FIRST HITS THE WRIGHT LEVEL OF 'WOW'

摘要

Around 70 years ago, Rotherham Corporation recognised that the tide was turning against the tramcar and bought itself a fleet of new unidirectional trams that looked like trolleybuses (picture p15 by M. H. WALLER). It was fitting then that the Magna Science Centre, a former steelworks where Rotherham meets Sheffield, was the venue on 22 September — Car Free Day — where FirstGroup and the Wright Group unveiled the designs of a new bus that's disguised as a modern tram. Public transport, it would seem, has turned full circle. FirstGroup calls this concept 'ftr' — it's the text message shorthand for 'future' — and it's talking confidently of at least one trial fleet being in service in urban Yorkshire within the next 12 months. 'Ftr' is the UK equivalent of bus rapid transit (BRT) in the United States. It's a complete package of vehicles, infrastructure, real-time information and advanced ticketing technology — a lower cost alternative to a tramway. The Wright Group calls the vehicle the StreetCar, which is what the Americans have always called their trams.