Tracking back Are trams the answer - again - to our city's transport issues?

An underground would cost too much, buses may never be a mass transit solution, and new stations will only see a few more trains a day. So the answer to Bristol's decades-old demand for the kind of transport network visitors to Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Nottingham see every day, is increasingly being touted by those now in power in the city - trams.

- Tristan CORK

The city council is gradually creating key transport routes that could, they say, one day accommodate trams. But trams are nothing new on the streets of Bristol. The city was one of the first in the country, and indeed the world, to install a tram network, and in its heyday it was the envy of many other cities.

The transport planners of the 2020s are earmarking routes for what could end up being a tram system for Bristol's future. They include Cumberland Road along the north side of the New Cut, the A4 through Brislington, and the A4108 out through Clifton and Westbury-on-Trym up to Cribbs Causeway.

But, as the previous Labour administration run by Mayor Marvin Rees pointed out, Bristol could struggle to put trams back on main roads where they used to be, like the A38 Gloucester Road through Horfield and Bishopston, the A420 Church Road to Kingswood through St George and Redfield, or the A38 through Bedminster, simply because there are hundreds and hundreds of times more vehicles on the roads now than there were at the turn of the 20th century.

Trams were the main means of getting around the city for Bristolians from the last decades of the 19th century and up to the eve of the Second World War.

By 1910, the city was crisscrossed with routes coming from all quarters, with pretty much every main road into the city centre containing two-way tram lines. One of the longest routes started in Staple Hill, came down Fishponds Road, then Stapleton Road before swinging right at Broadmead and heading up Gloucester Road to terminate at Zetland Road and the Arches.

Another route from Eastville went through the city centre but then climbed the hill to Kingsdown and ended at the Downs. Fares were cheap, the trams were usually bustling, and provided Bristolians with a way to get around the city, commute into the city centre and also for leisure.