Sixty years ago, there was a plan for a revolutionary monorail system around Coventry City Centre. It was never built, but shows some striking similarities to the Very Light Rail system currently being planned.
In a recent post on the Visit Historic Coventry Facebook site, Debbie Harrison brought to light a 1964 plan for a monorail system in Coventry.
The report in the Coventry Express, dated 1st May 1964, shows the vision of Mr. Reg Trotter, described as a Coventry Consultant Surveyor. He had spent eight years working on the plan.
The plan was for streamlined electric carriages each holding 60 people suspended from a monorail 20 ft about the ground. The route would run for four and a half miles in both directions around the ring road and across the city centre. It would stop at ten stations, including the railway station, Broadgate and Pool Meadow Bus Station.
Mr. Trotter’s said that his proposed monorail system would provide cheap public transport throughout the city centre and combat traffic congestion.
The cost of the system was estimated to be £5 million (£86 million in today’s prices). Individual fares would be 3d (old pence), which is equivalent to only about 21p in today’s prices. Tremendous value!
It was expected that the project would be completed by 1971 and would put Coventry twenty years ahead of other cities.
It was claimed that the plan had the support of previous City Architect Donald Gibson, Earnest Marples, the Minister of Transport, as well as Colin Buchanon and Wilfren Burns, two of the country’s most famous planners.
We don’t know how the plan was received in the City Council, but in August 1965 it was reported in the Coventry Evening Telegraph that Alderman George Hodkinson, chairman of the Planning and Regeneration Committee, did not see a future for a monorail.
Speaking shortly before leading a delegation to Dusseldorf to look at monorail systems there, Alderman Hodgkinson said “There may be some lessons to be learnt from the German city, but I can’t see what Dusseldorf has to offer myself”.
Responding to questions about a visit to Tokyo, Alderman Hodgkinson said “I believe that Tokyo is running into problems with its monorail, both mechanically and economically, now that the initial enthusiasm for the project has worn off”. He went on to say that a monorail for Coventry would be too expensive.
At that time the City Council commissioned a number of reports on the city’s future transport arrangements and a special committee was set up to consider the future. These included two studies from monorail firms.
Today the Tokyo monorail system, which was opened in time for the 1964 Olympic Games, is one of the busiest mass transit systems in the world. It has 127,000 trips a day. A monorail at Dusseldorf airport finally opened in 2002. However, monorails have not generally caught on, except for larger cities, and specialist systems such as at airports and leisure resorts.
Tram systems, by comparison, have become an important element of mass transport in larger cities such as Manchester and Sheffield. Coventry’s Very Light Rail system is an attempt to extend the tram into smaller, more compact cities such as Coventry. Meanwhile the humble bus continues to be the flexible mainstay of public transport in Coventry and everywhere else.
