Coventry’s bid to become the UK’s first home of ‘very light’ railway is literally now on track. An innovative ultra-thin track has been installed at Whitley Depot for testing.
The unique track system will now be stress-tested by heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) as the city hits a milestone in its bid to become the first city in the UK to have its own Very Light Rail (VLR) line as part of a £1.3 billion travel plan. Council bosses say that by installing a short section of track at Whitley Depot, the team will be able to measure its performance under extreme conditions.
This is a huge milestone in the creation of the VLR system, which will use lightweight, battery-powered electric vehicles and will operate without overhead cables. The new testing track at the depot has vibration sensors that take measurements 10 times a second and weight-in-motion sensors will weigh vehicles while they move across the track.
This data will be collected for a year and fed into a ‘digital twin’ computer model, allowing WMG at the University of Warwick, to evaluate the performance of the track over time. Councillor Jim O’Boyle, cabinet member for jobs, regeneration and climate change, said: “The tracks we’ve installed here at Whitley Depot represent hundreds of hours of innovation that have taken place right here in Coventry.
“They were designed from day one to minimise disruption to people and businesses, and we’re excited to see their strength demonstrated in a real-world environment. Our own council road team laid them too – which is great and supports our aim of ensuring CVLR creates and safeguards jobs in our city.
“Transport innovation has the opportunity to really support a zero carbon economy and Coventry is leading the green industrial revolution. Not only will we be the UK’s first all-electric bus city, we have already installed more electric vehicle charge points than anywhere outside London, and we’re investing in new fully segregated cycleways to give more people greener options to move about our city.”
The Whitley Depot track test site is part of a comprehensive range of testing planned to demonstrate the longevity of this track. A length of track has been laid at the University of Warwick to test installation, and soon another track will be laid at the Very Light Rail National Innovation Centre in Dudley to test the Coventry Very Light Rail vehicle on the track for the first time.
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