India (Commonwealth) _ Authorities in Kolkata, India, declared this week that they will be going away with trams completely, keeping only a tiny historical loop. In response, a group of campaigners is trying to keep trams from being just nostalgic vacation destinations and instead from being a necessary mode of transit.
Kolkata commemorated the 150th anniversary of its tramways in February 2023 with music, cake, a vintage tram beauty pageant that included a century-old wooden vehicle, and a beaming tram driver named Roberto D’Andrea who traveled all the way from Melbourne, Australia.
In operation are two of the oldest tramways in the world, located in Kolkata and Melbourne. Trams in Melbourne have existed since 1885. The horse-drawn tram that went through Kolkata first appeared in 1873.
Despite a previous attempt by the government to eliminate them, Melbourne’s tram system continues to operate. Some trams now run on solar power, and the system has been updated. Over time, Kolkata’s tram system has become less and less frequent. There are presently just three routes, down from 52 in the 1970s, 25 in 2015, and so on.
The tram cars, which haven’t been overhauled in years, whine and rattle. Not even the inside signs have changed. “Be on the lookout for pickpockets,” “No change available for 100 rupees ($1.19; $0.89) or 50,” and “Please ring the bell only once to stop the car.”
The state government now declares that it wishes to completely phase out tram service, with the exception of a single, tiny loop designated as a heritage route. However, a tenacious gang of advocates for trams is still retaliating and fighting hard to preserve them for the next generations too.
Mr. D’Andrea, who over the years has worked to build a friendship between the trams of Melbourne and Kolkata, said it’s a major step backward in a world when cities are ‘decarbonising transport’ due to climate change and global warming.
There are tram networks in over 400 cities. Cities that demolished their tramways are spending a lot of money reconstructing them in Sydney, Helsinki, and throughout France. He noted that trams are run on tight streets in Hong Kong at a high frequency.
Snehasis Chakraborty, the minister of transportation for West Bengal, however, told the reporters that although the city’s population and car count have increased many times, the roads have not become any wider. The amount of road space is still just about 6%, far less than Mumbai’s 18% and 10% for Delhi.”
There were trams in those two cities once. There were double-deckers in Mumbai. With their elimination, Kolkata is the only Indian city that still has streetcars that trundle along. They have, in a sense, come to represent the city itself.
Other notable structures in the city include the colonial buildings in the city center, the steel Howrah bridge, and the white-domed Victoria Memorial monument. However, Kolkata has its trams, just as London has its famous red double-decker buses. For many people in Kolkata, the alarm clock that awakened them up was the first tram of the day rattling down the streets, ding-ding.
They frequently appear in movies shot in the region. Filmmaker Anjan Dutt stated that he had used trams in two of his films and the tram yard as well.
The renowned director Satyajit Ray’s 1963 film Mahanagar begins with a breathtaking two-minute tram scene in which sparks fly from the overhead cables. The camera then pans inside to focus on the protagonist’s weary face as he arrives home from work. Here, the tram stands in for the city itself, both its hopes and the everyday grind.
Actually, the Belgachia tram depot in Kolkata, which used to be crowded with laborers fixing, maintaining, and even building trams, frequently serves as a backdrop for movies. “I witnessed movies being shot in the workshop even during the working day,” recalls Subir Bose, a 39-year tram business employee who retired in 2022. “A The first city in Asia to get electric trams was Calcutta, as it was known at the time, in 1902. The Calcutta Tramways Company continued to operate out of London even after independence, and it remained listed on the London Stock Exchange until 1968. Car manufacturers including Burn Standard and Jessop created the vehicles.
It was also more than just a means of transportation. The city is connected by the tram lines. Tram workers used empty trams to patrol Calcutta during the horrific riots that erupted following the city’s partition in 1947 in an effort to help things return to normal.
