From 2003 to 2009 light rail vehicles operated on the Gouda–Alphen aan den Rijn railway, sharing these tracks with regular NS stock.

The province of South Holland was in favour of this, but based on a referendum in March 2007 among the Leiden population, the municipality was against it.

The proposed line passed through Leiden Centraal railway station and then used the new tracks to Katwijk with a branch to Noordwijk.

In the beginning they were used on the regular railway service between Gouda and Alphen aan den Rijn.

Completion depended on financial support from the national government, and in the autumn of 2009, State Secretary of Transport Tineke Huizinga indicated that the line to Katwijk would cost €45 million.

The first ideas for the RGL were presented in the early 90s by Boudewijn Leeuwenburgh, the former district chief of NZH.

The tram system was initially intended to be a much larger light rail network, with branches to Leiderdorp, the district of Ridderveld in Alphen and Schiphol.

Despite the negative impact on the bus network in favor of the RGL it was expected that the accessibility of central Leiden would be greatly improved.

From 2003 to 2009 light rail vehicles were used on the existing railway between Gouda and Alphen aan den Rijn.

In one of those alternatives the RGL would follow the existing route of the railway line all the way to Leiden Centraal, or to a point near the station.

These alternative plans were shown to be three to four times more expensive than the originally proposed route through the city centre.

The western branch of the RGL was also important for the opening of the new building located on the former Valkenburg Naval Air Base.

The grey and blue trams were fitted with yellow stickers to resemble NS "Sprinter" trains.

The operation suffered from frequent signal interference caused by malfunctioning axle counters and/or ATP-NG-train security.

However the number of passengers per day, around 5,000, during the period 2003-2009 was stable, despite a large increase in many other rail routes in the Randstad.

The six light rail vehicles purchased for the test eventually proved inadequate, also because of the large number of problems they faced.

In August 2009 it was announced that the proposed precursor of the RGL on the Gouda-Alphen route would disappear as of 13 December 2009, because using only Sprinter the train timetables could be improved.

A more direct train service between Gouda and Leiden Centraal was introduced, decreasing the travel time by 8 minutes.

On Wednesday 30 January 2013, the provincial government chose to stop this version of the RGL project.