaining tracks with bitumen. However, there is hope of a tram revival in the city now as the Calcutta High Court has stopped the tarring of tracks in response to pleas from concerned citizens, tram enthusiasts and environmentalists. A committee of tram enthusiasts and experts is also working on a revival plan, possibly as a feeder service to the city’s expanding metro system. “People of the city have come to understand why losing the tram would be an irreparable loss, one that future generations will never forgive us for,” says Bhattacharya.
Save Them For The Planet
Roberto D’Andrea, a Melbourne tram conductor who has been organising the ‘Tramjatra’ cultural festival every two years to celebrate the connection between Kolkata and Melbourne trams since 1996, says, “Kolkata must expand its tram network. It is the oldest electric vehicle that can help the city in its battle against climate change.” In fact, London’s decision to replace its trams with buses in the 1950s had resulted in greater air pollution. The last London electric tram was replaced by a diesel bus on July 5, 1952, and five months later the Great London Smog had enveloped the city, says a report by Kankana Das, principal analyst at Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE). “Abolishing the tram would be a very costly mistake for Kolkata,” she adds. Meanwhile, there is hope from another quarter. The campaign to secure World Heritage status for Kolkata’s tram system could help preserve it as a cultural treasure and promote eco-friendly mobility in the city.
now the selfish crowd will be concerned that how to stop trams and fill the road with their dirty polluting cars. according to them tram causes jam , it is slow , it is noisy but polluting cars and buses are the best.
Details
Nov 6, 2023: The Times of India
From: Nov 6, 2023: The Times of India
See graphic:
Trams in Calcutta, 2011-22
Passenger trams have been in use for almost 220 years, starting with the Swansea and Mumbles Railway in Wales, UK, in 1807. The 19th and early-20th centuries were the tram’s heyday, and while many cities dismantled their tram systems in later years, others like Melbourne have nurtured them. Meanwhile, cities like Manchester (1992) and Strasbourg (1994) have built modern tram systems over the past three decades, showing that streetcars remain desirable. These are some of the largest tram systems in the world:
