Tram rides are comfortable, they do not cause traffic snarls and they are pollution-free — these are some of the reasons Kolkatans mentioned while demanding more tram services at a programme to mark the 151st anniversary of trams in the city.
People would take trams for their daily commute if there were frequent tram services, they said.
Erratic services with long gaps have made it impossible for commuters to depend on trams, said a woman from Behala who rued that there were no running tram routes in her part of the city.
The voices of the common people were in contrast to what the government had been saying about its plans for Kolkata’s trams.
The city’s mayor and the state’s transport minister have said in the recent past that it was not possible to run trams on more than four or five routes.
In August, Calcutta High Court formed a committee that includes government officials and advocates of a wider tram network to deliberate on how to preserve trams.
On Saturday, two trams ran between the Gariahat depot and Esplanade.
One of them was a wooden-body car that was introduced in the 1940s. The other was a steel-body car that had not been in use for many years but was repaired for the occasion.
The celebration was organised by the Calcutta Tram Users’ Association, a group of Kolkatans who have been advocating a wider tram network in the city and trying to build public opinion against reducing trams to just a few routes.
The first tram — a horse-drawn carriage — in Kolkata, ran between Sealdah and Armenian Ghat on February 24, 1873, according to the website of the West Bengal Transport Corporation.
“Trams services are unpredictable now. No one knows when the next tram will come. How can people depend on trams if the services are so unpredictable?” said Meharun Nesha, who attended the celebrations.
“There should be a regularity in the services. If people know when a tram will come to a place, they will use trams for daily commute,” she said.
Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay, a former professor of film studies at Jadavpur University, said trams were pollution-free and it was necessary to expand the fleet at a time Kolkatans are troubled by air they breathe.
“We are thinking about reducing pollution and here is a transport mode that is free of pollution. It is wrong to say that trams cause traffic snarls. Trams carry so many more people than a car and can actually reduce snarls,” Mukhopadhyay said.
Members of the tram users’ association said 25 tram routes were operational in Calcutta till June 2017.
Now, there are only three routes on which trams run. They are Tollygunge-Ballygunge (route 24/29), Gariahat-Esplanade (route 25) and Shyambazar-Esplanade(route 5).
Mayor Firhad Hakim had in August 2023 told the house of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation that the civic body had told the state transport department that trams should be running on only four routes.
On February 24, 2023, state transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty said: “Our government does not want to shut down trams but, at the same time, it is not possible to run trams on all routes. Trams will run on four or five routes.”
Advocates of trams said that route 36 (Esplanade-Kidderpore) shut down after Cyclone Amphan in 2020 when the overhead cables snapped. Since then, the cables have not been repaired.
Debashis Bhattacharya, president of the Calcutta Tram Users Association, said they had invited people from the fields of film, music and theatre to attend Saturday’s programme.
“We also wanted this to be a form of cultural protest against the government’s decision to restrict trams within four or five routes,” Bhattacharya said.
“We have in the past organised street-corner meetings in many localities and spoken about how trams benefited people in that area,” he said.
Among those present on Saturday were theatre veteran Rudraprasad Sengupta and filmmakers Goutam Ghose and Anik Dutta.
Sengupta said he turned 90 recently and still found tram rides “very comfortable”.