The Right Way Forward - Page 1
Aspects of the trolleybus solution

Route 907
This site advocates that the west London tram scheme is abandoned in favour of a trolleybus solution which will have the same order of benefits as the proposed tram scheme but without the expense and disruption of providing tram tracks or large scale demolition of businesses properties. Our map below shows 'Route 907' as the trolleybus route running from Uxbridge to Shepherds Bush, as the tram would, but with the possibility of using the same pollution free vehicles for the night time service onto Holborn using onboard power supplies. The need for overhead wiring for much, or all, of this night time extension is therefore eliminated.

Again, the spur service to Ealing hospital will not need to have overhead wiring as it is envisaged that this part of the service would also use onboard power supplies. Similarly the trolleybus depot will not use any significant overhead wiring and requires no greater land grab than needed for a tram depot. There won't be complex trackwork or obtrusive overhead that a tram yard will spawn either.

This maybe just one trolleybus route [albeit a spinal one], but it could be part of a wider network of trolleybus routes serving London which would be affordable from the financial savings from the tram scheme. It would certainly bring travelling benefits to a much larger area of London than just the Uxbridge Road corridor, but present day attitudes in the UK towards public transport provision makes it difficult to predict when, or if, such a network would be built.

The multiplicity of bus routes that uses the Uxbridge Road corridor are shown, these sometimes just cross the corridor, but in many cases they run along the Uxbridge Road. A trolleybus scheme would neatly interface with these bus services in a way that is difficult to achieve with the proposed design criteria by TfL for the West London Tram where separate tram stations and bus stops are planned.