There are a set of tracks going nowhere in the middle of Joburg.
The two rails break through the asphalt on Pritchard Street, run for a few metres into Harrison Street, then disappear back into the tar.
The tracks have become the bane of Jozi motorists who are forced to take it slow over the ribs of iron at this busy intersection.
But to the few who recognise these artefacts, unearthed courtesy of the Johannesburg Roads Agency, they are a delight to see.
They are electric tram tracks – and the tram was a mode of transport that helped forge a young Joburg.
Peter Hall, the curator of the James Hall Transport Museum, is an expert on Joburg trams. He knows where other sets of tracks can be spotted poking out of the streets of the city.
“A few of the tracks were lifted when they stopped using trams, but in places like Kitchener Avenue in Kensington and in La Rochelle, they were left and you can see them,” he says.
The city’s trams were retired in 1961, ending an era that stretched right back to the earliest days of the mining town.
The first trams appeared on Joburg’s streets in 1886 and were drawn by horses and mules. These trams ran along tracks and competed with other modes of transport of the time – carriages and rickshaws.
It was in 1906 that the citizens of Joburg were first able to hitch a ride on new state-of-the-art electric trams.
The arrival of the electric tram was similar to the arrival of the Rea Vaya bus rapid transit system just over a hundred years later.
The old tram tracks had to be dug up, says Hall, and replaced with new ones. There was probably some cursing going on in those traffic jams caused by workers laying the new tracks.
Like the BRT system of today, trams ran in the middle of the road. “The problem they had was pedestrians getting knocked over running across lanes of traffic to catch the tram,” says Hall.
The trams ran out of what is now the Bus Factory in Newtown. The tram tracks led into the centre of Joburg and from there spread out through the CBD and beyond.
By the 1920s, trams were helping to expand the city. “Suburbs like Orange Grove and Rosebank were spurred on by the expansion of trams,” says Eric Itkzin, deputy director of immovable heritage at the City of Johannesburg.
However, not everyone benefited from the trams. Segregation, says Itkzin, meant that black passengers could only ride as far as Newtown, before finding other modes of transport into the CBD.
By the early 60s, Joburg’s love affair with electric-tracked inner-city transport was over.
Petrol and diesel became the new way, although trolley buses that drew electricity from overhead wires continued to be used on city streets until 1986.
Hall says it would be wonderful to see tram tracks once again criss-crossing the city.
He plans to show the public and maybe even some city officials the advantages of this green mode of transport that is still in use in some cities around the world.
Hall wants to lay tracks around Pioneer Park at Wemmer Pan, where vintage trams that once ruled Joburg will ride the electric current again. - The Star