I don’t think that many people outside London, especially east London, will have heard of the Docklands Light Railway. Of course, most people in the UK will know about the famous London tube lines like the Jubilee or Elizabeth Line, even if they never come to London to use them, but the DLR seems significantly less famous. Before I moved to London I had certainly never heard of it. These days, though, I use it quite regularly: it’s one of my favourite ways of getting around east London. What makes the DLR cool is, much of it runs on a raised track, elevated about twenty meters above the ground , giving you great views of the landscapes you’re going through. The best thing about the DLR, however, is that all the stations are perfectly accessible, so I never have a problem getting from place to place.

The DLR is about thirty-five years old. I recently began to wonder whether anywhere else in the UK could do with something similar. Unlike other London tube lines, the DLR is not a straight line but functions on a cross shape, terminating at Stratford in the north, Woolwich in the east, Lewisham in the South and Bank in the East. Passengers can thus get around the old docklands rather efficiently. I’m now curious whether such a public transport system could work in somewhere like Manchester, Liverpool or even Stoke. Would making getting around such cities far easier help to boost their economies? They might not be big enough to warrant a full blown underground rail system, but a light rail network along the lines of the DLR could be what they need.

Does anyone else think this is a cool idea? Perhaps we could go even further and create a light rail system running between the cities too. After all, so much money is spent on London’s transport infrastructure, other UK towns and cities surely deserve a larger piece of that pie.