5 ms·

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 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.
  - close04 7y ago
    Getting the bike on a (small) bus is not the best experience. But that's what trains or subways are for. They take hundreds of people longer distances to the general destination area. Perfect use case if you cycle. > a flat bottom tram Only modern trams have this, just like any modern bus. But consider this, a single bus costs several hundreds of thousands of E/$ (double if it's electric). A single tram costs several millions. That's before laying track.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  At least in the US, buses tend to only be partially low floor, with a higher section where the engine and fuel tank are in the back. Bus tires also are generally larger diameter and wider than the wheels of a tram, so the wheel well physically juts out into the low floor section and reduces available space. And (this may be fixable) the doors on a bus tend to be narrower, almost but not quite wide enough for two people to walk off simultaneously, and are more poorly laid out to minimize distance for passengers to the door.
- asdff 7y ago
  They are and it takes all of two minutes for the buss driver do deploy the ramp and secure the wheelchair to the cabin
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Two minutes is a long time in an individual person's commute, especially if it is done multiple times on the route. Two minutes is often the difference between making a timed connection to another route and missing it.
close04 7y ago
> but its arguing using "shoulds and coulds" against empirical reality Not every city sees it this way. Maintaining the existing infrastructure is very expensive (and even disruptive), not to mention building more. Many cities use it as a backbone to connect several main nodes which makes sense. But they are not very suited to having short stops, can't take you everywhere, and it's hard to re-plan. So in the end they still have to maintain some pretty massive bus fleets that can use already existing road infrastructure. Vehicle features like accessibility depend on the model of bus or tram, modern ones all have them. And many cities find it a bad idea to mix any kind of traffic with pedestrian zones. The explanation of "travel direction and momentum" doesn't really make sense to me. Buses have a very obvious "front" while trams are usually perfectly symmetrical. And trams are far more dangerous in any accident (weight, stopping distance, metal wheels). If you ever saw a tram breaking down, an accident on the track, or works on the road you know how much more disruptive this can be compared to regular traffic (with trolleybuses coming in a close second). I lived in places where this happened every few days in the morning rush hour. For cities with deep pockets and which can interleave tram and subway lines to have as much coverage as possible it may be easier. But most cities don't really have deep pockets. Which is why the are many bus-only cities, probably none or very few tram-only cities (none that I've heard of anyway). If the goal is to replace personal cars a city has to offer something "close" in comfort. Electric buses are a good clean alternative and they're as close to personal car comfort as public transport will ever be.

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.
- close04 7y ago
  Getting the bike on a (small) bus is not the best experience. But that's what trains or subways are for. They take hundreds of people longer distances to the general destination area. Perfect use case if you cycle. > a flat bottom tram Only modern trams have this, just like any modern bus. But consider this, a single bus costs several hundreds of thousands of E/$ (double if it's electric). A single tram costs several millions. That's before laying track.
bobthepanda 7y ago
At least in the US, buses tend to only be partially low floor, with a higher section where the engine and fuel tank are in the back. Bus tires also are generally larger diameter and wider than the wheels of a tram, so the wheel well physically juts out into the low floor section and reduces available space. And (this may be fixable) the doors on a bus tend to be narrower, almost but not quite wide enough for two people to walk off simultaneously, and are more poorly laid out to minimize distance for passengers to the door.
asdff 7y ago
They are and it takes all of two minutes for the buss driver do deploy the ramp and secure the wheelchair to the cabin
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Two minutes is a long time in an individual person's commute, especially if it is done multiple times on the route. Two minutes is often the difference between making a timed connection to another route and missing it.

close04 7y ago

> but its arguing using "shoulds and coulds" against empirical reality Not every city sees it this way. Maintaining the existing infrastructure is very expensive (and even disruptive), not to mention building more. Many cities use it as a backbone to connect several main nodes which makes sense. But they are not very suited to having short stops, can't take you everywhere, and it's hard to re-plan. So in the end they still have to maintain some pretty massive bus fleets that can use already existing road infrastructure. Vehicle features like accessibility depend on the model of bus or tram, modern ones all have them. And many cities find it a bad idea to mix any kind of traffic with pedestrian zones. The explanation of "travel direction and momentum" doesn't really make sense to me. Buses have a very obvious "front" while trams are usually perfectly symmetrical. And trams are far more dangerous in any accident (weight, stopping distance, metal wheels). If you ever saw a tram breaking down, an accident on the track, or works on the road you know how much more disruptive this can be compared to regular traffic (with trolleybuses coming in a close second). I lived in places where this happened every few days in the morning rush hour. For cities with deep pockets and which can interleave tram and subway lines to have as much coverage as possible it may be easier. But most cities don't really have deep pockets. Which is why the are many bus-only cities, probably none or very few tram-only cities (none that I've heard of anyway). If the goal is to replace personal cars a city has to offer something "close" in comfort. Electric buses are a good clean alternative and they're as close to personal car comfort as public transport will ever be.