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The American transportation research board (TRB) defines light rail as follows:
Light rail transit is a metropolitan electric railway system characterized by its ability to operate single cars or short trains alongexclusive rights-of-way at ground level, on aerial structures, in subways or, occasionally, in streets, and to board and dischargepassengers at track or car-floor level (TRB, 1978).
This definition is in line with the more recent one of Jackson (2000), Working from this definition this section provides afurther description of light rail and an overview of the fifteen most promising light rail projects in the Netherlands.The essenice of light rail is that it is a hybrid form of public transport. It involves passenger rail transport in which thevehicle, as regards size and weight, stands between urban tram and a conventional train. The tram characteristics of lightrail are generally found in a lower floor and small wheels that allow passengers to board and exit on the street or low plat-forms. Vehicles are larger then trans, but have a lighter design then heavy rail allowing for lighter engines and more efficientoperation. Thanks to the lighter vehicles the infrastructure can also have a lighter format than required for conventionaltrains. Due to its hybrid character, light rail services can adopt elements of heavy rail, urban tram and even subway operationmodels. These include operating speeds and stop distances can be adopted from tram and train, schedules can be fixed times(at 17,23 h) or intervals (every 5 min), boarding regimes can have in-vehicle ticket sales and validation or off-vehicle saleswith in-vehicle or platform inspection.
The promise of light rail relates to the synergetic combination of aspects of train and tram (Barry, 1991 and Voermanet al., 2001). Due to the lesser weight and smaller scale the operating and construction costs are lower than for heavy rail.The smaller scale means light rail can penetrate into city centres without the need for heavy investments in undergroundinfrastructure such as required for the subway. This gives medium-sized urban centres the chance to create direct links be-tween the inner city, the outlying districts and the surrounding population centres. Through the lighter operating require-ments (like a tram), the transport service can be denser in terms of time (higher frequency) and space (more lines and stops)according to the needs. It can be operated at grade and is faster then trams. All these factors mean that light rail providesstronger links within a metropolitan district and thus contributes to a more cohesive metropolitan district.There are many examples of these hybrid forms of rail transport. Some are characterized by combined use of train andtram infrastructure, such as the Periurbain in the French city of Mulhouse and the 51 in the German city of Karlsruhe. Otherexamples feature mixed forms of tram and train using their own infrastructure, such as MAX in Portiand in the United Statesand the Supertram in the English city of Sheffield.
In the last decades a variety of projects for new light rail links have been initiated in the Netherlands. As early as 1997 thenational government noted 30 initiatives. Fifteen of these projects were ultimately identified by the government as prom-ising and received support. Table 1 indicates which promising projects are cited in the various national government whitepapers. These range from 6 in 1997 to 15 in 2001.
Around the turn of the millennium, however, the Dutch light rail projects showed a tendency to slow down. Manyprojects met with resistance and implementation of plans slowed or stopped. One good example is a project that originallyaimed to connect a high-speed tram from Nieuwegein and IJsselstein (two 'new', fast-growing towns close to Utrecht)through the centre of Utrecht towards the campus of the University of Utrecht. In 1999 this project met with majorresistance due to its potential effects on the centre of Utrecht, and the light rail project was ultimately implemented as aseparate bus lane, This perceived bog down was the focus of this research: why did realization of these promising projectswith financial backing take this long? What were the most important reasons for this slowdown and how could it beavoided?
Table 1
Light rail projects on the agenda of the national government over the years and status in 2004 (Source: Voerman et al. (2001)).
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