Dijon Trams Cut the Mustard with Louise Haigh

On the 28^th November England’s Transport Secretary Louise Haigh will unveil her transport strategy for a national integrated transport system in Leeds. Apparently she will point out that the French city of Dijon could be an example for cities in the UK with a population of 150,000 plus of which there are 30 odd.

Dijon, (population 159,346; density 3,900 per Km2) is one of the many French towns that has reintroduced trams over the last 40 years since Nantes started the ball rolling in 1985.

A reorganisation of the public transport system started  in 1971  and investment in the bus services took place over a number of years until it got to the stage that the only way forward was to make a major capital investment in infrastructure and so the idea of a tramway for the city arose.

A conventional system was selected, the authorities wisely ignoring the idea of “rubber-tyred trams” which are really guided buses.

But here is lesson 1. If you have an inefficient bus or bus and train system then you probably will not solve the problem by just throwing a load of money at it. Sort out your transport system first and when you create the need for a high capacity operation then invest. There is no sense on spending a lot of money on passengers who do not exist.

Lesson 2 is buy off the shelf. Dijon bought 33 trams from Alstom. Now one could say Alstom trams are simply the best but they are expensive. However the city combined its order with that of Brest and got a reported discount of 25%. In Germany and Austria various operators have done a similar deal with Stadler for some tramtrains.

A conventional system was selected, the authorities wisely ignoring the idea of “rubber-tyred trams” which are really guided buses.

But here is lesson 1. If you have an inefficient bus or bus and train system then you probably will not solve the problem by just throwing a load of money at it. Sort out your transport system first and when you create the need for a high capacity operation then invest. There is no sense on spending a lot of money on passengers who do not exist.

Lesson 2 is buy off the shelf. Dijon bought 33 trams from Alstom. Now one could say Alstom trams are simply the best but they are expensive. However the city combined its order with that of Brest and got a reported discount of 25%. In Germany and Austria various operators have done a similar deal with Stadler

You can travel on Alstom trams throughout the world; I’ve been on some in the Sahara Desert! The French have created a global light rail industry for themselves which goes much further than just tramcars – extending to financing systems and they started with a blank sheet of paper apparently. There are options for trams but the Dijon ones are double ended, double sided with low floors giving level access.

The tramway in Dijon consists of a 20 km network of two lines that commenced service in 2012. Trams form a backbone to the total public transport system and buses still play an important part  running on routes which do not as yet carry the traffic levels that would be better handled by trams or act as feeders to the tramway. To attract motorists park & ride facilities are also provided.

As trams are most suited to operation of heavily trafficked routes it is important that they serve major traffic generators such as railway stations, hospitals and universities and the tramway at Dijon does this but also links places of recreation and culture at the Sports Park, Olympic Swimming Pool and the Auditorium, a venue capable of housing major works of opera, theatre and dance. More mundane locations such as residential areas and schools are also not forgotten. Being a highway based tramway costs were no doubt higher than one using ex-railway alignments but this made potential traffic sources easier to capture.

The result of all this is that the annual ridership is calculated to be 24 million passengers per year giving 2 million riders per km per annum. Compare this to UK systems where the best is Docklands at 2,6 million per annum, although that is a light metro in a major metropolitan area. Croydon has a passengers per km per annum of 0.8M and Nottingham 0.5M.

A study by Eurogroup Consulting (Trams at the heart of the 21^st Metropolis 2019) identified the Dijon tramway as the best of the recently introduced tramways in medium sized towns having matched its operation against 10 criteria. Besides being fully accessible they reported that;

• 34% of the stops serve major traffic generators;
• It has an easy to use payment system enabling travellers to pay by credit or debit card on board.
• Thanks to the investment traffic on the whole transport system had risen by 40% within three years.

Private car usage has fallen to a level of 53% of that of 2016 according to The Times and expected to fall to 38% by 2030.

Haigh visited Dijon when she was Shadow Transport spokesperson and sent Danny Williams who is in charge of the Government’s integrated strategy there recently again according to The Times. Whether they can persuade Rachel Reeves that the UK needs more of these systems than just one in her constituency remains to be seen.