Douglas East Clare Louise BETTISON MHK/Christopher Roy ROBERTSHAW Esq MHK

"I am a big supporter of all our heritage transport - including the horse trams, but not in the manner they are currently operating. They must be run as an heritage facility and the frequency of services should be reduced, they should not be running at peak traffic times. I would reduce them to a single track with turning points at the end. I do not feel there is a need for more than one passing point. I would support a 10am-4pm seasonal service operating on a single track in the centre of the road with special events to showcase it as a unique attraction. In the longer term I do not believe that operations such as this fall into the remit of Government. There should be a concerted effort to seek a private operator or a charitable trust to continue the running of the Douglas Bay Horse Tram service."

Mr Robertshaw: Thank you, Mr President.

I will try not to repeat anything that has already been said, because it has been said loudly 320 and clearly and I am very pleased to support the amendment. But I would like to reiterate the Member for Douglas South’s congratulations and thanks to the Department of Infrastructure and to the Chief Executive, who is with us today, to MNH, and particularly as well the Transport Division, who have all worked exceedingly hard in a very short period of time to produce some really good numbers. Those numbers show an increase in business, a reduction of cost, an integration of the tourism product – which I am obviously passionate about, considering my history. So I am very pleased to support this amendment.
Let’s, for a moment, just remember the inheritance which the Minister has just been talking about, that heritage. My great grandfather was the last Chairman of Great Laxey Mines, for his. These things are extremely important, but they occurred on the basis of a great sense of 330 vision, and what I would ask Members to do today is, realising all the tensions and stresses and pressures that we have got – and they are very real, in terms of cost – let’s not let go of this vision thing: what our future will look like, what our capital will look like. It is absolutely sensible and appropriate that the tram track runs right down through to the Sea Terminal. With that, Mr President, I will return to my seat.

Mr Robertshaw: Thank you, Mr President.

I think, perhaps, we have been a little bit more influenced by the European Union and Brussels than we think, because Departments do seem to now want to come back and keep asking us until we get the answer that they want. That is very much the fashion in Europe.

To be fair, I think that this debate today is in some ways helpful. I think there is a clarity beginning to emerge in all of this, but before I add my comments to the debate, I would just like to congratulate the Minister for trying to grip this and drive it on. I know he has been praised a lot and it is becoming slightly embarrassing today – I hope he is enjoying it!

I would also like to mention a particular officer, which I do not normally do. I would like to thank Mr Longworth for the hard work he put in this summer to make sure that we had a tram service and that actually the losses were significantly reduced, so, to him, I say, well done, sir.

My contribution will surround, a little bit, the future issues. I started it with the deepwater berth issue and I want to go on with this now. As politicians, we do have three responsibilities: we must protect and secure the best of the past; we must do our best in the present; and we must think about the future and how that might develop and prepare as best we can for it, given our best estimations.

So the horse trams in fact encapsulate everything: the fact we did our best this year; that we are protecting our history, but that we are trying to prepare it for the future. And I think that the Department put up a good show trying to get us to stop the tram in front of the Gaiety and Sefton, but I was not convinced by their argument at all.

I want to make a couple of points about this. The first is that they said, ‘This is compliant with the Douglas Master Plan.’ Well, actually, yes and no. Part of the essence of the Douglas Master Plan was to enable an understanding of the topographical interaction between Lower and Upper Douglas, that we had to somehow resolve that – and to some extent we have started. We have the two lifts in Chester Street Car Park. One goes up over the bridge to the Museum and the other one takes you towards Christian Road. So we have that, but we are lacking it further along.

But, in the Plan it is quite clear: in the future there needs to be more opportunities behind the retail sector to take people moving around Douglas up and down through other lifts. That means, effectively, that if a tram facility continues along the Promenade, it should be able to feed through the retail sector and then up all the way along into Upper Douglas. So the idea that somehow the way to get to Upper Douglas should be by stopping at the Sefton and then going, perhaps in the future with some new facility, up Finch Road lost me. I lost confidence at that stage.

There was a comment about, ‘Well, you know, one can walk through.’ And then we talked, if you recall – because a lot of Members were there at the presentation – about the right place for the bus station, and it needed to come further in because it needed to be nearer to people. And yet, on the other hand we are saying, ‘Actually, what we want to do is move the tram further out’. And that seemed an absolute contradiction to me. We all know that the natural collection point is towards the south end, where the buses come, where the horse tram comes and, as far as it can, the steam train, the ferries, etc.

Can you imagine a situation where we have got our deepwater berth and we have 100 to 120 cruise ships coming in a year – what a fabulous future that would be for us, and it is doable – then we say, ‘Oh, by the way, we have moved the horse tram right down to the far end so you will have to walk through’. And they would say, ‘Well, why did you do that?’ I could not answer that question.

Now I want to take us a little bit further forward into the future, because in all of this we have said that it is incredibly important that the track we put back is capable of taking light trams. I remember when I used to bring this up 10, 15, or 20 years ago – Mr Cretney: We would laugh.

Mr Robertshaw: – I used to get ridiculed, they used to laugh, quite regularly. I got associated with felt museums and things, as I recall. But I passionately believe that we must retain that potential.

I had the opportunity to attend the ISLEXPO presentation which the Minister of the DED put together and presented down at the Villa Marina during the summer. I made a particular point of going to listen to Jim Mellon.
Jim Mellon has made his very significant funds through anticipating the future. Not looking five years, or 10 years, or 15, but 20 or 25 years ahead. That is how that man thinks. That is how we should think. He stood before us and he said, ‘So, just think about driverless cars and removing traditional fuels from vehicles, and imagine what that world will look like.’ He said, ‘Do you know how many million people drive taxis and freight trucks in the UK?’ And I cannot remember how many million he said. We could not ... I think it was seven million, but I could be completely wrong. He said, ‘Well, just expect those jobs in the years to come, to go!’ It will be a different world in the future.

Now, you translate that world back to the Isle of Man and imagine a world – and it will come 2830 – where there are driverless vehicles. I have tried to think this through in my imagination and tried to interpret how we might do it. It might be progressive, it will not happen overnight or in 10 years, but it will happen.
My view is that at that stage, people will tend to adopt a hub-and-spoke approach to transport. In other words they might live somewhere north of Ramsey, pull their phone out and get a vehicle which takes them to the tram hub; it pops them down to Douglas; out here; and on the way down they have called another driverless vehicle and it takes them up to Athol Street. They will not take a driverless vehicle, each one, all the way from Ramsey down to here because it will be a damn sight cheaper to do it using public transport. Public transport, the light tram, in my humble opinion, has a future and we will be very foolish indeed to turn our backs on that potential.
That potential requires people to be able to get all the way to the ferry terminal. It requires them to be able to get off the tram, to go down the spine of our shopping centre and get off where it suits them.

Remember the Douglas Masterplan talks about the lifts taking people up to Upper Douglas, so let’s imagine that future as it is going to be, and make sure that our planning now takes that into account so that those who follow us – and I will not be here, obviously – say, ‘They did the right thing.’
Thank you, Mr President.

Miss Bettison: Thank you, Mr President.

As someone who has enjoyed the horse trams from childhood, I am certainly keen to ensure they are preserved for future use. I am delighted at the Minister’s support for the horse trams and feel that we must keep them in a manner that best serves our Island residents and our visitors.
I feel that the development of a cultural quarter would be an asset to our Island, giving us a chance to showcase our artisan producers, our exceptional artists and crafters and our truly Manx product offerings. I support the desire to improve safety for boarding and alighting the horse trams and I am supportive of any improvements to the traffic flow around the Broadway junction.
I remain very keen to see adequate parking throughout the works and for the long-term, but feel there are many ways in which this can be provided. This is a key argument for multi-agency working to enable the Promenade redevelopment to complement the wider Douglas regeneration programme.
It has been over 80 years since the Promenade was last properly tended to, and while the temporary repairs are very much welcome – although I imagine the local garages will see a drop in suspension repairs (Laughter) – we must identify a permanent plan.

I beg to move the amendment:

In the amendment tabled by Mr Cretney, after ‘A single line’, to insert the words ‘between Strathallan and the Sea Terminal’.