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TfL needs to find £50m to replace Croydon’s oldest trams

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Transport for London needs to replace two-thirds of its fleet of trams – but still has to secure the funding to pay for them.

All change: the original Bombardier-built trams have reached the end of the line

The original 24 Bombardier-built trams have been trundling from Beckenham Junction and New Addington through Croydon and on to Mitcham and Wimbledon for almost a quarter of a century and have reached the end of their useful lifespan.

The German-built Stadler Variobahn trams, which TfL acquired between 2013 and 2015 to augment its fleet, cost around £2million each – putting the total needed to replace the old Bomardiers at an estimated £50million.

A City Hall report sources suggest a number of manufacturers have been approached in replacement negotiations.

The fleet replacement has been an element of TfL’s long-term business plan for at least four years.

But the covid pandemic three years ago emptied the London transport authority’s coffers, and all major capital expenditure is now being carefully scrutinised by the government.

The Croydon Tramlink network opened in 2000, the first tram system to operate in the London area for nearly half a century. Before the covid pandemic in 2020, the tram network was delivering 27.2million passenger journeys per year.

Of the original 24 Bombardier CR4000 trams that came into service 23 years ago, two are not in operation. This includes 2251, the tram involved in the Sandilands derailment in 2016 when seven passengers died.

TfL’s latest investment programme report ahead of a meeting on March 1 says that the Bombardiers “are experiencing declining reliability and have one of the lowest states of good repair categorisations across our fleets”.

Refurbishment and repair of the older trams has been discounted as an option. Changes to the tram network’s infrastructure – length and height of platforms, for example, as well as track upgrades – may also have to be factored into the project costs.

Tram fan: London Mayor Sadiq Khan

TfL recently conducted engineering works on a relatively short stretch of track near Mitcham Junction to improve the service’s reliability. The service from Therapia Lane to Wimbledon was closed for 11 days as a consequence.

At Mayor’s Question Time at City Hall this week, Sadiq Khan said that he is continuing to lobby the government for financial support for an extension of the network into Sutton and the Royal Marsden’s “cancer hub” at Belmont.

Extending the network to Crystal Palace, as costed and planned by Ken Livingstone when he was Mayor and then promised by Boris Johnson on three occasions, has long since been forgotten as an option.


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