Kolkata’s trams, once essential, are now a neglected relic
Hit by official apathy, tram system has become a nostalgia ride
The tram rattled along College Street, passing dozens of book stalls and announcing itself with the quaint chime of a bell. A gentle breeze from its open windows and antique ceiling fans cut the humid summer heat.
Sounds and smells from the streets wafted in — fresh fish splayed out on the sidewalk, the muezzins’ call to prayer — as the tram passed vegetable wagons and ornate colonial buildings.
“You get all the flavours of Calcutta here, so it’s the best way to travel,” said a medical student, Megha Roy, riding the tram with two friends. She used the Anglicised version of Kolkata, which residents deploy interchangeably with its current spelling and pronunciation.
The three friends had jumped onboard spontaneously, with no clear idea of where the tram was going or when it was scheduled to get there. But it didn’t really matter. The ride itself was an unexpected treat.
“It’s like a fairy tale,” Roy said.
But in reality, Kolkata’s trams — the first in Asia and the last still operating in India — are in trouble.
In recent years, hit by natural disasters and official neglect, the city’s tram system has become little more than a nostalgia ride, its passengers more often looking for a lark than an efficient trip home.
And authorities say that while trams should remain a part of the transit mix, buses and the city’s metro system better serve 21st-century riders
Nobody knows when the next car will come. They say this is the control room, but nothing is controlled; everything is scattered.” Debasish Bhattacharyya | President of the Calcutta Tram Users’ Association
in the city of some 15 million people. The tram system, built in 1881, was instrumental in Kolkata’s growth into one of the world’s most populous cities, cutting the path for the development of a metropolis on the move.
Preserve heritage
“We grew up as a city with the tramways,” said Aranda Das Gupta, some of whose earliest memories are of the tram rolling past his greatgrandfather’s bookstore, which opened just five years after the tram first arrived. “It’s the heritage of Kolkata.”
A few committed riders are fighting hard to preserve that heritage.
Pointing to cities from San Diego to Hong Kong, they say
light rail is being reevaluated globally and argue that Kolkata’s 140-year-old system makes sense for a city struggling with pollution and overcrowding.
In an age of growing concerns about climate change, the emission-free trams, powered by overhead electric lines, are a better option than diesel-fuelled buses and private cars, activists say. The trams were briefly pulled by horses, an experiment that ended in less than a year after too many horses succumbed to the heat.
“Scientifically, economically, environmentally, there is no reason to convert the tramways for buses,” said Debasish Bhattacharyya, president of the Calcutta Tram Users’ Association.
But the scene at one tram stop suggested commuters may feel differently. Fewer than a half-dozen people were waiting for the tram, while nearby, hundreds were piling onto buses that sagged under the weight of so many passengers, belching black plumes of diesel exhaust as they careened over the tram’s tracks and onto the street.
Control room
Admittedly, neither speed nor punctuality are hallmarks of the trams, which must contend with a melange of traffic on their routes: trucks, buses, cars, vintage yellow Ambassador taxis, rickshaws manual and electric, pedestrians, herds of goats and the occasional cow.
“Nobody knows when the next car will come,” Bhattacharyya said. “They say this is the control room, but nothing is controlled; everything is scattered,” he said, gesturing to a hub of the tram system in central Kolkata.
Monthly tickets have disappeared, but at Rs7 a ride — about 9 cents — it is still one of the cheapest ways to get around.