That photo is from Helsinki. Around Eira I think?
You are right. This is in Vallila, I tracked down the red building on the right, it is Mäkelänkatu 19.
My US city put one in in downtown. It would be fine should they have their own lane that bypassed traffic, but no thoughts were given to it’s actual implementation. They picked a loop path that goes from two lanes to one frequently. They simply placed the track on the road and kept car street parking on the other side. So you get the pleasure of waiting in traffic on the tram and the tram getting stuck because someone poorly parked their monster truck. Top that off with it was open 10am til 6pm when it first started, but downtown doesn’t have much going on during the day. They’ve changed times now but it barely scratches the surface of use issues. As someone fully for public transportation, this has been so poorly done it’s very frustrating. I do hope they have more fixes in the future.
Most US cities are doing trams for tourist purposes not transport. The bus is better than a tram in almost all cases, it doesn’t need track maintenance ,can go around obstacles, can change routes quickly if you didn’t get it perfect in advance.
The disadvantage of a bus is they can hold 1)at most 100 people, and can’t come more often than every 5 minutes. If you are running into that limit a tram might be right for you. (Even then think carefully , a subway might be better)
We have very similar trams here, they are quite neat when they travel in their regular 10 minute interval. But once they go into night mode e.g. every 30 minutes it makes them a lot less useful further outside of the city. But thats critique on a high level, they perform really well and in 95% of cases I don’t have to check a timetable to catch one to work or uni.
I wish my city would have trams, they’re one of the best means of transit
I have fond memories of a couple of metro lines in Berlin that had part of their routes going thru parks without the usual road the metros go along. It always gave me a little feeling of magic when suddenly we were going thru beautiful nature instead of the Big City.
