21 ms·

How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car

137 points by oska 7y ago

gumby 7y ago
The Melbourne's retention of the trams has provided a wonderful A/B experiment. Although I consider Sydney a more attractive city (sorry, city of my birth!) Melbourne frankly is a much easier and more enjoyable city to get around and live in.
- guitarbill 7y ago
  agree in the centre. Sydney's trains are good for the sprawl, it can be hard to get to some Melbs suburbs without a car (even though there are trains in Melbourne)
  - devnulloverflow 7y ago
    It's hard to get to some Sydney suburbs for the same reason. Though interestingly this includes rich areas like the Eastern Suburbs and Northern Beaches. I suspect fat-cat NIMBYs have been keeping the trains out for generations now.
    - falsedan 7y ago
      no it's the geography, too hard and bumpy or waterlogged to drill tunnels
      - devnulloverflow 7y ago
        You don't have to drill tunnels. The North Shore line isn't on tunnels for the most part, but it also never goes anywhere near the shore. I guess it's true that now you might need tunnels (especially for the eastern suburbs). But these lines could have been built many decades ago.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Sydney suffers IMO from it's harbour topology (topography?). There are a lot of points where the only way to get from A to B is over a specific bridge. But I'll take the awesome views :-)
- reubens 7y ago
  I love that
- ShinTakuya 7y ago
  Keep in mind that Melbourne is a planned city and Sydney isn't. That makes a huge difference on the viability of modes of transport. So it's not really a good experiment at all.
- cylinder 7y ago
  Eh the trams are cute, and smooth, but painfully slow. Better passenger experience than buses, but the tracks and overhead cables are a blight on the streetscape and impact drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike. Overall, not worth it. Real cities have metros underground, full stop. Would I rather have trams than not have trams, absolutely -- but they shouldn't be relied on as a true solution to urban transport.
  - zizee 7y ago
    > Real cities have metros underground, full stop. I am not sure if this implies you think Melbourne is lacking a underground metro? Or perhaps you're just making a general statement. FWIW Melbourne has both trams and a underground metro system that does a fairly respectable job serving the CBD, and good network coverage to inner suburbs.
    - cylinder 7y ago
      Melbourne has a suburban heavy commuter rail network with an underground CBD loop. That's not the same thing as an underground metro like the NYC subway, Paris metro, Tehran metro, Japan, London Underground etc. All of these cities have urban metros in addition to suburban commuter rail (except Tehran I guess?). Melbourne's just not there yet and is still fairly suburban. Sydney's building a new metro system which will operate like the above mentioned systems.
      - mikelward 7y ago
        I don't see the difference. Take Melbourne versus London. Both use electrified trains. Both have drivers. Both travel at similar speeds. Neither have to stop for automobile traffic (except for slowing down at the few level crossings in Melbourne). Whether the line is fully underground or not doesn't seem to affect much (other than ventilation).
        9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
        The technical difference is that metros have dedicated tracks and sufficiently frequent services that you can just turn up and go. In Melbourne (and Sydney), tracks are shared in complicated ways by many lines and other traffic (regional, long distance, even cargo) so any issue somewhere cascades in complicated ways, and frequencies are metro-like only in the densest corridors.
mrmincent 7y ago
As someone who moved to Melbourne (and doesn’t have a car), I don’t have the love for trams that Melbournians do. They’re slow and disruptive to the rest of the traffic. At the same time buses aren’t stuck on rails and usually get you places a lot quicker. They’re also easier to get a seat on as the Melbournians I know hate buses and refuse to catch them.
- ACow_Adonis 7y ago
  Same boat, but do love them. In fact aside from walking, the trams are my main mode of transport. Can't stand buses. Buses are slower, comparatively unreliable, from the commuters view they are stuck on rails (that's what a route is), they don't support the increased density trams and rail do, have lower capacity, more disruptive to traffic, slower to get on/get off because of fewer doors. So now we have the contradictory evidence problem :p (And just for the record, I've lived in both Sydney and Melbourne, and the only thing worse than replacement buses are Sydney buses + Sydney traffic. Of course, that's not to say I don't use buses, I do, but Melbourne's core is awesome partly due to the trams, and people in Melbourne don't know how good they've got it).
- reitzensteinm 7y ago
  The rest of the traffic is disruptive to the trams. I also moved to Melbourne recently, and my theory is that the love of trams is inertia from a time where congestion wasn't so bad. I prefer to walk within the city loop, but both activities would be so much faster and more pleasant without the cars. There are quite a few Teslas that drive around here with wanky number plates like they're doing the world a favor, which in a city with such usable public transport always makes me cringe.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    I feel like the best solution for this problem is a reduction of traffic in core city areas by restricting car access.
    - ACow_Adonis 7y ago
itronitron 7y ago
some readers may be interested in this video which discusses the impact of accommodating cars in cities >> https://youtu.be/0lvUByM-fZk https://youtu.be/0lvUByM-fZk
femto 7y ago
The burning of Sydney's rolling stock was a crime against woodworkers. The same thing happened to old wooden railway carriages in Sydney. Slabs of well seasoned (Australian) red cedar, the length of a railway carriage, inches thick and even wider gone up in smoke. That sort of wood was rare when the carriages were burnt and practically unobtainable now.
- oska 7y ago
  For people unfamiliar, 'Red Cedar' in Australia refers to a tree from the mahogany family, Toona Ciliata. Quoting an easy reference: > It is one of Australia's few native deciduous trees. The timber is red in colour, easy to work and very highly valued. It was used extensively for furniture, wood panelling and construction, including shipbuilding, and was referred to as "red gold" by Australian settlers. Heavily and unsustainably exploited in the 19th and early 20th centuries, almost all the large trees have been cut out and the species is essentially commercially extinct. Availability of this timber is now limited. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toona_ciliata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toona_ciliata
  - jonny_eh 7y ago
    Sounds like an identical story to California redwood trees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoioideae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoioideae
- falsedan 7y ago
  There might be some old red rattlers in sidings of rural stations, my dad made a deal to get one and the fittings from its sibling when the owner wanted to use the bogeys and trays for a tourist train. That was a fun few summers of unscrewing everything from one unairconditioned carriage and and reattching it to ther other.
ksbakan 7y ago
Wooden train cars are deathtraps though
fasteddie31003 7y ago
I believe buses are almost universally better than any kind of city light rail. Please no more light rail in cities, more buses.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Once we have electric buses (battery powered) I think this makes sense. And it would also make environmental sense in some cases to build a new road over a new train route. Because you can then run electric buses (maybe self-driving eventually) which can then easily open up new routes where trains would be unpractical for commuters.
- glangdale 7y ago
  I used to work with a public transit evangelist tragic (in his spare time) and he hated buses and bus-ways. I could never understand it. I think there's an element of permanance to light/heavy rail where the physical infrastructure is there (ergo it can "never" be taken away, ha ha) while a bus-way can be turned into a road. I think there's some legit reasons (capacity) that light rail is better than buses in many circumstances, but there's a fair bit of fetishism in the anti-bus mob. It also seems to line up pretty well with 'not liking transit unions'.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    A lot of times buses/busways get trotted out as the anti-transit alternative. Or are super watered down. In general if you have to build new infrastructure doing it with rails vs asphalt cost is not actually that different. In general, for developed countries with high labor costs busways are a rotten deal since buses have such low per-driver capacity. And the most successful busways can't scale and end up getting replaced by light rail anyways. (Ottawa, Seattle, LA's Orange Line)
    - glangdale 7y ago
      Buses are transit yo. The thing about busways is that the buses get to the end of the busway and can then go around different areas and pick people up in places it would be impossible or uneconomical to lay track.
ekianjo 7y ago
Sydney is still being influenced by overseas trends right now as trams become popular again across large western cities. So do they actually make rational decisions or just follow whatever anyone is doing at the time?
- ShinTakuya 7y ago
  The latter, definitely the latter. Although as much as I dislike the state government they kinda got screwed over by the federal government of the same party. There were reserved heavy rail corridors sold off by the Howard government that would have proven pretty useful.
- vorg 7y ago
  Looks like Auckland NZ is planning on following this trend by building two tram lines over the next 10 years (CBD down Dominion Rd to Airport, another CBD to West), 60 years after following Sydney's lead of tearing out the trams (first replacing them with electric trolley buses, then removing the overhead lines 20 years later). I don't see either line making a financial return on the investment, but the NZ government is financing it all by plundering the NZ Super Fund, which was originally intended to provide super payments for NZ's over-65-yr-old retirees. Of course, they're framing it all as "the Fund is making a long-term investment in the country's transport infrastructure", making the eventual huge losses some other goverment's problem.
  - flukus 7y ago
    > I don't see either line making a financial return on the investment Do they get a financial return on the roads they build?Infrastructure (and practically all government services) never make money, that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile.
    - michaelt 7y ago
      If you're putting the country's pension fund into it you need a financial return. Otherwise you're not making an investment, you're just withdrawing money from the pension fund.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
> “London has resolved its traffic problem by replacing trams with buses, and Sydney should do the same,” he advised. Interestingly enough, London has not seen it fit to reinstall trams, instead choosing to continually expand the Underground (subway) network and apply congestion charges to the inner-city traffic. And as it happens, one of the more valid criticisms levied against Sydney's new line is that its capacity will be insufficient from Day 1, and it really should have been built as heavy rail instead.
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  Banning poor from the roads really seems like no solution at all to me. Like one of those misguided solutions an AI comes up with like pausing Tetris forever to avoid the score going down. You alleviated congestion for a few without solving the real problem. Improve transit and traffic engineering instead.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    A congestion charge isn't "banning poor from the roads" any more than other significant costs like vehicle and fuel taxes or inner-city parking. And in the absence of the congestion charge, London's roads would be utterly unusable for everyone, including "poor" people who need an emergency ambulance provided by the free Government healthcare. If the congestion charge was eliminated, daily commuting to central London by car would still be a non-starter for even the most aspirational middle-class office worker—let alone the poor. If you've ever been to London you'd notice that the mass transit system—particularly the tube—is dominated by smart-looking, professionally dressed people navigating the city. It's a great system, it's almost always better than driving, and its use spans a broad socio-economic group.
  - cletus 7y ago
    I hate this argument because it seems altruistic and empathetic but most of the time it's entirely self-serving. People wheel it out when something that would inconvenience them, specifically, is proposed. Example: in Manhattan we still have free street parking. It's insane. Yet any attempts to remove it get this same argument of "what about the poor who need to drive?" To anyone who says this or thinks this I challenge you to walk several blocks of pretty much any street below 110th street and look at the cars parked there. On some I see Maseratis, Teslas, BMWs and so on. It's not poor people who own these cars. It's just another giveaway to incumbents and the wealthy for no good reason. I lived in London when congestion pricing was first rolled out. The difference in traffic in the West End was night and day, overnight. It was unbelievable, so much so that Ken Livingstone (then Mayor of London) worried they wouldn't hit revenue targets. The problem with London's congestion pricing is there's an exemption for those who live in Zone 1, basically (technically, it's a subset of Zone 1). Why? These are the people who have the least need for private vehicles (by virtue of good public transportation) and are probably significantly wealthier than the average Londoner. This is also the problem I have with what NYC is doing. They're also flirting with congestion pricing. So far all they've done is make Ubers stupidly expensive (there are rides that 5 years ago would cost me <$15 that now cost $35), which is again completely wrong. Uber and Lyft make efficient use of vehicles. They're not driven once a week and otherwise block the street cleaners in their free parking. Private vehicle ownership for Manhattan residents needs to be punitively taxed and street parking should require an expensive permit. There should also be a lot less of it.
i386 7y ago
The NRMA campaigned for decades to remove the trams from Sydney streets and it was effectively done at their behest. Corporate vandalism at its finest.
ajxs 7y ago
I don't feel like anyone has addressed the fact that Sydney's new tram system is an absolute joke. There's no point comparing it to Melbourne's expansive tram network, ours covers less than a tenth of the distance and pretty much runs between UNSW ( incredibly wealthy private institution ) and the new casino ( incredibly wealthy private institution ). The NSW state government has been thumbing it's nose at the ICAC for years with some of shadiest dealing and poor infrastructure investment of little benefit to the public. This new tram network is just the latest in this tradition. You can't possibly say that projects like this, Westconnex, the shortening of the rail line in Newcastle, etc did not reek of corruption and keep a straight face. Admittedly, transport to UNSW was always bad via road. The congestion in the Eastern Suburbs is terrible. I never found the buses to Randwick to be _that_ terrible, but I never rode them in peak hour on a daily basis.
- stonith 7y ago
  > I never found the buses to Randwick to be _that_ terrible, but I never rode them in peak hour on a daily basis. It's very difficult to get a bus towards the city in the south east if you live closer to the city than UNSW - there's no standing room so they don't even stop. Getting a bus home at night after 10pm is a similar story so I end up walking back along the route past Hyde Park since that's where it fills up. You can also add the stadium to the infrastructure corruption stink-list.
- emmelaich 7y ago
  Agreed. The fact that it cost _so_ much is part of why we should not have public transport on rails. The money would have far better spent on better and more buses. And dedicated bus lanes and roads. I have an inside story on the tram (light rail) construction. Workers were hired and literally did nothing for months. No wonder it cost so much.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    So the problem is corrupt and lazy managers, not that trams are bad.
jaimex2 7y ago
I love our trams in Melbourne. They are free, don't emit fumes, reduce pedestrian numbers on the sidewalk and get you where you need to go quickly. Hook turn laws work well to make sure traffic doesn't get in their way. We still have an underground train loop and the trams help reduce congestion in there as well.
- yoube 7y ago
  Melbourne isn't just the CBD, though. > They are free In the free tram zone, sure, which is an area of less than 2 by 3 km. The longest tram route is 23 km long.
  - jaimex2 7y ago
    Is that Burwood highway one? But yeah, I feel like they do their best work in the CBD. There are some examples that come to mind of trams I don't like. The tram that goes down Toorak rd is a huge nuisance, mostly due to how the council has mismanaged that road. There are two lanes. That tram shares the right lane with cars and cars are allowed to park on the left lane. It completely bottlenecks the road - probably its intended purpose so people pay for Citylink bypass.
neilv 7y ago
> "There was a nastiness to it that is quite surprising in hindsight," Hounsell says. "There was a clear ideological attack on this particular mode of transport – an attempt to destroy it and to obliterate it, to erase it from history." Also reduces the likelihood that public opposition would result in trams being put back into service (spoiling whatever planning and deals politicians made).
m0llusk 7y ago
This is an increasingly popular narrative, but it isn't entirely true. The trams of the 1950s were not well loved by everyone because they were alternatively burning hot or frigid cold, they forced all manner of people to squeeze together or hang on the outside as shown in the pictures, and at that time the system had fallen into disrepair during the war and had such deferred maintenance that it was necessary to either rebuild or ditch the system altogether. Being honest about the limitations of the system and its lack of strong popularity helps explain very much. At that time cars were still relatively new so that all the downsides of traffic and freeways were not yet understood. It is also worth noting that modern trams deliver a much more refined experience not only from their own improvements but also from the traffic signal control integration that many newer tram lines enjoy. That kind of system was not available for trams of the 1950s and so they were slower in traffic.
DavidPiper 7y ago
> "They just got convinced by what was going on overseas, what the Americans were doing ... It was the wrong decision. I think we’ve always regretted that." That final line struck a bit of a nerve. It always feels like Australia just sits around waiting to see what America's stance is on <political thing> and then try to follow suit. Notable examples: immigration, data privacy, climate change, extensive privatisation in recent years. (Notable counter-examples: gun control, healthcare) I'm interested to know if this is just my own biased perception based on media and news exposure though.
- rexelhoff 7y ago
  > Notable counter-examples: gun control, healthcare Gun control, yes. Healthcare, it seems like the Libs (at least) are bent on destroying Medicare in favour of what? Likely private healthcare
kmlx 7y ago
I lived in Amsterdam a number of years ago. There were people constantly hit and killed by trams. There was a constant health emergency with cyclists getting their wheels stuck in the lines and then damaging their kneecaps, shoulders you name it. Anyone know if Melbourne solved any of these issues?
- mercer 7y ago
  I'd like to see some numbers to support that claim. I've lived in amsterdam for close to a decade and while the trams were something to watch out for, I can't remember any number of stories to indicate that they 'constantly' hit and killed people, and I was quite fond of their presence, generally speaking.

137 points by oska 7y ago

The Melbourne's retention of the trams has provided a wonderful A/B experiment. Although I consider Sydney a more attractive city (sorry, city of my birth!) Melbourne frankly is a much easier and more enjoyable city to get around and live in.

guitarbill 7y ago
agree in the centre. Sydney's trains are good for the sprawl, it can be hard to get to some Melbs suburbs without a car (even though there are trains in Melbourne)
- devnulloverflow 7y ago
  It's hard to get to some Sydney suburbs for the same reason. Though interestingly this includes rich areas like the Eastern Suburbs and Northern Beaches. I suspect fat-cat NIMBYs have been keeping the trains out for generations now.
  - falsedan 7y ago
    no it's the geography, too hard and bumpy or waterlogged to drill tunnels
    - devnulloverflow 7y ago
      You don't have to drill tunnels. The North Shore line isn't on tunnels for the most part, but it also never goes anywhere near the shore. I guess it's true that now you might need tunnels (especially for the eastern suburbs). But these lines could have been built many decades ago.
quickthrower2 7y ago
Sydney suffers IMO from it's harbour topology (topography?). There are a lot of points where the only way to get from A to B is over a specific bridge. But I'll take the awesome views :-)
reubens 7y ago
I love that
ShinTakuya 7y ago
Keep in mind that Melbourne is a planned city and Sydney isn't. That makes a huge difference on the viability of modes of transport. So it's not really a good experiment at all.
cylinder 7y ago
Eh the trams are cute, and smooth, but painfully slow. Better passenger experience than buses, but the tracks and overhead cables are a blight on the streetscape and impact drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike. Overall, not worth it. Real cities have metros underground, full stop. Would I rather have trams than not have trams, absolutely -- but they shouldn't be relied on as a true solution to urban transport.
- zizee 7y ago
  > Real cities have metros underground, full stop. I am not sure if this implies you think Melbourne is lacking a underground metro? Or perhaps you're just making a general statement. FWIW Melbourne has both trams and a underground metro system that does a fairly respectable job serving the CBD, and good network coverage to inner suburbs.
  - cylinder 7y ago
    Melbourne has a suburban heavy commuter rail network with an underground CBD loop. That's not the same thing as an underground metro like the NYC subway, Paris metro, Tehran metro, Japan, London Underground etc. All of these cities have urban metros in addition to suburban commuter rail (except Tehran I guess?). Melbourne's just not there yet and is still fairly suburban. Sydney's building a new metro system which will operate like the above mentioned systems.
    - mikelward 7y ago
      I don't see the difference. Take Melbourne versus London. Both use electrified trains. Both have drivers. Both travel at similar speeds. Neither have to stop for automobile traffic (except for slowing down at the few level crossings in Melbourne). Whether the line is fully underground or not doesn't seem to affect much (other than ventilation).
      - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
        The technical difference is that metros have dedicated tracks and sufficiently frequent services that you can just turn up and go. In Melbourne (and Sydney), tracks are shared in complicated ways by many lines and other traffic (regional, long distance, even cargo) so any issue somewhere cascades in complicated ways, and frequencies are metro-like only in the densest corridors.

mrmincent 7y ago

As someone who moved to Melbourne (and doesn’t have a car), I don’t have the love for trams that Melbournians do. They’re slow and disruptive to the rest of the traffic. At the same time buses aren’t stuck on rails and usually get you places a lot quicker. They’re also easier to get a seat on as the Melbournians I know hate buses and refuse to catch them.

ACow_Adonis 7y ago
Same boat, but do love them. In fact aside from walking, the trams are my main mode of transport. Can't stand buses. Buses are slower, comparatively unreliable, from the commuters view they are stuck on rails (that's what a route is), they don't support the increased density trams and rail do, have lower capacity, more disruptive to traffic, slower to get on/get off because of fewer doors. So now we have the contradictory evidence problem :p (And just for the record, I've lived in both Sydney and Melbourne, and the only thing worse than replacement buses are Sydney buses + Sydney traffic. Of course, that's not to say I don't use buses, I do, but Melbourne's core is awesome partly due to the trams, and people in Melbourne don't know how good they've got it).
reitzensteinm 7y ago
The rest of the traffic is disruptive to the trams. I also moved to Melbourne recently, and my theory is that the love of trams is inertia from a time where congestion wasn't so bad. I prefer to walk within the city loop, but both activities would be so much faster and more pleasant without the cars. There are quite a few Teslas that drive around here with wanky number plates like they're doing the world a favor, which in a city with such usable public transport always makes me cringe.
- munk-a 7y ago
  I feel like the best solution for this problem is a reduction of traffic in core city areas by restricting car access.
  - ACow_Adonis 7y ago

itronitron 7y ago

some readers may be interested in this video which discusses the impact of accommodating cars in cities >> https://youtu.be/0lvUByM-fZk https://youtu.be/0lvUByM-fZk

femto 7y ago

The burning of Sydney's rolling stock was a crime against woodworkers. The same thing happened to old wooden railway carriages in Sydney. Slabs of well seasoned (Australian) red cedar, the length of a railway carriage, inches thick and even wider gone up in smoke. That sort of wood was rare when the carriages were burnt and practically unobtainable now.

oska 7y ago
For people unfamiliar, 'Red Cedar' in Australia refers to a tree from the mahogany family, Toona Ciliata. Quoting an easy reference: > It is one of Australia's few native deciduous trees. The timber is red in colour, easy to work and very highly valued. It was used extensively for furniture, wood panelling and construction, including shipbuilding, and was referred to as "red gold" by Australian settlers. Heavily and unsustainably exploited in the 19th and early 20th centuries, almost all the large trees have been cut out and the species is essentially commercially extinct. Availability of this timber is now limited. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toona_ciliata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toona_ciliata
- jonny_eh 7y ago
  Sounds like an identical story to California redwood trees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoioideae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoioideae
falsedan 7y ago
There might be some old red rattlers in sidings of rural stations, my dad made a deal to get one and the fittings from its sibling when the owner wanted to use the bogeys and trays for a tourist train. That was a fun few summers of unscrewing everything from one unairconditioned carriage and and reattching it to ther other.

ksbakan 7y ago

Wooden train cars are deathtraps though

fasteddie31003 7y ago

I believe buses are almost universally better than any kind of city light rail. Please no more light rail in cities, more buses.

quickthrower2 7y ago
Once we have electric buses (battery powered) I think this makes sense. And it would also make environmental sense in some cases to build a new road over a new train route. Because you can then run electric buses (maybe self-driving eventually) which can then easily open up new routes where trains would be unpractical for commuters.
glangdale 7y ago
I used to work with a public transit evangelist tragic (in his spare time) and he hated buses and bus-ways. I could never understand it. I think there's an element of permanance to light/heavy rail where the physical infrastructure is there (ergo it can "never" be taken away, ha ha) while a bus-way can be turned into a road. I think there's some legit reasons (capacity) that light rail is better than buses in many circumstances, but there's a fair bit of fetishism in the anti-bus mob. It also seems to line up pretty well with 'not liking transit unions'.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  A lot of times buses/busways get trotted out as the anti-transit alternative. Or are super watered down. In general if you have to build new infrastructure doing it with rails vs asphalt cost is not actually that different. In general, for developed countries with high labor costs busways are a rotten deal since buses have such low per-driver capacity. And the most successful busways can't scale and end up getting replaced by light rail anyways. (Ottawa, Seattle, LA's Orange Line)
  - glangdale 7y ago
    Buses are transit yo. The thing about busways is that the buses get to the end of the busway and can then go around different areas and pick people up in places it would be impossible or uneconomical to lay track.

ekianjo 7y ago

Sydney is still being influenced by overseas trends right now as trams become popular again across large western cities. So do they actually make rational decisions or just follow whatever anyone is doing at the time?

ShinTakuya 7y ago
The latter, definitely the latter. Although as much as I dislike the state government they kinda got screwed over by the federal government of the same party. There were reserved heavy rail corridors sold off by the Howard government that would have proven pretty useful.
vorg 7y ago
Looks like Auckland NZ is planning on following this trend by building two tram lines over the next 10 years (CBD down Dominion Rd to Airport, another CBD to West), 60 years after following Sydney's lead of tearing out the trams (first replacing them with electric trolley buses, then removing the overhead lines 20 years later). I don't see either line making a financial return on the investment, but the NZ government is financing it all by plundering the NZ Super Fund, which was originally intended to provide super payments for NZ's over-65-yr-old retirees. Of course, they're framing it all as "the Fund is making a long-term investment in the country's transport infrastructure", making the eventual huge losses some other goverment's problem.
- flukus 7y ago
  > I don't see either line making a financial return on the investment Do they get a financial return on the roads they build?Infrastructure (and practically all government services) never make money, that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    If you're putting the country's pension fund into it you need a financial return. Otherwise you're not making an investment, you're just withdrawing money from the pension fund.

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

> “London has resolved its traffic problem by replacing trams with buses, and Sydney should do the same,” he advised. Interestingly enough, London has not seen it fit to reinstall trams, instead choosing to continually expand the Underground (subway) network and apply congestion charges to the inner-city traffic. And as it happens, one of the more valid criticisms levied against Sydney's new line is that its capacity will be insufficient from Day 1, and it really should have been built as heavy rail instead.

jimmaswell 7y ago
Banning poor from the roads really seems like no solution at all to me. Like one of those misguided solutions an AI comes up with like pausing Tetris forever to avoid the score going down. You alleviated congestion for a few without solving the real problem. Improve transit and traffic engineering instead.
- sjwright 7y ago
  A congestion charge isn't "banning poor from the roads" any more than other significant costs like vehicle and fuel taxes or inner-city parking. And in the absence of the congestion charge, London's roads would be utterly unusable for everyone, including "poor" people who need an emergency ambulance provided by the free Government healthcare. If the congestion charge was eliminated, daily commuting to central London by car would still be a non-starter for even the most aspirational middle-class office worker—let alone the poor. If you've ever been to London you'd notice that the mass transit system—particularly the tube—is dominated by smart-looking, professionally dressed people navigating the city. It's a great system, it's almost always better than driving, and its use spans a broad socio-economic group.
- cletus 7y ago
  I hate this argument because it seems altruistic and empathetic but most of the time it's entirely self-serving. People wheel it out when something that would inconvenience them, specifically, is proposed. Example: in Manhattan we still have free street parking. It's insane. Yet any attempts to remove it get this same argument of "what about the poor who need to drive?" To anyone who says this or thinks this I challenge you to walk several blocks of pretty much any street below 110th street and look at the cars parked there. On some I see Maseratis, Teslas, BMWs and so on. It's not poor people who own these cars. It's just another giveaway to incumbents and the wealthy for no good reason. I lived in London when congestion pricing was first rolled out. The difference in traffic in the West End was night and day, overnight. It was unbelievable, so much so that Ken Livingstone (then Mayor of London) worried they wouldn't hit revenue targets. The problem with London's congestion pricing is there's an exemption for those who live in Zone 1, basically (technically, it's a subset of Zone 1). Why? These are the people who have the least need for private vehicles (by virtue of good public transportation) and are probably significantly wealthier than the average Londoner. This is also the problem I have with what NYC is doing. They're also flirting with congestion pricing. So far all they've done is make Ubers stupidly expensive (there are rides that 5 years ago would cost me <$15 that now cost $35), which is again completely wrong. Uber and Lyft make efficient use of vehicles. They're not driven once a week and otherwise block the street cleaners in their free parking. Private vehicle ownership for Manhattan residents needs to be punitively taxed and street parking should require an expensive permit. There should also be a lot less of it.

i386 7y ago

The NRMA campaigned for decades to remove the trams from Sydney streets and it was effectively done at their behest. Corporate vandalism at its finest.

ajxs 7y ago

I don't feel like anyone has addressed the fact that Sydney's new tram system is an absolute joke. There's no point comparing it to Melbourne's expansive tram network, ours covers less than a tenth of the distance and pretty much runs between UNSW ( incredibly wealthy private institution ) and the new casino ( incredibly wealthy private institution ). The NSW state government has been thumbing it's nose at the ICAC for years with some of shadiest dealing and poor infrastructure investment of little benefit to the public. This new tram network is just the latest in this tradition. You can't possibly say that projects like this, Westconnex, the shortening of the rail line in Newcastle, etc did not reek of corruption and keep a straight face. Admittedly, transport to UNSW was always bad via road. The congestion in the Eastern Suburbs is terrible. I never found the buses to Randwick to be _that_ terrible, but I never rode them in peak hour on a daily basis.

stonith 7y ago
> I never found the buses to Randwick to be _that_ terrible, but I never rode them in peak hour on a daily basis. It's very difficult to get a bus towards the city in the south east if you live closer to the city than UNSW - there's no standing room so they don't even stop. Getting a bus home at night after 10pm is a similar story so I end up walking back along the route past Hyde Park since that's where it fills up. You can also add the stadium to the infrastructure corruption stink-list.
emmelaich 7y ago
Agreed. The fact that it cost _so_ much is part of why we should not have public transport on rails. The money would have far better spent on better and more buses. And dedicated bus lanes and roads. I have an inside story on the tram (light rail) construction. Workers were hired and literally did nothing for months. No wonder it cost so much.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  So the problem is corrupt and lazy managers, not that trams are bad.

jaimex2 7y ago

I love our trams in Melbourne. They are free, don't emit fumes, reduce pedestrian numbers on the sidewalk and get you where you need to go quickly. Hook turn laws work well to make sure traffic doesn't get in their way. We still have an underground train loop and the trams help reduce congestion in there as well.

yoube 7y ago
Melbourne isn't just the CBD, though. > They are free In the free tram zone, sure, which is an area of less than 2 by 3 km. The longest tram route is 23 km long.
- jaimex2 7y ago
  Is that Burwood highway one? But yeah, I feel like they do their best work in the CBD. There are some examples that come to mind of trams I don't like. The tram that goes down Toorak rd is a huge nuisance, mostly due to how the council has mismanaged that road. There are two lanes. That tram shares the right lane with cars and cars are allowed to park on the left lane. It completely bottlenecks the road - probably its intended purpose so people pay for Citylink bypass.

neilv 7y ago

> "There was a nastiness to it that is quite surprising in hindsight," Hounsell says. "There was a clear ideological attack on this particular mode of transport – an attempt to destroy it and to obliterate it, to erase it from history." Also reduces the likelihood that public opposition would result in trams being put back into service (spoiling whatever planning and deals politicians made).

m0llusk 7y ago

This is an increasingly popular narrative, but it isn't entirely true. The trams of the 1950s were not well loved by everyone because they were alternatively burning hot or frigid cold, they forced all manner of people to squeeze together or hang on the outside as shown in the pictures, and at that time the system had fallen into disrepair during the war and had such deferred maintenance that it was necessary to either rebuild or ditch the system altogether. Being honest about the limitations of the system and its lack of strong popularity helps explain very much. At that time cars were still relatively new so that all the downsides of traffic and freeways were not yet understood. It is also worth noting that modern trams deliver a much more refined experience not only from their own improvements but also from the traffic signal control integration that many newer tram lines enjoy. That kind of system was not available for trams of the 1950s and so they were slower in traffic.

DavidPiper 7y ago

> "They just got convinced by what was going on overseas, what the Americans were doing ... It was the wrong decision. I think we’ve always regretted that." That final line struck a bit of a nerve. It always feels like Australia just sits around waiting to see what America's stance is on <political thing> and then try to follow suit. Notable examples: immigration, data privacy, climate change, extensive privatisation in recent years. (Notable counter-examples: gun control, healthcare) I'm interested to know if this is just my own biased perception based on media and news exposure though.

rexelhoff 7y ago
> Notable counter-examples: gun control, healthcare Gun control, yes. Healthcare, it seems like the Libs (at least) are bent on destroying Medicare in favour of what? Likely private healthcare

kmlx 7y ago

I lived in Amsterdam a number of years ago. There were people constantly hit and killed by trams. There was a constant health emergency with cyclists getting their wheels stuck in the lines and then damaging their kneecaps, shoulders you name it. Anyone know if Melbourne solved any of these issues?

mercer 7y ago
I'd like to see some numbers to support that claim. I've lived in amsterdam for close to a decade and while the trams were something to watch out for, I can't remember any number of stories to indicate that they 'constantly' hit and killed people, and I was quite fond of their presence, generally speaking.