Transportation Deployment Casebook/2023/Glasgow

History and development of the Glasgow electric streetcar network

Introduction

Streetcars, specifically electric streetcars, are a form of public transportation that rose to prominence in cities around the world during the late 19th and early 20th century before falling victim to buses and the automobile.

In the case of Glasgow, electric streetcars ran on rails along city streets, sometimes with their own right of way and often mingling with other modes of transport. They were cheaper to build and operate compared to heavy rail, but were able to move larger numbers of people than carriages or cars. They were also considered to be more reliable than earlier modes due to their sturdier construction and comparative speed (Railway World). Importantly, electric streetcars were also considered much cleaner in terms of pollutants when compared to steam powered and horse drawn vehicles.

Streetcars were connected to electricity through overhead wiring or underground conduit power lines (Schmucki 2012). The streetcar vehicles included comfortable seating and interiors that were enclosed, protecting travellers from the outside weather (Schmucki 2012).

The main markets for streetcars included densely populated cities. The ability to move larger numbers of people on street level was attractive and multiple systems were constructed across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Glasgow's transport system prior to the electric streetcar

Prior to the opening of the first electric streetcar line in Glasgow in 1898, passengers utilised an extensive network of horse drawn streetcars and buses when they couldn’t make trips by walking or cycling (Jones 2019). Glasgow opened its first horse drawn streetcar service in 1872, and the system experienced significant growth through subsequent years (Schmucki 2012). Relatively soon after this in 1898, the horse-drawn streetcar network began to be electrified with inefficient and slow streetcars slowly replaced by their electric counterparts (The Scotsman 2017).

The rapid growth of Glasgow and other British cities during the late 19th and early 20th century was driven by movements from rural areas into the urban centre and lower mortality rates (Brash 1971). Transportation improvements at the time, most notably the electric streetcar system, enabled and supported this shift towards city centres as they enabled people to move around more easily and quickly. This ease of movement led to the rapid expansion of the mode in the urban area and eventually outside of Glasgow’s city limits, helping to shape the city by influencing the location of new housing developments (Pooley & Turnbull 2000).

The technological genesis of the electric streetcar

Electric streetcars were crafted through the marrying of several different pieces of technology. The first notable technology was the precursor to electric streetcars, horse drawn streetcars; from this technology came the idea for carriages pulled upon rails on the street surface, it also provided streetcar vehicles that had been designed and refined for use on street rails. So similar were the first electric streetcar carriages to the horse drawn ones, that a number were converted for electric streetcar use for operation on the new system (Jones 2019).

The concept of utilising steel rails was in itself borrowed from the railways, though it had been adapted for city roads by sinking tracks to ensure they were flush with the road surface to avoid hindering pedestrians and motorcars (The Tramway and Railway World 1903).

Another notable technological advancement utilised for electric streetcars was electricity and its accompanying infrastructure, which over time had been rolled out through wiring, telegraph poles and substations (The Tramway and Railway World 1903). In the example of Glasgow, existing electric infrastructure for the Glasgow Subway system and the knowledge from use of this technological were important factors in the genesis of the Glasgow electric streetcar system (The Tramway and Railway World 1903).

The standard streetcar was designed and refined over time through four phases (Jones 2019). The initial streetcars used on the first line were not successful in operation due to challenges with derailments, they did not last long but the lessons learned were invaluable for the future phases of streetcars (Jones 2019). Further phases of streetcar design mainly sought to increase the comfort of the vehicles for passengers, including interior design improvements and enclosing parts of the vehicle from the weather (Jones 2019). Mino speed and suspension improvements also occurred over time.

Development and growth of the system

The initial market for electric streetcars was along existing horse-drawn streetcar lines, all of which had been established along routes with high densities radiating out of the city centre (Brash 1971). As each line was gradually replaced with electric streetcars, ridership boomed across the network due to the vastly improved service they provided. Improvements in speed also allowed an increase in headway meaning that more frequent services could be offered to meet demand (Brash 1971).

Concurrent with the replacement of the horse-drawn streetcar network, new lines were constructed spreading out from the urban centre into new and existing suburban areas. In some cases suburbs were constructed around extensions to streetcar lines (Pooley & Turnbull 2000).

Development of the Glasgow streetcar network was influenced and borrowed technologies that were implemented and proven by earlier tramways in Dublin and London (Brash 1971). These precedents along with the success of horse drawn streetcars were the foundation for introducing and developing streetcar technology in Glasgow.

Policy was influential in the development of the system, initially government policy banned the local municipal council from operating the first tramway lines; instead signing allowing a private company to operate the network for a 22 year period under a lease agreement (The Tramway and Railway World 1903). The company constructed extensions to the network and opened new lines during their lease period which witnessed significant patronage increases. Despite this success, the company was unable to extend their contract at the end of the lease and operations fell under municipal control until the final streetcar line closure in 1962 (The Tramway and Railway World 1903). This created a monopoly on streetcar travel in Glasgow that wasn’t present in other cities with systems that had competition between different operators.

Quantitative analysis of the network

Figure 1: Glasgow electric streetcar network track length per year

The birthing period of the Glasgow electric streetcar system can be observed in Figure 1 from 1872-1912, where the network expanded exponentially. This growth was initially driven by replacement of existing horse-drawn streetcar lines and eventually through extensions to lines and opening new lines to cover service gaps (The Tramway and Railway World 1903).

Unsurprisingly, minimal extensions and improvements were made to the system during WW1 and in the post-war period except for repairs following bombings.

Figure 2: Glasgow electric streetcar network track length against city population per year

Following 1923, network expansions were planned for the system to account for the massive post-war population increases that Glasgow was experiencing, which had placed greater demand on the streetcar network (Brash 1971).

In a positive virtuous cycle, as the city grew, the need for transport also grew exponentially (corroborated in Figure 2), along with the distances that people needed to travel in order to access employment that was mostly located in the city centre. Electric streetcars provided the perfect means for enabling the growth of cities whilst simultaneously increasing access and mobility factors, it revolutionised transport and shaped cities.

Network expansions continued for 15 years until 1938 by which point the network had reached its largest historical extant at 141 miles, making it one of the largest streetcar systems in the world (city monitor).

Figure 3: Utilisation of public transport in Glasgow. Notable is the dominance of the streetcar system up until the end of the 1930s. (Pooley & Turnbull 2000, p.374)

Government interventions to support the streetcar system can be best observed during this period, which saw private bus services begin to compete with and impact streetcar service patronage and revenues (Pooley & Turnbull 2000). Interventions included reductions in streetcar fares and replacing ageing fleet members with modern tram cars (Pooley & Turnbull 2000). These policies were supplemented by an act of government that limited the operation of bus services within the centre of Glasgow and subsequent introduction of municipal run bus services to fill streetcar service gaps (Pooley & Turnbull 2000). These policies are considered successful when viewing Figure 3, which shows that patronage on tramways continued to capture a growing majority of trips taken up until World War II.

Unfortunately, track mileage data is difficult to find after 1938, but it is understood that the advent of World War II in 1939 scuttled any plans to continue growing the streetcar system and to fight competition with buses; it was in a sense the major catalyst for the decline of the Glasgow streetcar system (Brash 1971). It is likely that the system never experienced a maturity phase in the theoretical sense because services were immediately reduced in an effort to conserve energy during the wartime and to reflect a sudden drop in patronage.

The correlation between population growth and the streetcar system was analysed up until the end of the WWII and showed a very high r squared of 93.1 demonstrating the fact that in Glasgow, streetcar system and population growth were linked together during the growth period of the network.

Unlike many other Western cities at the time, Glasgow did not experience a post-war population boom, it experienced an overall decline as can be witnessed in Figure 2. As expected considering the linkages between demographics and the streetcar network, these trends were the death nell for any future plans to extend the streetcar network and eventually led to the closure of lines that were experiencing significant patronage decline. The final factor that accelerated the decline of Glasgow’s system was the rise of the automobile and propositions that buses were a good replacement to streetcars that were becoming more expensive to operate and maintain in the face of falling patronage (The Scotsman 2017). In the end, bus lines began replacing streetcar lines on an approximate like-for-like basis beginning from 1953 when a decision was made to cease replacing the ageing streetcar fleet (Jones 2019).

References

Brash, RW 1971, Glasgow in the Tramway Age, Longman, London.

Jones, C 2019, Glasgow Trams through the years, Glasgow History, viewed 7 March 2023, <<unable to publish link due to wikibooks>>

Pooley, CJ & Turnbull, J 2000, ‘Commuting, transport and urban form: Manchester and Glasgow in the mid-twentieth century’, Urban History, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 360-383.

Schmucki, B 2012, “The Machine in the City: Public Appropriation of the Tramway in Britain and Germany, 1870–1915”, Journal of Urban History, vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 1060-1093.

The Scotsman 2017, ‘The heartfelt farewell to Glasgow's last tram 55 years ago’, The Scotsman, 12 September, viewed 9 March 2023, <<unable to publish link due to wikibooks>>.

The Tramway and Railway World 1903, “A Review of Railway and Tramway Progress in Electric and Other Traction: 1903”, The Tramway and Railway World, viewed 6 March 2023, <<unable to publish link due to wikibooks>>.