4 ms·

Trams are actually a strange beast that's not as cheap and flexible as a bus, and not as efficient as the underground but still quite expensive to build and mai

Trams are actually a strange beast that's not as cheap and flexible as a bus, and not as efficient as the underground but still quite expensive to build and maintain, which is the main reason many cities abandoned them. A big advantage is that they are electric but once electric buses really take off they'll be a much better compromise for public transport overall. Much of the surface traffic would have to be reduced anyway.

bobthepanda 7y ago
The main advantage of trams over a bus is that in general, the layout is more conducive for rapid boarding and alighting, and the trams can physically be longer and have more room for people. The main advantage of trams over an underground is that they can be much cheaper to build. Crossrail 2 in London is expected to cost 32 billion GBP; you could build quite a lot of tram for that kind of money.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Only the fact that trams can be larger is inherent in trams. The rest could easily be applied to a bus if someone had the vision to do so.
  - elsurudo 7y ago
    It's not always _just_ about objective features. I really like trams and trains in general, because they feel "solid" – like an immovable part of the city infrastructure. There are mental benefits to this, I feel. Buses jostle around, abrupty change speeds, etc. Trams... just glide. You are on a movable walkway, seeing the cityscape unfold on both sides as you commute to work.
    - asdff 7y ago
      Trams do not glide. The trams in portland sound like nails on the chalkboard when they round a turn. They also vibrate and thud and have to deal with traffic all the same if they aren't grade separated.
  - ACow_Adonis 7y ago
    The on-boarding/off-boarding efficiency of trams would be very hard to replicate in a bus design. Low floor and equivalent disabled access would be hard too. The efficiency of metal on metal movement is harder to match with buses. Big heavy vehicles on bitumen and rubber particulate have environmental costs and maintenance costs (I haven't looked at this one, but people frequently ignore that tyres themselves being used create air particulate pollution). You can have the equivalent shared pedestrian zone with a tram: search Bourke st mall Melbourne or watch how pedestrians jaywalk with abandonment down Brunswick st Fitzroy that you can't get with heavy rail because of the start/stopping times, and that you don't get with buses because pedestrians don't have the psychological certainty of their travel direction and momentum. And lastly there is a real psychological town planning point with fixed rail that sees density and value build up around better around permanent paths and installments. It's well and good to dismiss that as someone could do it differently if they wanted to, but its arguing using "shoulds and coulds" against empirical reality.
    - dsego 7y ago
      Aren't most modern city buses with low floors and wheelchair ramps?
      - ACow_Adonis 7y ago
        Like the other pros and cons, it's a matter of degree and trade off. We have buses as well (I still use them locally for trips too). I don't have a wheel chair, but I do have a stroller and no car, so I'm using then both heavily. In my old city I often put my bike on the front of the buses and relied on the express bus with commuter dedicated lanes that came every 5 minutes for a commute which worked very well in a town of 400,000 of mostly car drivers. But does it scale? You can get several prams practically straight onto and off of a flat bottom tram without almost any stopping or logistical penalty. On buses, not only is it comparatively awkward to get on and off, you have to nod, thank, praise every other passenger for getting out of the way, and you spend most of your time praying you'll be the only one using that particular aspect of the bus, because otherwise it becomes a lot more complicated. Could you run three times as many buses to accommodate? Sure, but then you end up running into increasing start-stop-merging problems and the bus bunching problem presents itself earlier along the supply curve than with the tram.
- asdff 7y ago
  You should see what busses are like now. They are twice as long with an accordion in the middle to round right angle turns. If you need more length you just run more of these busses on the lines. Some of the buss lines I take also accept paying fare at all three doors with the tap card (although fare dodgers are at least 50% of the riders on my bus).
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Smartphones have probably changed that a bit. What you say absolutely used to be a factor in my not taking buses. I still don't take them much but it is easier to figure out the routing and where you are these days.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Those buses in the US tend only to be 60 feet long. To put this in perspective, the longest single tram unit is 183 feet long in Budapest: https://welovebudapest.com/en/2016/04/14/budapest-now-has-the-worlds-longest-tram/ https://welovebudapest.com/en/2016/04/14/budapest-now-has-th... And because trams are basically just street legal trains, they can be coupled together like a tram. Seattle eventually plans to couple 4 96 ft units together, for a total length of 384 ft. You couldn't run a bus that long safely in mixed traffic; trams are able to do this because the vehicle is fixed to the tracks.
- jen729w 7y ago
  My untested theory re: trams over buses is that trams are predictably less random. You’re a tourist. You board a bus. Where does the bus go? A: literally anywhere. You’re a tourist. You board a tram. Where does the tram go? A: where those tracks, that I can see, go. This is obviously less relevant for non-tourists but I wonder if it’s a factor nevertheless. It’s hard to go disastrously wrong on a tram, whereas on a bus you might find yourself inadvertently half way down the freeway.
lonelappde 7y ago
In the US the only thing that stopped municipal trams was bribes from auto manufacturers
- asdff 7y ago
  In LA they were run by a private company that was mandated by the city to keep fares the same as in like 1910 despite costs being far higher in the 1950s. Service was cut and cut and ridership therefore fell and fell until the company folded and the city ripped out nearly all the rails. By contrast, nearly the exact same thing happened in NYC. All the trains there were private, went bankrupt, but the city bought and expanded the system instead of tearing it out.

bobthepanda 7y ago

The main advantage of trams over a bus is that in general, the layout is more conducive for rapid boarding and alighting, and the trams can physically be longer and have more room for people. The main advantage of trams over an underground is that they can be much cheaper to build. Crossrail 2 in London is expected to cost 32 billion GBP; you could build quite a lot of tram for that kind of money.

bluGill 7y ago
Only the fact that trams can be larger is inherent in trams. The rest could easily be applied to a bus if someone had the vision to do so.
- elsurudo 7y ago
  It's not always _just_ about objective features. I really like trams and trains in general, because they feel "solid" – like an immovable part of the city infrastructure. There are mental benefits to this, I feel. Buses jostle around, abrupty change speeds, etc. Trams... just glide. You are on a movable walkway, seeing the cityscape unfold on both sides as you commute to work.
  - asdff 7y ago
    Trams do not glide. The trams in portland sound like nails on the chalkboard when they round a turn. They also vibrate and thud and have to deal with traffic all the same if they aren't grade separated.
- ACow_Adonis 7y ago
  The on-boarding/off-boarding efficiency of trams would be very hard to replicate in a bus design. Low floor and equivalent disabled access would be hard too. The efficiency of metal on metal movement is harder to match with buses. Big heavy vehicles on bitumen and rubber particulate have environmental costs and maintenance costs (I haven't looked at this one, but people frequently ignore that tyres themselves being used create air particulate pollution). You can have the equivalent shared pedestrian zone with a tram: search Bourke st mall Melbourne or watch how pedestrians jaywalk with abandonment down Brunswick st Fitzroy that you can't get with heavy rail because of the start/stopping times, and that you don't get with buses because pedestrians don't have the psychological certainty of their travel direction and momentum. And lastly there is a real psychological town planning point with fixed rail that sees density and value build up around better around permanent paths and installments. It's well and good to dismiss that as someone could do it differently if they wanted to, but its arguing using "shoulds and coulds" against empirical reality.
  - dsego 7y ago
    Aren't most modern city buses with low floors and wheelchair ramps?
    - ACow_Adonis 7y ago
      Like the other pros and cons, it's a matter of degree and trade off. We have buses as well (I still use them locally for trips too). I don't have a wheel chair, but I do have a stroller and no car, so I'm using then both heavily. In my old city I often put my bike on the front of the buses and relied on the express bus with commuter dedicated lanes that came every 5 minutes for a commute which worked very well in a town of 400,000 of mostly car drivers. But does it scale? You can get several prams practically straight onto and off of a flat bottom tram without almost any stopping or logistical penalty. On buses, not only is it comparatively awkward to get on and off, you have to nod, thank, praise every other passenger for getting out of the way, and you spend most of your time praying you'll be the only one using that particular aspect of the bus, because otherwise it becomes a lot more complicated. Could you run three times as many buses to accommodate? Sure, but then you end up running into increasing start-stop-merging problems and the bus bunching problem presents itself earlier along the supply curve than with the tram.
asdff 7y ago
You should see what busses are like now. They are twice as long with an accordion in the middle to round right angle turns. If you need more length you just run more of these busses on the lines. Some of the buss lines I take also accept paying fare at all three doors with the tap card (although fare dodgers are at least 50% of the riders on my bus).
- ghaff 7y ago
  Smartphones have probably changed that a bit. What you say absolutely used to be a factor in my not taking buses. I still don't take them much but it is easier to figure out the routing and where you are these days.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Those buses in the US tend only to be 60 feet long. To put this in perspective, the longest single tram unit is 183 feet long in Budapest: https://welovebudapest.com/en/2016/04/14/budapest-now-has-the-worlds-longest-tram/ https://welovebudapest.com/en/2016/04/14/budapest-now-has-th... And because trams are basically just street legal trains, they can be coupled together like a tram. Seattle eventually plans to couple 4 96 ft units together, for a total length of 384 ft. You couldn't run a bus that long safely in mixed traffic; trams are able to do this because the vehicle is fixed to the tracks.
jen729w 7y ago
My untested theory re: trams over buses is that trams are predictably less random. You’re a tourist. You board a bus. Where does the bus go? A: literally anywhere. You’re a tourist. You board a tram. Where does the tram go? A: where those tracks, that I can see, go. This is obviously less relevant for non-tourists but I wonder if it’s a factor nevertheless. It’s hard to go disastrously wrong on a tram, whereas on a bus you might find yourself inadvertently half way down the freeway.

lonelappde 7y ago

In the US the only thing that stopped municipal trams was bribes from auto manufacturers

asdff 7y ago
In LA they were run by a private company that was mandated by the city to keep fares the same as in like 1910 despite costs being far higher in the 1950s. Service was cut and cut and ridership therefore fell and fell until the company folded and the city ripped out nearly all the rails. By contrast, nearly the exact same thing happened in NYC. All the trains there were private, went bankrupt, but the city bought and expanded the system instead of tearing it out.