My area of the Thames Valley has grown rapidly for many years. We attract plenty of new business, new industrial parks and jobs. There is endless pressure for people to buy homes here, with a high rate of new housebuilding. It all puts too much demand on our limited road space, transport capacity, water supply and even on the availability of electricity. The government did not buy us a tram to get the growth started and is not proposing any extra money for the additional roads we need to cope with all the extra lorries, vans and cars the extra homes and jobs bring. Indeed any attempt to fit a tram into the totally inadequate roads we currently have would be impossible. A tram would need to join the rail tracks and add new rail capacity across green fields.
The announcement that the Chancellor has relaxed borrowing rules in order to borrow more to put trams into some additional northern and Midlands cities may be welcomed by some in the places that will get them. It sounds as if it will take until 2028 to plan the projects, with some possible early construction work just ahead of the next election. Maybe people might be using the trams during the next Parliament. If they want them then fine. However it is difficult to claim this will do anything for growth or the strength of our economy this decade and little spending anytime soon to give things a boost now. The government should not overclaim on what this might achieve.
In London and the South east we get some transport investment after the growth when we are chronically short of road space, tube capacity or other transport needs. The transport does not induce the growth but seeks to catch up with the growth. Growth comes from key sectors in a competitive free enterprise economy. Such a pity so many of the government’s tax and regulatory policies are seeking to damage that. There isn’t some new way of public sector led growth that will rescue their chosen locations with trams.
June 5, 2025
It’s all rather meaningless anyway. Playing politics with the next Parliament in making forward announcements they know won’t be achieved in their wretched term in office. Brown’s outgoing government pulled a similar stunt in 2009 announcing large capital rail projects that in reality they hoped the Conservatives would cancel. All very small minded, all very Labour.
June 5, 2025
I couldn’t believe what I heard, so short memories these days—–HS2….
The way to attract business into the areas needing new commercial activity is to make these places low tax ‘enterprise zones’.
June 5, 2025
Net zero. Roads bad, electric trams good. Bad policy leads to bad decisions everywhere.
June 5, 2025
Correct
June 5, 2025
Indeed a full car can take up to 5 or even 7 or 8 people plus luggage and perhaps four bikes all door to door for about 1/5 to 1/25th of the cost per head as a train. More convenient, faster, more flexible, can travel at any times, more comfortable, uses far less fuel per person too. Also you can stop off on route at the super market, pick up the kids, and you have a car to use when you get there.
Why catch a train? Very rarely does it make much sense, occasionally if travelling alone at peak times or to an airport or large city where parking is a rip off perhaps?
June 5, 2025
Why not make the whole country a low tax enterprise zone. To do this halve the size of government cut tax and cut red tape.
June 5, 2025
Tories will ‘never again’ put economy at risk like Liz Truss did, Mel Stride to say
Shadow chancellor to accept Truss’s mini-budget badly damaged party in clearest repudiation yet of ex-PM. Needless to say he read PPE.
It was not so much Liz Truss as all the vast borrowings, duff vaccines and lockdowns of Sunak and Boris that caused the economic damage, Then Sunak (net zero and Covid “Vaccines” fan got in as PM with tax to death Hunt and threw the election six month early to give us the even more appalling Starmer!
We lost our mantle for fiscal responsibility during the Truss time. You lost this with John Major’s ERM fiasco then lost it again with Suank’s vast borrowings during the net harm lockdowns and net harm Covid Vaccines. Stride once again says Reform have not said where the money will come from. Reform have laid this out very clearly ditch net zero, ditch DEI, stop paying for illegal migrant hotels for a start!
With people like Stride, the dithering and sit on the net zero fence Kemi and not so Cleverly the Tories are surely done for. The sensible 10% in the party should join Reform and 90% are clearly LibDims anyway. They even put Theresa May in the Lords!
June 5, 2025
@Lifelogic – another one that doesn’t understand how to create an economy. He was also as with others in the team part of the collective responsibility of cabinet that all own the largest tax take and borrowing created in 70years.
Liz Truss may have been a disrupter to the establishment, hence the briefing against her, but she was attempting to rebalance the runaway section those that had unelected unaccountable found power. A persistent situation that until it is addressed will prevail on the direction the country gets to take.
The UK needs its democracy back, WEF disciples need challenging
June 5, 2025
History tells us that The Lords is a fine place to move failed or embarrassing people, sometimes those who bought the ‘privilege. So, quite fitting for Mrs May. Alternative being The Tower, possibly more appropriate.
June 5, 2025
Now that the Reform chairman Zia Yusuf has resigned, perhaps the 10% sensible Tories won’t think they should join the Farage Circus.
June 5, 2025
That’s what will happen when push comes to shove. But we will so poor at that point that half the tax demand will still be too high.
June 5, 2025
Enterprise zone are unfair & rigged competition to other areas that are outside these zones! So you get businesses locating in the wrong places but when the tax etc. breaks stop go they close or move away again. We should be getting rid of rigged markets – we have so many of them in energy, schools, universities, housing, transport, healthcare, banking, pension investments…they do vast damage.
June 5, 2025
A well planned enterprise zone can make the difference between setting up a new business activity and not. There needs to be rules for entry – new tech, not moving from other areas, a start-up not a subsidiary of a wealthy parent etc. It encourages new businesses to start in parts of the country with the space (possibly former brownfield) and available workforce, away from the presently popular congested areas.
June 5, 2025
Well it makes a difference to where it is set up – often the tax and grant in certain areas end up with it being set up in the wrong place for tax and grant reason. Also unfair competition for other areas.
Make the whole of the UK a low tax enterprise zone and attract businesses and investment to the whole of the UK
June 5, 2025
@Lifelogic – exactly, if tax is required to pay for our safety, security, resilience and self-reliance and on section that enjoys that benefit gets a free pass all the others have to pay their share. The money/taxes in those instances were still required
June 5, 2025
James tomorrow but tomorrow never comes. I don’t think the promise of a few trams at an undefined date will converters yo support this shower of bovine excrement. Even the supposed reversal of WFA comes with more conditions than a little
We wait in trepidation for the next sell out by this government who are definitely working for some foreign power
June 5, 2025
Is that jam tomorrow or who is James?
June 5, 2025
James tomorrow. Auto correct. No glasses.
June 5, 2025
Auto correst is a pain, a slight mis-type is better than a totally different word! My friend Dear Fergus turns to Dear Fungus!
June 5, 2025
‘ The announcement that the Chancellor has relaxed borrowing rules in order to borrow more to put trams into some additional northern and Midlands cities may be welcomed by some in the places that will get them.’
Indeed. Many in these areas feel that London and the South East gets all the investment at their expense. They point to HS2, truncated at Birmingham. So they have a point. Meanwhile, I can now get to Reading on the Elizabeth line at no cost on my Freedom Pass.
June 5, 2025
You can now get to Reading….how exciting!
June 5, 2025
What a waste, if it happens. Trams disrupt other traffic and have immutably fixed routes. Buses on the other hand are collective transport and can be routed practically anywhere. They require no new single-use infrastructure.
Government is a lousy allocator of many resources, including transport. I suppose this is partly to keep the 15 minute city thing alive, and in the forlorn hope to please a few northern voters. Hopefully it won’t ever get to real wasted money, as HS2 has done.
June 5, 2025
Visit Amsterdam
June 5, 2025
Or … Angers, Aubagne, Avignon, Besançon, Bordeaux, Brest, Caen, Clermomt-Ferrand, Dijon, Grenoble, Le Havre, Le Mans, Lille-Roubais-Tourcoing, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Mulhouse, Nantes, Nice, Orleans, Reims, Rouen, Saint-Etienne, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Tours, Valenciennes.
June 6, 2025
but you are unlikely to be as welcome in the French ones!
June 6, 2025
I cannot vouch for all of them but I did not encounter any problem in the Montpellier, the Toulouse or the Lille-Roubaix trams. These three systems had information in English.
And in Toulouse, in 2020, arriving in Blagnac airport the tramway was dead cheap compared to a taxi to the town centre.
June 5, 2025
Indeed public transport is very expensive and usually slow and inconvenient especially if travelling with family or luggage or at off peak times or on many routes it is virtually impossible.
June 5, 2025
Yes yet a another stupid idea from Labour to clog up the roads even more and bring in a system which was got rid of in the 1950’s.
They say they’re relaxing borrowing rules to make way for establishing a tram infrastructure in the north and Midlands.Where does that actually get us a as a Country and what is the benefit when we already have an enormous multi billion pound investment in millions of green eco friendly electric/hydrogen/bio fuel buses across the UK which most of the time run half empty because they don’t operate to schedule are unreliable and as a result people either use their cars, or prefer to order what they are going into the shopping centres for, off the internet.
Surely we should be prioritising defence spending and finding a way to fund the extra 0.5% of GDP that Keir Starmer is waffling on about, and in addition the further 0.5% of GDP which the EU and Nato want us to spend. The Government are not seeking to relax borrowing rules for this but are looking to the taxpayer to carry the bill, but I admit no decision has yet been made as to how this will be funded so it’s all hot air at the moment.
So I think it’s a fair bet that trams will be appearing in Manchester,Birmingham and Glasgow long before we see submarines and rockets being made.
The current Labour government to be credible and give confidence, must start to look at balancing the books in the UK before agreeing to any more unnecessary expenditure, and prioritise defence, reducing benefits, stopping migrants, illegal or otherwise, repatriating foreign criminals back to their own countries to release prison space, stopping expenditure on vanity projects like Hinkley Point and HS2,repairing roads and giving value for money on rates and Council tax, building prisons, reducing UK debt etc etc.
When agreeing to dispose of sovereign territory such as the Chagos Islands,this must be done on a commercial arms length basis where other Countries have the opportunity to buy and the asking price is set at a level which is supported by a proper valuation.In the case of the USA air base at Diego Garcia was it ever offered to the USA and why isn’t it being used as a bargaining tool against the high tariffs now being put on UK goods and services being imported into America.
There appears to be so many opportunities to “make the UK great again” that are being missed all to provide some trams in UK towns and cities that don’t need them, and probably don’t want them.
June 5, 2025
Trams (electric) are part of the WEF project to:
a) get rid of “fossil fuel” transport
b) force private cars in general off the roads, particularly in our cities, in favour of mass transit
c) give the remaining road space over to cyclists and pedestrians
June 5, 2025
@Donna +1
World Government, the 2TK go to for advice and direction as he has told the media and now plays out daily
June 5, 2025
Exactly and what is a tram anyway but an inflexible and far more expensive bus with far more limited and restricted routes!
June 5, 2025
The Rejoiners love trains and teams – ‘the points are set’.
You can go where they say you can go by the route they say you can take.
So different from a car or a horse where you can turn off anywhere, start, stop, so whatever suits you!
June 5, 2025
I give Edinburgh trams as a perfect example of the expensive, problem ridden pitfalls.
June 5, 2025
The keys to growth are cheap reliable largely home grown energy. Less regulation of every nit picking variety, a bonfire of quangos, and a much lower tax burdon on individuals and industry.
Whatever the merits of northern trams, how will it be paid for. Do you see 2TK and Rachael from accounts applying any of the earlier mentioned keys. Just like smash the gangs, talking about it does not result in the departure of an estimated 2m illegals. PMQs should continue to be asked, even when PMAs have become a rambling irrelevance.
June 5, 2025
There has been evidence in the past that some modest public sector ‘triggering’ of private investment in local areas has been successful. But a government like the current one tends to think that public investment must be paramount. Ministers would tend to read Will Hutton and William Keegan in the Guardian as confirmation bias, rather than John Redwood or Milton Friedman.
June 5, 2025
Will Hutton and William Keegan god help us! Steal the money off the people who made it and invest it well then waste half of it in admin, collection and distribution costs – then piss the rest down the drain on some duff tram scheme, net zero, a Millenium Dome, two duff Aircraft Carriers, Paying to give away Chagos, Paying the French to help launch the small boat or a new Humber Bridge project! What might go wrong?
June 5, 2025
@Lifelogic +1
June 5, 2025
The most interesting thing about the announcement yesterday was the reaction from the captive and despised working class men (they appeared to be all men) who were forced to stand behind Rachel from Complaints and listen to her droning nonsense.
I’ll be amazed if the projects she announced, which were the same ones Sunak announced two years’ previously, are delivered on time, let alone on budget. Let’s remind ourselves what happened when the Edinburgh tram system was constructed:
“The Edinburgh Tram project was £400 million over budget and five years late due to a “litany of failures”, Lord Hardie has found.” I’m sure we were assured that “lessons will be learnt” and this may be an opportunity to assess whether they were. Personally I doubt it.
If these projects DO go ahead, I predict they will have the same delivery/cost outcome as the Edinburgh one (and HS2). McSweeney seems to think that constantly announcing what they WILL do is achieving something when it clearly isn’t. All it is doing is setting the Government up to fail, which is what it is really doing.
As Mrs Thatcher once remarked “the problem with today’s politicians is they make a speech and think they’ve achieved something. They haven’t; they’ve just made a speech.”
June 5, 2025
The north does not want to stand in the rain waiting for a tram, competing for a house within running distance of a tram stop.
We were interested in a mainline fast railway to the west coast cities. That could take freight to ports for export.
I suggest Rachel promises cloth caps and whippets at a discount or free with a every tram ticket. That’s who they think we are.
We know who we think they are and they are not the Government.
June 5, 2025
Being a Southerner, I wouldn’t presume to tell Northerners what they want. I would, however, make the observation that if Northerners don’t want what Rachel-from-Complaints announced yesterday and Sunak announced two years ago (because they were the same thing) …. then perhaps those Northerners should vote for another Party which offers them the prospect of something different.
Just saying ….
June 5, 2025
Indeed.
June 5, 2025
As I understand it most of this money was committed by your government as part of the Red Wall project, indeed the website has been mentioning it for months. i presume you fought hard against it.
Labour paused it on taking power, resurrected it with a few tweaks and sold it as their own.
As usual duplicity all round.
June 5, 2025
@NigL – its called electioneering. Similar promises have been made by every ego wishing to rule this century
June 5, 2025
Its called buying votes , by taking money(taxes) to bribe you.. It changes nothing as it is the taxes and government who knows best that is killing the economy. The election for survival in 2019 is already upon us.
June 5, 2025
Why this fixation with trams? Use trolley buses instead. They can use the existing roads. No track installation required, just the catenary.
June 5, 2025
‘just the catenary’.
If only life and catenary in built up towns were that simple.
June 5, 2025
Dear John,
You refer to the Thames Valley, and my thoughts went to Reading which up to the 60s had a trolleybus system, a form of tram I suggest. This system had in fact replaced a much earlier tram system.
The poignant question is why should towns in the Thames Valley adopt a transport system they previously had abandoned?
June 5, 2025
Have you tried driving into or through Reading during rush hour? There’s no space to expand the existing road network and the third Thames crossing (which would help) has been kicked around (with no real progress) since the 60s.
Trams/trolleybuses fed from strategically placed Park and Ride locations (many of which already exist e.g. Thames Valley Park, Winnersh Triangle, Mereoak) would allow more people to get in and out of the town centre without yet more cars adding to an already overloaded road network.
Reply If there is no space for more road there is certainly no space for tram track. Tram track is far less flexible than roads which can take buses and cars.m
June 6, 2025
Its a nightmare at almost any time of day, you have to contemplate where you are expected to drive, signage occupies you when you should be concerned with jay-walkers, other cars with confused drivers. And then you might want to park !!
If you must then try to use trains/buses/park & ride much better for your stress level.
June 6, 2025
Tram tracks don’t always have to be built on existing roads. They can be built on elevated platforms. Look at the DLR in London for an example.
June 6, 2025
Ask the citizens and shoppers of Reading how much they would like elevated levels for trams ….I seem to remember there was a very small length one in Seattle?
The rather OTT bit south of the Oracle is enough.
Prepare for raised voices and possibly abuse, who do you imagine is going to have to pay for such a nonsense?
June 5, 2025
I can only imagine that on one of his cosy jollies to chat with EU officials Starmer noticed the shiny trams everywhere and thought they might be a good idea for ‘back-home’.
There is clearly no desperate need for trams in the UK and they were never a part of any consolidated infrastructure plan – BUT the UK would certainly look more like the EU with Trams all around.
The other thing of course is that the PM needs to regularly introduce stunning ideas to show how much he is working for our good, ideas that keep him in the news in a positive way and keep Farage from the front pages.
Trams for the UK are not a new idea, nor an innovative one. It’s hard to believe we can afford this scheme no doubt devised on the back of a fag packet as the bright idea for the day, and it will soon be forgotten.
If Starmer really wants to help us he should lock himself away in his office and stop doing anything!
June 5, 2025
Stay in his office, what! A frequent flyer stops amassing points?
June 5, 2025
Trams are a terrible idea. They’re expensive, inflexible and noisy and of course the road needs to be dug up to put down the track. If the idea is to provide a fixed route then simply paint lines on the existing tarmac road and use trolley buses which are cheaper, quieter and can a least negotiate around obstructions on the road when nececessary. No difference to the overhead electricity supply. Better still are CNG buses which can even be “green” CNG. Not that CO2 is a pollutant or causes global warming as shown by either Happer & Wijngaarden ‘s saturation explanation (also endorsed by the Royal Society) or Shula & Ott’s thermalisation argument.
June 5, 2025
Docklands regeneration was facilitated, amongst other things, by DLR assuring good public transport connectivity to and through it.
This can be the model for regeneration of areas.
It must be accepted though that the public and indeed all transport opportunities in most large UK urban areas outside London and it’s large commuter belt are far inferior not just to London but more importantly urban areas of comparable size around the world. For businesses to thrive they need good access to a large pool of talented labour and transport is a key facilitator of this.
Having grown up in the South East, lived in Manchester for 10 years and now living in a mid sized European city I can say even now Manchester’s transport provision, after quite a lot of improvements in the last 30 years, is clearly inferior. This cannot be good for UK growth
Reply Extra road space was more crucial for Docklands success which I helped put in as Minister. Trains only work financially when enough people need to use them which requires big cities.
June 5, 2025
A new tram system is a typical example of politicians and planners getting excited about something which is new to them. I was living in the area when the London Tramlink was in the planning stage. An original plan was in my local paper which showed the route going through my house. At this time it was not possible to sell a property in the area because purchasers were wary of buying a property that might be subject to demolition or the tramway passing their front door. In the event the line, when built, diverted towards New Addington, a monstrous council estate of two story dwellings with cars parked all over everywhere, and came nowhere near me.
A got on one of the trams once and alighted at a station which was in a field, my fellow passengers seem quite well adapted to this novel arrangement, but I found it rather strange.
June 5, 2025
Reeves’ announcement about transport infrastructure spending in the North simply restates exactly spending plans already announced by Sunak so if you don’t like them you know which party to blame.
June 5, 2025
Sadly, we have a dishonest PM and a dishonest Government, as many of the comments today show. No one seems to believe the Tram schemes will happen, and they are entirely unsuitable for cities today. The cost far outweighs the benefits, so yet again Labour are going down a blind, dead-end alley! Even to think of borrowing money to fund Trams is the economics of the madhouse!
Defence spending should be the No. 1 priority now. The PM lives in a different world from the rest of us. To us, a war in Europe, showing no signs of stopping, underscores the urgency of rebuilding our defences. The price is what is required, not a vague percentage. 5% is a reasonable target, but if it costs more, so be it. You cannot put a price on freedom, but it is far more critical than a few tram systems. The Beatles sang about Starmer years ago. “He’s a real nowhere man, living in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody!”
June 5, 2025
Could you please give the reference of The Royal Society endorsing the saturation effect discussed by H&W or the S&O’s thermalisation argument. Thanks a lot in advance.
June 5, 2025
Fantasy daily wishful thinking from Labour spinning their ideas of Utopia where no one owns a car and will be made to prefer rigid tram constraints instead.