Tring tring rings the bell, as the tram trudges leisurely along the lush green Maidan. Alas! The Calcuttans may not see this scene for very long, as the iron caterpillar faces gradual extinction. Trams of Calcutta are not just another mode of transportation. It is part of the urban heritage of the city, going back to the days of the Raj. People, particularly the older generation had developed a deep romantic association with these slow but gentlemanly comfortable streetcars. However, there is a move to gradually phase out the trams, as there is constant jostle for space on the painfully inadequate roads of Calcutta.

 

Trams are electric driven vehicles, running along rails flushed with the road surface. Operating along the streets with various other modes of transportation, they provide an eco-friendly, highly economical but slow urban mass transit option. The origin of the tramway can be traced back to the plateways used in mines and quarries to ease the passage of horse-drawn wagons, but the first street tramway in a city was the New York and Harlem line of 1832, coining the American term still used today - street railway. Remarkably the world’s second horse drawn tramway, in New Orleans (1835), is still in use today – running on electricity. A glorious uninterrupted innings of 170 years.

 

American promoters brought the tramway to Europe in 1850s – Paris (1853), London (1861) and Coppenhagen (1863). The 1870s were a boom time for the construction of horse tramways, but the limitations of animal power were obvious, and promoters soon turned to investigating mechanical traction. Steam trams were developed, but were not very suitable for urban use, although they ran on many suburban and rural light railways. Compressed air, gas and petrol engines were tried; cable tramways enjoyed considerable success for a time (and still survive in San Francisco). However most of these technically suspect or expensive options faded quickly once electric traction became a possibility. Siemens & Halske opened the first electric tramway to provide public service in Berlin in 1881, using current at 180 volts fed through the running rails. For safety reasons electrified running rails were unsuitable for a street environment. However the overhead wire with trolley pole collection was soon shown to be the most practicable solution, and the first city tramway network was that installed by the American, Sprague, in Richmond, Virginia, in 1887

 

Trams were introduced in Calcutta in 1880, by a British company, Calcutta Tramways Company Ltd. (CTC). Initially there were meter -gauge horse-drawn tram tracks as east-west corridor, connecting the railway station at Sealdah to Armenian Ghat on the banks of River Hooghly, via the central business districts - Bowbazar Street, Dalhousie Square, Customs House and Strand Road. Electrification of Tramways and simultaneous reconstruction of tracks to the standard gauge (4’-8½ “) was taken up in 1900. By the end of 1905, the entire system was converted to an electric traction. The network expanded rapidly to cover the city.

 

Soon, the tramways became integral part of life in Calcutta, as much as a dish of macher jhol or sandesh in Bengali meal. Calcuttans loved this pollution free, jerking-less, comfortable and cheap travel mode. It also helped to maintain social segregation. The bhadralok Bengali babu used to travel in the first class, which had fans and comfortable single and double-seater seats with a separate ladies section. The hoi-polloi boarded the second class, which had marginally less fare, allowed smoking, and had bench type seats.

 

This social segregation was later on brilliantly portrayed by Satyajit Ray in his film ‘Mahanagar’, on the Calcutta of the seventies – frustration among the educated youth, unemployment and disenchantment with the establishment. The protagonist, played by Anil Chatterjee is an middle class unemployed young man with social consciousness and leftist ideologies. He gets an interview call, in a large company where the interview board tries to convince him that Neil Armstrong’s moon landing was the most significant event of the 60s decade. But he differs and holds the struggle of the people in Vietnam, was more important. Finally, they had heated argument, and the protagonist walks out of the interview. On his way home though, he boards the first class compartment of the tram!

 

The first two decades of the twentieth century were the golden era of tramways, when practically every major city in the world had a tram line. But in the United States, tramways started declining since the 1920s due to competition from petrol driven buses and recession. Most of the privately operated routes closed down. The Second World War hastened the decline of tramways in the UK and France, but provided the opportunity for tramway reconstruction and reinvestment in Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Germany, the Scandinavian countries and Eastern Europe. The communist countries of Eastern Europe had little private motoring, so high-capacity public transport was a must. Full metro (underground railway) was unaffordable outside the major urban conurbations, and the tramway remained the dominant mode for city transit. Soviet Union become the world’s largest tram operator, with Leningrad (St. Petersburg) having the world’s largest network. Efficient management and public support helped the Melbourne system to prosper and become the largest network in southern hemisphere with 238km route length.

 

Tram services in Calcutta, reached its peak in1943, when the network was expanded to the other side of the city across the Hooghly river and ran over Howrah Bridge to the Howrah Station and beyond. But the system started declining soon after. There are three major reasons – population explosion, power crisis, inadequate planning support, management problems. Certain inherent limitations of the tramways surfaced.

 

Clearly, the flexibility of the tramways is constrained by their connections to the overhead power transmission systems. As a result, either temporary or permanent re-routing involves a considerable civil and electrical construction work. In addition, power failures may affect several trams at once and thus paralyse a large portion of the system. In congested streets of Calcutta, such interruptions create nightmares – clogging all traffic arteries.

 

The population of the city has increased manifold. As a result, there are more cars on the road. But the amount of road space could not be increased proportionally. Non-existence of dedicated tram tracks gives rise to traffic bottlenecks, Buses, cars and trams has to jostle for space in the same area. In the event of breakdown of trams, it becomes a nightmare for drivers to navigate a road. Squatters and hawkers encroach upon roads, causing traffic snarls.  

 

There are management problems as well. In 1967 the Govt. of West Bengal passed the Calcutta Tramways Company (Taking Over of Management) Act, 1967 and took over the management on 19^th July 1967. Since then, bureaucratic red-teppism, and sloppy work ethic had plagued the system.

 

There were difficulties for expansion as well. Such as high initial costs and manpower intensive operation. Each tram car costs five times more the cost of a luxury bus, the maintenance of tracks is a perennially high cost area. Every turns has to be manned to change the tracks of the trams.

 

All these problems had encouraged the government consider phasing out the trams. Already, the tram cars have lost much of their glory. Gone are the days when more than five hundred trams used to ply in the streets of Calcutta. Until a few years ago, about three hundred trams used to come out on the streets daily, but now no more than one hundred and eighty trams leave their sheds daily.

 

This however led to vociferous protests from the environmental groups and concerned citizens. They brought forward certain pertinent points, which merit attention. Some of their suggestions are introduction of single compartment trams to increase their mobility, using the body of the trams for advertisement purpose which can earn substantial revenue, building multi-storied complexes on the depots of Calcutta tramways to which can ensure substantial earnings contributing to the running costs of the trams. They also focussed on certain inherent advantages of trams over bus based transportation system. For example -

 

 

It is unfortunate, that the authorities in Calcutta, are planning for burial of the tram services at a time when transport planners in Europe and America are injecting fresh lease of life to this environment friendly mode of transit as part of Urban Renewal efforts in old cities. In London, a brand new cross-river system is being introduced between Uxbridge to Shepherd’s Bush in West London. A public opinion survey had shown 89% approval rating.

 

Trffic congestion in major cities had reached chaotic proportions at peak times. The peak times are spreading, and attempts to create new super highways in urban areas to cope with the demands of private motoring are seeing whole swathes of city landscapes demolished or divided, bringing economic and social decline. Many North American cities saw a rapid decline in their city centres as new suburban malls sprang up to serve populations that had migrated from high to low-density housing areas, and these were focused almost entirely on travel by car. Concerns about environmental pollution started to surface. Planners and politicians began to look at flourishing cities in continental Europe for a solution to their problems, and realised the importance of effective public transport such as that provided by reserved track tramways.

 

The urban environment and traffic can no longer be separated from one another. Without guaranteed mobility any city will not be able to develop further. An integration of urban planning, traffic and the environment is, however, the precondition for urban living in the next millennium.

After excluding metro and museum tram services, it still leaves over 460 light rail and tramway systems world-wide. As many as 76 of them opened from 1980 onwards. Therefore, before we decide to consign the faithful iron caterpillars of Calcutta to history, it is necessary to holistically scrutinise the issues. Till then, let the tring tring bells continue their gentlemanly journey.