œ1 BILLION OF SCHEMES WAIT FOR THE GO-AHEAD

ight rail continues to gain a steady, if not dramatic, momentum in this country: four of the UK's five schemes have been built in the last decade, and almost œ1 billion of projects have survived the false hopes of the 80s to have a realistic chance of going ahead.

Top of the list of challengers to get the go ahead for construction, and the funding required, are the Midland Metro and Croydon Tramlink. Both have parliamentary assent and provisional funding authorisation. Midland Metro is odds on favourite to get the green light first with only œ30m of the total œ135m funding still required. Discussions are underway with the DoT on how this money can be raised but it will only be able to come from the seven local authorities in the West Midlands area. The Altram consortium, consisting of Laing and Ansaldo have everything in place except the money.

In the meantime Croydon Tramlink has just invited interested parties to pre-qualify for the tender process. The œ160m scheme received Royal Assent in 1994. The system is being developed by London Transport with Croydon Borough Council which hope to achieve a more significant level of private financing than other schemes. They hope to let the contract to design, build and operate the system in the spring of 1996 with construction taking approximately three years and trams running before the end of the century.

Lagging behind in the running, but both with authorisation from Parliament, are Leeds Supertram and the Greater Nottingham Rapid Transit. Leeds has just announced a shortlist of three consortia to design, build, operate and maintain the system. These are Tramrider (BICC, Siemens and Badgerline); Tramtrack (Sir Robert McAlpine, Bombardier and Serco); Eurotrans (Morrison, Christiani and Nielsen, Taylor Woodrow, British Bus and Vevey). It is hoped that if bids for funding are successful that the œ95m scheme will start construction in April 1996.

The Greater Nottingham Rapid Transit scheme is somewhat behind. It has Royal Assent but has only recently advertised for interest from consortia to form the development group. The œ68m scheme will then go out to tender at the end of 1996.

A light rail scheme had been approved for Bristol but the private company promoting it is now in liquidation. Avon County Council is, however, putting forward proposals for a scheme in south Bristol. On top of these schemes there are a further 45 light rapid transit systems planned which use either light rail, trams or guided buses.

The unco-ordinated approach of all the schemes, with contact between the project teams only on an informal basis, is in contrast to that adopted by the French. They have an impressive record of maintaining a rolling programme of projects using standard vehicles and a design which uses standard components. 'In this country we start from scratch every time,' commented Scott McIntosh of London Transport. 'We should be aiming at achieving something similar to the old roads programme which allowed contractors to invest in plant, equipment and their manpower.'