Cost almost nothing to run and maintain as they are electric, last 50+ years, takes traffic off the road, can be easily automated, 10 times cheaper to build than subways and heavy rail, basically zero downsides
Trams are good, folks.
fuuck i wish that thing was actually useful though.
you cant really get anywhere on them cause all the lines are so slow and run so infrequently, it might as well just be a big ball of yarn and also plus theyre expensive as fuck to ride :angry-hex:
tourist based rail solutions instead of meaningful transport use kinda rage inducing, sorry
they are cool and pretty i guess
yeah absolutely.
im just lamenting the lack of modern expansion to the system. im sure back in 1920, the new orleans trolley was similarly awesome seeming.
In Toronto, they're serious public transportation. They're about as long as 3 busses and I always prefer them to trains. It's a smoother, faster ride with a bit more space.
for sure. the ones in new orleans are just... not designed to be an actual mass transit system
Before the Pandemic I was in Kansas City and they have a big and super nice tram that's free, goes by a ton of cool restaurants and bars and museums and ends up at Union Station and then goes back, fully automated I believe: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_Streetcar
cool! ive never been to kansas city, so i had no idea.
my only experience of kansas is driving across it, which takes approx eighty seven years
This is Kansas City, Missouri - definitely the best part of the state that I've experienced.
not kansas city, arkansas?
why is everywhere in this place named the same thing as someplace else? aaaugh
oh boy, love to take an hour to get from carrollton to claiborne. this system is definitely effective. 🙄
thats fine if it works for you, but you have to admit its slow as fuck which isnt anywhere near as useful as it could be.
dont get me wrong, i love the damn things, i just also hate them for not being better
stares at levee system sinking into the ground as sea levels rise
if only someone could have predicted this infrastructure would be inadequate by checks notes two years from now?
stares at light rain causing flooding
okay, where did the fourteen billion actually go?
just another tourism thing
just shows they can expand the network, they just don't want to do it for the people who actually live in the city
Had so much fun visiting my cousins in Melbourne riding the trams (or whatever they're called). The myki (miki) system was kind of confusing at first, I think I had to go to a 7-11 to buy a card, and I saw a lot of folks get ticketed due to confusion of the system. Coming from Los Angeles it was amazing. I could just walk from my cousin's pad to the trolly stop in less than 5 minutes and find my way to the CBD and figure out what I wanted to do. Also, I love AFL (St. Kilda is my team, fuck you) Melbourne had a great graf scene to enjoy, but your Mexican food game could use some work.
forcing people to choose between streetcars and street tacos is the twelfth form of liberalism. :mao-shining:
Call me a lib, but I don't want to live in a world without Mexicans or Mexican food.
Edit: Not throwing shade on you Straya, you just got some work to do
ill call you a lib, but thats a perfectly reasonable sentiment. :quokka-wink:
believe me, it was much worse until 8 (maybe) years ago. Literally below Taco Bell tier until Mamasita took off as a wanky restaurant and the Taco Truck first opened.
We legit didn't have food trucks (apart from soft serve vans we all call Mr Whippy) until it became a cultural wank phenomenon like 5 years ago
the only way to make melbourne trams better is to [PARODY] the ticket inspectors
go the sainters
Melbourne is kind of what Los Angeles would have been like if they kept their interurban system.
i've just moved into a city for the first time and holy fuck i love the tram system, i've never been in a place big enough to warrent any form of public transport before and these slap so severely.
a north-south east-west line system that goes through the most frequented parts of the city and converges in the middle at a stop that is literally attactched to the train station, a tram every ten minutes (or less at peak times/places), automated ticket system, you don't have to talk to anyone at any point, kids get on free (i think), and, according to people who are a bit cooler than me, its pretty easy to ride for years without buying a ticket if you keep an eye out of the checkers. the only shame is that its not formally free. I only meant to live here for a few years but the transport has me like 👀👀👀
i've missed it since The Plague ngl. walking all the way to the city center might be good exercise but who has the time. rip to americans for missing out on this shit :amerikkka:
I'm pro-tram for all the reasons you stated... buuuuuut I wouldn't go as far as to say there are no downsides, versus a bus at least. Buses are much more flexible. You can change all your routes as needed at zero additional cost. Hell you can change the routes every day if you wanted to. In the long-run trams are cheaper but up front costs are a lot more. Again, love trams, they're great and I prefer them to buses. But there are a couple downsides...
Maybe not zero cost, but yeah, you can change routes as you need to. Like, if you want to have a parade down main street instead of a tram being inoperable, you have buses you can run along the streets to the side. But fair point about how healthy communities should be relatively static. Maybe I'm thinking of all the city builders I've played where locking yourself into something often causes regret. Whatever, I like trams better than buses anyway.
Buenos Aires had an extensive network of tram lines (like among the densest in the entire world) but they ceased to exists in the 60s with the rapid propagation of bus lines (Colectivos), you can still see some remains of the old tram lines in some avenues but that's all. A museum runs them once every year on a small ceremonial line.
Beautiful machines.
I like that it's OD green and is decorated with a wreath and cute bows. Thank you streetcar, for your service :fidel-salute:
Dedicated lanes help with that. One way streets with timed lights help with that. Express Bus Routes work the same way, and do a good job of transforming paved roads into mock-mass transit systems. Not as efficient as trams, but still better than raw traffic.
But taking a lane out of circulation drives the car culture folks nuts. It's red meat for the talk radio screaming heads. And it tends to provoke an outsized political response from upper-middle class types who think they're too good to sit on the bus. Nevermind when a city reduces fairs to increase participation among poor residents. Then it's pillared as a welfare system, which we absolutely cannot have.
it’s crazy all the cities that just ripped their tram networks out
laughs in Henry Ford
Crazy, yes. It's an amazing coincidence how they got ripped out practically at once.
They're adorable, but they're not grade-separated, so they're just a bus with extra steps.
