LiRa stands for Network of Light Rail Cities. It represents a total of 11 cities and regions in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The City Region of Haaglanden is leading partner. LiRa provides a knowledge platform for public authorities investing in Light Rail. The LiRa-network is concerned with the implementation of Light Rail schemes from a technical point of view, as well as from an economic, financial, social and spatial perspective. For this reason we use a pragmatic definition of Light Rail: "quality rapid transit on a regional scale", no matter the technical system actually used.
LiRa was set up in 2000 with support of NWMA as a part of the Interreg IIC initiative of the EC. On four different subjects concerning important Light Rail topics reports were written by renowned advising companies. First a state-of-the-art was made and finally in 2001 a comprehensive report. All reports are available as .pdf files on this site.
At the end of LiRa most partners decided to continue with the partnership and apply for participation in the Interreg IIIB initiative. Ever since the original LiRa actions are known as LiRa-1.
The LiRa-1 partners are:
City Region of Haaglanden (leading)
The Netherlands
Province of Noord-Holland
The Netherlands
Province or Zuid-Holland
The Netherlands
Province of Limburg
The Netherlands
Province of Gelderland/KAN-region
The Netherlands
GMPTE (Manchester)
United Kingdom
East Lancashire Partnership
United Kingdom
Cardiff County Council
United Kingdom
Ministry for the Walloon Region
Belgium
Ministry of the Flemish Region
Belgium
City of Kaiserslautern
Germany
The reports available on LiRa-1 are:
LiRa: International Network of Light Rail Cities: State of the Art . Nijmegen: Buck Consultants International
LiRa Pilot 1 : Exploitation models for Light Rail. Amersfoort/Nijmegen: Twynstra Gudde Management Consultants/Buck Consultants International
LiRa Pilot 2 : Light Rail in a Nutshell/Knotshell. Utrecht/Brussels: Holland Railconsult/STRATEC
LiRa Pilot 3 : Light Rail, economic impact and Real Estate Development. Nijmegen/Amersfoort: Buck Consultants International/Twynstra Gudde Management Consultants
LiRa Pilot 4 : Light Rail: long term (modal split) impacts. Brussels/Utrecht: STRATEC/Holland Railconsult
LiRa Final report : The New Challenge for Light Rail in Europe - From Vision to Action. Nijmegen: Buck Consultants International
