Sometimes when watching videos on effective ways of public transport and trams come up, I get a bit annoyed at people not addressing the fact that they seem to share the road with cars. Why do people twerk for trams so much as a form of light rail if they share the road with cars and are subject to being affected by traffic? Doesn’t that just make them rail buses without their own bus lane? Doesn’t that make them more obsolete? Why do people like them so much?
Edit: Also, does anyone have any resources about the cost to benefit ratio of different intratown/city forms of transport (bike lanes, BRT, trams and other forms of light rail, subways etc)? Would be much appreciated.
Trams do not have to share the road with cars. They can have (and often do have) their own dedicated right of way.
In those situations the tram only really interacts with cars on intersections, similar to level crossings for rail.
I think it’s more helpful to see a tram as an upgrade on a bus, rather than a downgrade on rail.
The main advantages of trams over busses are the increased capacity, and increased efficiency (less fuel, fewer drivers per passenger needed)
Definitions are loose but generally a tram is defined as sharing the road with cars, aka streetcar in North America. If it has its own dedicated right of way, then it’s a light rail. Light rail can be separated all the way to a metro system if you want. (I think we shouldn’t use the term tram at all, use streetcar which is self explanatory or light rail to mean dedicated right of way.)
don’t give in to tramsphobia.
Depends on the location. If done right, trams can be the single most efficient form of intra-city transit. Treating trams like cars is not doing it right.
My city has trams that are grade-separated from car traffic for most of their routes, but often run alongside cars within their own “lanes”. Cars can still use that lane for maneuvers and overtaking, but whenever a tram approaches, it has the absolute right of way.
Tram tracks are much narrower compared to bus-sized streets. They can run through places where roads can’t be built, and bypass busy intersections. They’re also quieter, less disruptive (see: grassy tram tracks), less polluting (no asphalt dust or tyre particles), more durable, and more efficient (steel rolling on steel).
Trams usually don’t have to care about ground clearance. This allows them to be built with a much lower floor. Running on fixed tracks also allows them to perfectly align with the platform at stops, which makes wheelchair accessibility trivial.
Unlike trolleys, trams can use pantographs to connect to the overhead wires, which is much simpler and less likely to fail compared to trolley poles, which require switching whenever the routes diverge, and can get caught on the wires. They also don’t have to carry backup batteries or combustion engines.
Trams usually don’t have to care about ground clearance.
Not to dispute anything you’ve said, but you should see some Amsterdam trams, particularly in the inner city area. They go through some historical small bridges that I don’t even know how they get through, the arches in the tracks are extreme.
I think trams are pretty great. There are pros and cons, of course. Pros being that they can be bigger than buses, lower rolling friction, etc. Cons being higher initial costs and being stuck to a fixed route.
But I also think they’re better for short to mid-distance trips. Shorter is best done by bike
Mid - bus or tram
long - metro/train.
So getting around downtown or a neighborhood, or going a few neighborhoods over? definitely.
Going across town? you’ll want rail.
So a commute may look like taking a bike/bus/tram to a station to get to down, then hopping “down” the transit hierarchy to a tram to get to where you’re going.
I don’t necessarily have resources on the cost to benefit ratio since that tends to differ based on where it’s done.
But the overall idea is:
Buses - easy to get started, flexible routes, more expensive in long run for maintenance and fuel
Trams - higher infrastructure costs up front, but lower maintenance and cheap fuel (electricity), and higher capacity than buses
Metro - super high startup costs, super high carrying capacity, you get the idea
Fantastic. So a nice small town can really rely on well planned out bike paths with a good tram network if they can afford the upfront costs. If not, then a BRT system or similar with separated bus lanes would be the next best thing, making sure that these “mid” to “short” distance forms of transports linl well with the town’s train station(s).
But they’d probably do it in the opposite order. As a town evolves its bus network into something more mature, trams may be a next step. However, I do think BRT will be chosen over trams every time, for the cheaper infrastructure
The problem with this though is if a town/ city can afford a tram network but chooses not to in order to cut corners for upfront costs, it shows a lack of commitment. The wrong government/ council comes into power and a BRT us getting rolled back straight away for car centric infrastructure again.
They’re way better than buses. There’s a direct comparison here: Birmingham is a small city, including a plot of bus times vs tram times at different times of day.
While the tram is substantially quicker at all times than the bus, the reliability of its timing, even during the most congested periods, provides an additional large benefit to users.
We think that people generate the most agglomeration benefits for a city when they travel at peak times, to get to and from work, meetings, and social events. Our tool shows us that at the times when people need to travel in order to generate these benefits, buses are extremely slow. And since buses are by far the largest mode of public transport in Birmingham this is likely to have significantly higher impact on Birmingham than in Lyon where the largest mode of public transport is the metro, which delivers reliable journey times no matter the time of day.
Our hypothesis is that Birmingham’s reliance on buses makes its effective population much smaller than its real population. This reduces its productivity by sacrificing agglomeration benefits. For the past six months, using our Real Journey Time tool, we’ve worked with The Productivity Insights Network to quantify that.
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I wouldn’t call Birmingham a small city haha, but thanks for this!
Edit: I am an idiot, I get what the link means by “Birmingham is a small city” after taking 5 mins to read.
Edit 2: Just taken some more time to read this and it’s gold, thanks for sharing. Really informative.
i did its just 2 graphs talking about times to Strichly and wedensbury, which dont sound like Alabama to me.
There’s a direct comparison here: Birmingham is a small city
If you want to have a large city comparison, look at Berlin.
Berlin was divided after WW2 until 1989. West-Berlin, like most of West-Germany, removed all of their trams and replaced them for individual car use and buses. East-Berlin largely kept their trams.
The difference between trams and buses are huge. The „schedule“ of the major West-Berlin bus routes have become a running joke among Berliners: „You’ll wait and wait and suddenly there’s a herd of them!“. It’s bad. Really bad.
Trams are the reason I live in East-Berlin and would never, ever move to West-Berlin.
If you want to have a large city comparison
Once again, Birmingham is not a small city. It’s a very big city but its reliance on buses makes it effectively much smaller than it could be because the commutable zone shrinks with the slowness of the buses at rush hour. Hence the snappy title of the piece I linked.
Berlin is an excellent additional example of the effect on a big city. Thank you.
Yeah, I know Birmingham, I just went with the joke, sorry. Maybe should have added some air quotes.
Berlin is only „big“ because it gobbled up a lot of area in the past. Outside the central districts it‘s often just suburbs or even literal villages. and the public transport becomes… limited… 😬
I guess a more honest comparison would be the West Midlands, roughly the same size, population close to 4 million (Berlin) vs 3 million (West Midlands).
Still though, Berlin is a very interesting example not just with regards to public transport, but also with regards to housing, street lighting, etc. Really impressive what a mere ~40y of differences in government policies can accomplish.
Its a terrible title, as you can see from the multiple people who misunderstood it. Interesting article though.
