I’ve recently spent some time retracing what was once the second-largest tram network in the British Empire (in fact, the 13th-largest in the world). It had 291 km of track (more than any tram network still operating today) and was serviced by 1,600 streetcars–carrying a daily average of 1.1 million passengers in a city with 1.5 million residents.
It belonged to Sydney NSW, Australia–where I live–a city which recently spent four years, two months, and nearly three billion AUD laying just twelve kilometres of “light rail” on the same streets where the trams had once rattled.
What the f*ck happened?
Well, let’s remember that hindsight is 20/20:
Buses the world over have proved themselves the most modern and efficient type of public transport, and have superseded trams in all important overseas cities. Buses are far more mobile and get away from the rigid tracks. Buses will certainly speed up vehicular traffic and eliminate bottlenecks. The lifting of tram tracks will remove a constant source of danger to vehicular traffic both in wet weather when rails cause skids and when tracks are in a neglected state and develop potholes.
Richards, H.E. (General Secretary of the National Roads and Motorists’ Association). 10 November 1953, quoted in “No new trams for Sydney; gradual change to buses”, newspaper clipping, Sydney Tramway Museum Archive.
Sometimes, people get things wrong.
Which is fair enough? We’re human, after all.
But some oopsies can cause a lot of pain–and the removal of Sydney’s tram network pains Sydneysiders to this day. Modern Sydney is a sprawling, car-centric metropolis which boasts the world’s largest and most costly network of tolled motorways–not to mention the “varicose veins” which we call arterial roads.
Why, though, should I bother detailing the routes and roads which once carried trams in my city? Why have I sunk my time into remapping century-old accounts into Google Earth KML files?
Well, from a technical perspective, I think it needs doing. To my knowledge, no publicly available source has mapped the former network in a GIS.
Currently available datasets include extensive verbal descriptions and medium-resolution raster maps–but nothing which can be explored in fine detail. Additionally, many of the geographically-detailed datasets are lacking in chronology–when and for how long the different segments of the network were built and operated.
I hope that this project will provide that level of detail, for any future researchers and historians who seek to understand life in the Sydney of decades past.
And that brings me to the deeper purpose of the project–to better understand what once was, in order to better navigate and make sense of what is now. (And I promise I’m not just spouting blind νοσταλγία or misdirected intergenerational saudade.)
Like any inhabited place, the city I live in is the product of many lifetimes. Choice and chance become equally powerful forces, and so the magical questions–what if? how come?–are always worth asking.
We could have kept our streetcars, and I could have grown up a tram-ride away from my primary school. ‘But something happened on the way to that place’, and those happenings tell us a lot–not only about the people of Sydney past, but also the possibilities for the Sydney of today and tomorrow.
So what are we waiting for? 😀
— Josh
Idling Insignificantly 