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So there is also the benefit in helping create a circular economy.” The transport operators also like the idea of reusing the older stock, rather than letting it go to waste. He adds: “Casino find it economical because it’s very quick and convenient to get the goods into the downtown area – you can almost push the goods from the tram right into the shops. “It avoids congestion on the roads, and so it helps reduce the amount of carbon emissions and pollution.” “It was based on the idea that if you could bring the flow of goods on to the tramway, it would prevent adding to traffic on the road,” explains Danard. Efficacity’s business development officer Joël Danard says the organisation is now talking to several other potential clients keen to move goods by tram. The research and development institute Efficacity forged the TramFret partnership between Casino, the local authority and the tramway operator Société de Transports de l’Agglomération Stéphanoise (STAS). Since its launch in June, the once-daily TramFret has been delivering water, soft drinks, snacks and canned goods to supermarket stores owned by Casino. In Saint-Étienne, central France, the TramFret project uses old trams to transport cargo on the city’s network, moving produce from a warehouse on the outskirts of the city to the busy downtown area. The TramFret project uses old trams to move produce from a warehouse on the outskirts of Saint-Étienne to the busy downtown area. And having large, well-run tramways in place for passengers has allowed businesses to come in and make the network even more productive. In France there are dozens of tram and light-rail passenger systems following major investment in the 1980s. Could this extension help make a success of trams in the UK in the years ahead? Earlier this month the National Audit Office revealed the tram-train scheme linking Sheffield and Rotherham has soared five times higher than its £15m budget to £75.1m.īut across Europe there are examples of existing tram networks being used to attract businesses to use the network for freight transport. Since the launch of the Manchester Metrolink in 1992, a handful of British cities have opted for electric tram systems, which offer quiet, reliable and pollution-free transport in dense urban areas.Įdinburgh’s troubled tram project, which took three years longer than planned and had doubled in cost by the time it finally opened in 2014, helped taint tram development with the perception of costly overruns. Over the past 25 years, however, the tram has undergone a stuttering, half-hearted revival.

Having achieved ubiquity in almost every urban centre in Britain by the end of Victorian age, the electric tram was killed off by the rise of the automobile in the middle decades of the 20th century.