[Article] A city transformed by tram

markpb

(c) Ireland.com, Frank McDonald

In Bordeaux, only trams and cyclists enjoy free passage into the heart of the city, writes Frank McDonald

The honey-coloured sandstone buildings of Bordeaux are gleaming now, and the main public spaces of the city are filled with people. But not much more than 10 years ago, most of the buildings were blackened by pollution and the streets and squares were choked with traffic. Bordeaux had become "la ville noir". It took the current mayor, Alain Juppé, to get to grips with it. In 1995, he scrapped his long-serving predecessor Jacques Chaban-Delmas's plans for a metro, in favour of a street-running tramway, and decided to turn the quays of the Garonne river into a public promenade instead of sacrificing them for up to 18 traffic lanes.

With the breakneck speed of French planning, the first tram line opened in 2003, and by July 2004, a 25km network of three lines - all of which connect up, needless to say - was in place. A second phase, extending all three lines by a total of 19km, is already under way and will be fully operational by the end of next year.

"Every four months, we will open a new extension," Xavier Tersen of Veolia Transport confidently tells us. Veolia also operates the Luas in Dublin, but the tramway in Bordeaux is in a different league. Amazingly, it has no overhead power lines in the city centre; trams are energised by a third rail on the track bed as they pass over it.

There was a political will to protect the city's patrimoine (heritage) - indeed, a demand by the French ministry of culture that this be done. So Alstom, which manufactured the trams in La Rochelle - where the Luas vehicles were also made - came up with the "world first" of activating the electric power by radio signal.

"There is no danger [ to pedestrians] because the electricity moves with the wagon," Tersen says. In the beginning, he concedes, there were technical problems, but these have since been ironed out. Jointed frameworks on the trams slide down and fit nearly into their roofs when not in use.

From the outset, all of the city's bus routes were reorganised to integrate with the tramway. This was much easier than in Dublin because Veolia runs the trams and the buses in Bordeaux. Ticketing is also integrated, with a cheap flat fare of €1.30 that's valid for any journey within an hour of purchase.

A fourth tramline is now being planned, and it is expected that the overall cost of the entire 44km network will be €1 billion - "much cheaper than a nuclear power station", as Tersen says. It will also work out a lot cheaper than the Luas, which cost €750 million for just 26km - the Red and Green lines, which don't even link up yet.

The tramway was developed by Communauté Urbaine de Bordeaux (CUB), a federation of municipalities in the greater Bordeaux area, which has a population of 670,000. CUB has financed 60 per cent of the cost, with the rest coming from a 1.6 per cent payroll tax levied on all companies in the region with nine or more staff.

Bus and tram services carry 300,000 passengers per day, and their operation is subsidised by CUB, which accounts for the flat fare. The tramway carries 55 per cent of the total number of passengers and, Tersen says, covers 95 per cent of its running costs; it is the buses, all of which are now gas-powered, that need the subsidy.

Bordeaux's trams, with their black, grey and blue livery, are more elegant than Luas vehicles, and seem almost to float through the city's streets. Most of them are longer, too (44m), though on one less-intensively used line they are 33m long - three metres longer than the congested trams on the Tallaght line.

The tramway was also treated as a "complete urban project". Before its introduction, Bordeaux had just one pedestrianised shopping street (rue St Catherine) and the city's cathedral was marooned on a traffic island. Now, cars are banned from the historic core, and the Place Bey in front of the cathedral is a pedestrian plaza.

There is access for delivery vehicles and cars with permits. Barriers such as those used in multi-storey car parks prevent access at key points. If motorists want to get in, they have to use an intercom to get permission from the police; only trams and cyclists enjoy free passage into the heart of the city.

Traffic on the quays has been reduced to four lanes, to make room for a wide promenade along the Garonne designed by Parisian landscape architect Michel Corajoud. It includes a beautiful rectangular water feature, the Miroir d'Eau, which reflects the facades of Place de la Bourse at night and sprays mist during the day.

THE RESULTS HAVE BEEN dramatic, according to Michel Duchène, deputy mayor of Bordeaux. "Traffic in the heart of the city is down by 35 per cent, we have seen an explosion in the use of bicycles and there are now 30,000 more inhabitants in the city," he says. "The key project in realising all of this was the tramway."

It was, as Duchène puts it, a "political project" designed to protect the historic core and achieve a new balance between people and traffic. Shopkeepers were "the most aggressive" in opposing it, believing that they would lose business if cars were not let in, but in the end more shops moved back to the city centre.

"People have taken possession of the city and made it their own," he says. Underground car parks for short-term use were installed under some squares and motorists using a park-and-ride site on the outskirts to take a tram into town can park all day for free. The city also bought 4,000 bicycles to promote more cycling.

Since 1995, owners of historic buildings have been obliged to clean them (usually by laser treatment), turning "la ville noir" into "la ville blonde". As a quid pro quo, the city made a commitment to upgrade streets and squares, using remarkably high-quality stone paving. So it's no wonder Unesco was impressed.

Mayor Alain Juppé, who was re-elected in 2005 (though he lost his parliamentary seat in the recent French general election), describes what has happened in Bordeaux as a "renaissance" and modestly agrees that it needed political will to overcome the obstacles. And now, it has support right across the political spectrum.

Bordeaux is not resting on its laurels. The city's slogan is "The future drives us" and one of its high-tech clusters is involved in building a megajoule laser machine that will produce a temperature of up to 10 million degrees Celsius, as part of a nuclear-deterrent programme financed by the Ministry of Defence. The city is pressing for a faster TGV rail link with Paris, to reduce the time taken for this 550km trip from three hours to just two. It is also counting on Unesco's recognition of its transformation to boost tourism and investment in a region that has already given us many of the best wines in the world.

There are obvious lessons for Dublin, particularly from Bordeaux's tramway. If the two Luas lines are to be linked via College Green, an option involving no overhead power lines should be seriously considered. The same should be done in O'Connell Street, not least to facilitate the St Patrick's Day Parade.

monument

Amazingly, it has no overhead power lines in the city centre; trams are energised by a third rail on the track bed as they pass over it.

There was a political will to protect the city's patrimoine (heritage) - indeed, a demand by the French ministry of culture that this be done. So Alstom, which manufactured the trams in La Rochelle - where the Luas vehicles were also made - came up with the "world first" of activating the electric power by radio signal.

"There is no danger [ to pedestrians] because the electricity moves with the wagon," Tersen says. In the beginning, he concedes, there were technical problems, but these have since been ironed out. Jointed frameworks on the trams slide down and fit nearly into their roofs when not in use.

The trams look better too...

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/images/2007/0717/1184196589878_1.jpg?ts=1184631244

ballooba

How are people not fried by the third rail?

monument

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply

ballooba

300% more expensive and unreliable?

Prof_V

ballooba wrote:

300% more expensive and unreliable?

There's a report from Edinburgh, justifying their decision not to go with the system (which Wikipedia doesn't exactly make clear), at
http://www.tramtime.com/downloads/dec05/Wire_Free_Traction.pdf
Admittedly the document is over 18 months old and performance in Bordeaux will have improved since then, but the technology isn't exactly taking the world by storm at this point. And as to the wisdom of trying to retrofit it into existing trams...

Slice

In fairness you'd think the wires above the Luas tracks were the transport equivalent of the ballymun towers from that article

DerekP11

Ah, the defensive celtic tiger mechanism has kicked in. Suddenly our beloved Luas is ok. Many of us here have often looked outside the Irish goldfish bowl for inspiration. But now we reject this? Amazing what two dodgy tram lines, a piece of paper with Transport 21 on it and some public consultations can do for the Irish people.

Let the onslaught begin. Im armed and ready, but deaf to the blind.:D

popebenny16

DerekP11 wrote:

Let the onslaught begin. Im armed and ready, but deaf to the blind.:D

Glad to hear it. By the way, I used Gouldings on the Lawn, worked a treat. Dont buy the 4.5 kg Box at €15.99 get the €20 kg plastic bag, it's the same stuff and cheaper!!

In fact its too good, its going to be impossible to cut when these thunderstorms bugger off.

Oh, and that's a nice tram they've got there. I dont know about the power being 300% and whatever, but the important thing is that they decided against the OHEC because they have a nice town and dont want it looking like the inside of a circus tent and therefore worth the expense, oh, and it looks to me as though the trams are indeed working, so I dont know why its unreliable.

Will it be used here? Maybe we are looking at what Metro West will turn out like

BendiBus

DerekP11 wrote:

Amazing what two dodgy tram lines, a piece of paper with Transport 21 on it and some public consultations can do for the Irish people.

Yeah! Forget Luas. What Dublin really needs is some of those megajoule laserbeams.

Slice

The only time overhead wiring becomes an issue, visually, is when property owners along Luas lines being planned object to the wiring being suspended from their buildings. It necessitates the erection of large and obtrusive poles - far more noticable than the wires they're suppose to carry. Luckily in the case of the two Luas lines built so far that hasn't been called for in the main. There are many things that can be done to reduce visual clutter in Dublin other than removing over head wiring on Luas (such as removing unecessary street furniture) and all of which will only cost a fraction of removing the overhead wiring while at the same time producing far bigger improvements to the visual space. I don't speak with any love for Luas in saying that it's not necessary - I'm just saying that, much like the WRC (an argument you're no doubt familiar with, Derek), it would be a huge waste of money given the other, cheaper, bigger "wins" that could be made in the same area...

Prof_V

DerekP11 wrote:

Ah, the defensive celtic tiger mechanism has kicked in. Suddenly our beloved Luas is ok. Many of us here have often looked outside the Irish goldfish bowl for inspiration. But now we reject this? Amazing what two dodgy tram lines, a piece of paper with Transport 21 on it and some public consultations can do for the Irish people.

Let the onslaught begin. Im armed and ready, but deaf to the blind.:D

I wasn't defending Luas as such, or rejecting APS. The fact remains that APS is largely unproven so far, that most light rail operators worldwide appear to think so for the time being, and that there's no way, in the current state of the technology, you could do what the writer (who is, in other contexts, inordinately fond of accusing anyone who disagrees with him of being ignorant of transport) is advocating. If it does eventually take off, I'm sure Dublin, as well as other cities with LRT, will adopt it where appropriate, though this may take quite a while unless an easy retrofit option emerges.