The tram that was also a bus

The great idea

Trams are lovely but not cheap: in the early 1990s a standard French steel-wheeled tram cost about 17 million francs a vehicle. The TVR was sold as something in between a bus and a tram: a tram’s qualities when it was guided, and an articulated bus’s freedom when it left the rail.

On the guided parts it followed a single central rail with grooved rollers, and the front roller turned the wheels into each curve. Off the rail, the driver simply steered. It carried electric power and a diesel generator, so it could keep going away from the wires.

It began as a Belgian idea, the GLT (Guided Light Transport), shown in Brussels in 1985. Bombardier bought the firm behind it.

What actually happened

Caen ordered first. Nancy ordered second but opened first, carrying passengers from February 2001.

About six weeks later the prefect stopped it. Switching between guided and road mode wasn’t working: the links meant to keep the long vehicle on a single track didn’t lock, and the driver wasn’t always warned. It restarted in March 2002.

Caen opened in November 2002, and in one week that month the two systems had four losses of guidance. The government counted 12 between May 2002 and November 2003, until Bombardier traced them to the power steering interfering with the guidance and fixed it.

Passengers, for the record, liked it, and a loss of guidance was nothing like a derailment: the TVR stayed steady on its tyres and kept all its braking.

Where it went wrong

The guide rail was a closed, one-maker design, so no other manufacturer’s vehicles could use it, and hardly anyone bought in: the government says only 50 TVRs were ever sold, all to Nancy and Caen. (The same report lists 25 and 24; the factual site’s myths page has more.) With so few made, there were no savings on maintenance or spare parts.

Nancy also leaned hard on the trickiest bit. Each vehicle left and rejoined the rail twice on every trip, about ten times a working day, and switching modes was exactly what had failed first.

By 2010, after more than 60 million euros of state subsidy, the government judged its reliability disappointing overall, with poor availability and high maintenance costs.

What changed

Caen switched its TVR off at the start of 2018 and opened a conventional tramway on 27 July 2019. Caen la mer says it carries 64,000 passengers a day, against 42,000 with the TVR.

Nancy’s TVR closed on 12 March 2023. The steep hills that had led Nancy to the TVR led it to trolleybuses rather than a tram, and Line 1 reopened on 5 April 2025. Grand Nancy says the new vehicles use 2.4 kWh a kilometre, against the old tram’s 4.

Even a rival paid for it: the 2010 report found the guidance on Clermont-Ferrand’s Translohr well designed and reliable, but said the TVR’s troubles had done its reputation no favours.

The department’s view: if you are the only people who can make the rail, you are also the only people who can fix it, and two customers is not a crowd.