Arup–Tony Gee partnership on Coventry Very Light Rail: design notes for civil teams
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
Arup has appointed Tony Gee as strategic partner for the next design phase of the Coventry Very Light Rail (CVLR) programme, which is developing a low-mass, battery-powered tram system intended to run on shallow, prefabricated slab track to minimise utility diversions. The partnership will focus on detailed civil and trackform design for future route sections beyond the initial Coventry city centre demonstrator, including integration with existing highways and tight urban geometry. For civil and geotechnical teams, the work will test repeatable foundation solutions and modular track systems that can be installed with limited possession windows and constrained excavation depths.
Technical Brief
- Similar UK light rail or tram‑train schemes could adopt the CVLR design model for brownfield corridors.
Our Take
Arup’s role on Coventry Very Light Rail comes soon after its work on the £34bn electricity network upgrade study for New Civil Engineer, signalling that the consultancy is still winning complex UK infrastructure mandates despite the internal restructuring and £20M redundancy spend reported in late 2025.
In our database of 737 Infrastructure stories, Arup appears frequently across transport, energy and flood defence schemes – from the Fowlea Brook flood upgrades to Belfast’s digital healthcare facility – which suggests Coventry’s light rail team can tap into a broad in-house knowledge base on urban resilience and multi-modal connectivity.
Pairing Arup with Tony Gee on CVLR aligns with a pattern in recent UK projects where Arup has been brought in alongside specialist designers (as at Ulster University’s Centre for Digital Healthcare Technology), typically to de-risk interfaces between novel structures, existing streetscapes and utilities in dense urban settings like Coventry.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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