Looking back at Bradford's trams and trolley buses

Just look across the Pennines. It is difficult for a Yorkshireman to admit it, but travelling by local public transport in Manchester, indeed Greater Manchester, is a pleasure when contrasted with the frustrations in Bradford and West Yorkshire.

Metrolink, Manchester’s new tram system, was launched in 1992 with the first trams linking the city with Bury, nearly 10 miles away. Now it has 99 stops along 64 miles serving termini at Altrincham, Ashton-under-Lyne, Bury, East Didsbury, Eccles, Manchester Airport, Rochdale and The Trafford Centre.

Within minutes of alighting from trains from all parts of the country at the two main Manchester city railway stations, sporting visitors to Old Trafford football or cricket stadia have the easiest of tram rides for the final three miles. Compare that with the tortuous journey for a similar distance to Headingley cricket from Leeds station, which also involves a much longer walk to the stadium!

Are things about to change? Two weeks ago at the start of a large public consultation exercise West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin announced outline plans for the new West Yorkshire Mass Transit system. “Spades in the ground by 2028!” she claimed, with a new Bradford to Leeds line a likely high priority in the first phase.

However, detailed routes have yet to be selected from likely options and it is still a very long way to go before the first of the new trams will be in service.

Old tram tracks at Netherlands Avenue in Odsal (Image: Martin Greenwood)

In short, Greater Manchester is at least 40 to 50 years years ahead of West Yorkshire, with Bradford and Leeds way behind Manchester. It was not always thus! Take two events at the turn of the 20th century as examples.

First, 126 years ago next week (July 30, 1898) a new era of public transport in Bradford was launched by a new electric tram. (Note: three years later Manchester followed suit with its first electric tramway). The new service took less than 15 minutes, but it was deemed important enough for a civic opening. It reduced the journey time from three quarters of an hour to go by tram (horse or steam) or cab. It was believed that the potential for the district was great.

The Bradford Tramways Committee and guests boarded the two new electric tramcars in Forster Square, watched by a large crowd, and rode along Bolton Road to the city boundary. They got off for ‘a light luncheon’ at a nearby villa owned by a former councillor and returned to the Town Hall where they dined. They finished with a toast to “the success of the Bolton Road Tramway”.

Electric trams signalled an end for horse and steam. By 1902 the pioneering horse trams on the Manningham Lane service were finally retired, followed 15 months later by the last steam tram on the Shelf service. The Bradford tramway system was now all-electric, but it would not be long before even these trams would be threatened by the new trolley-buses, although the last tram survived right until 1950.

A Bradford tram car at Bradford Industrial Museum (Image: Martin Greenwood)

Second, 13 years later on June 24, 1911, Bradford’s first trolley-bus service started operation between Laisterdyke and Dudley Hill along Sticker Lane. It linked the tram services that ran out of the city on Leeds Road and Wakefield Road. In fact, the formal opening had taken place four days earlier at the same time as a new service in Leeds.

Bradford's last trolley bus (Image: Martin Greenwood)

Both cities had taken the lead in developing a trolley-bus service, being the first in Great Britain to do so. Although three other corporations had visited European cities to see new trolley-bus services in action earlier than the two West Yorkshire cities did in 1909, it was Bradford and Leeds that were quicker off the mark in implementing their service.

Overall, Bradford developed an extensive trolley-bus service. In contrast, Leeds hardly got going, operating just three routes, and did not last more than 17 years. When Bradford closed its last trolley-bus route in 1972, its service had lasted longer than all 49 other places in Britain that had used trolley-buses.

As Bradford was the first place in the UK to start operating trolley-buses and the last to close them down, it can claim to be the country’s home of the trolley-bus. Meanwhile over in Leeds, it became the first English city to adopt electric trams in 1891, a decade before Bradford, and the last tram stopped in 1959, one of the last cities to use them. So Leeds can claim to have been the leader with electric trams to complement Bradford’s record in operating trolley buses.

How things have changed! Both pioneers in first generation local transport systems at the turn of the 20th century, Bradford and Leeds have, now well into the 21st centuries, sadly slipped back greatly in the new generation of mass transit systems. They have much catching up to do.

* Martin Greenwood’s book Every Day Bradford provides a story for each day of the year about people, places and events from Bradford’s history.

It is available from Amazon, The Great British Bookshop (thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk) and most bookshops and online book stores.