Would you want trams like the one pictured in UK cities?

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quick_justice@reddit

We should. Tram is an extremely efficient form of public transportation. It’s way cheaper to build than subway and has similar running costs, no air pollution.

They were largely removed because rails take space, and badly maintained rails hurt tires. So drivers won - why have a dedicated tram lane when we can run cars and occasional bus, right? And no need to cross rails too.

Obviously time shown it was idiotic. Now you have to organise dedicated lanes for far inferior buses.

But because it’s gone now you are facing a task of fighting motorists back for the land, and looking for capital investment.

I don't think I know better. I just haven't heard a good rational argument for them. Saying "The French have them" is like saying the French are wrong for not having a monarchy (unlike UK, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium).

If you can explain why they're better, do so.

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Realistic-River-1941@reddit

The fact you can easily close a bus service is one of the advantages of trams. Should you buy a house assuming the bus service will always be there?

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Teembeau@reddit

Why is that an advantage? You run public transport if there is sufficient demand. If there isn't you shut it down. If there's 1 bloke regularly using a tram, costing millions, do you want to keep running it?

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Realistic-River-1941@reddit

Because people can't plan around it if it might get shut down. A tramway isn't going to go away, so you can assume you can get to work, your kids can get to school etc.

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TfL have recently(ish) cut bus routes through the Purley Way shopping area. They haven't closed Tramlink.

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Teembeau@reddit

OK. But that's because both exist. I'm talking about an either/or situation.

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letsstartbeinganon@reddit

But tramways have gone away. That’s what many people are bemoaning?

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Realistic-River-1941@reddit

Which second generation tramways have gone away?

OK, but why have any trams?

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Fudge_is_1337@reddit

If you've got a city built around a block system with wide enough roads, devoting a section to rails means a tram system can be pretty efficient and predictable, and they don't get stuck in traffic.

Buses are fine, but to achieve the same level of seamless operation you'd have to give them exclusive bus lanes down the entire route, at which point you might as well have a tram on rails

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Teembeau@reddit

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

I've realised through these conversations that accessibility is a modern low-level multi-carriage tram's one big winner. No other current mass transit option beats it. Even the most accesible modern bus, the New Routemaster with three doors, isn't as easy for those with mobility issues or prams or wheelchairs. Trains above or below ground have accessibility issues by dint of their physical locations.

I honestly couldn't give a shit about perceived benefits: if something works better, it's the better option. Whether something is nice and shiny or looks more welcoming or all these other things that you can never get a 100% positive answer to is all balderdash.

horny-tory-mp@reddit

More transportation capacity, more commuters, more business, more jobs, more economy.

Edinburgh trams: 78 seats, 170 standing.

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horny-tory-mp@reddit

Buses would probably make an even bigger loss, higher maintenance cost, more drivers needed.

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Teembeau@reddit

You're missing the part about spending £800m on building the tram, and that interest has to be paid on it. Buses each cost about £150K/year to run. Total cost.

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Realistic-River-1941@reddit

Germans didn't close their trams, as they had other things to worry about. France did close them, but more recently had a system where it was possible to build a tramway in one elected mayor's time. And used French technology, rather than the lowest costs.

Also, continental cities are much denser.

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geeered@reddit

Also, continental cities are much denser.

Denser building layouts or more densely populated?

My impression has been that typically European cities with effective tram networks tend to have a lot more space, even if they have more large blocks of flats vs older buildings.

While somewhere like Lisbon does have trams running through tight streets in the older areas, they often don't seem particularly effective and are more of a tourist thing. While the larger trams only start to be worthwhile as you get out of the centre and it opens up to the sort of road widths that are rare in UK towns.

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Realistic-River-1941@reddit

Denser building layouts or more densely populated?

Both, but especially population. More oeople live in the centre, not only miles away in suburban semis.

.

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geeered@reddit

That I've seen, as I say the opposite is the case, at least for major thoroughfares - it's relatively rare you get plenty of big wide roads in UK cities, while I find it's really common in a lot of European cities.

Of the major European countries, only Belgium and Holland are more densely populated - and it seems they are distributed more evenly around their countries.

Free-radical2138@reddit

All good systems. But so so many more places could benefit from similar. Particularly where stations (often Parkways) are a long way from population centres.

Chester, Derby, Stoke, Crewe, Cambridge perhaps

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alvenestthol@reddit

It did go to exactly where I needed to go, which was Heaton Park, Bury for the Arcade Club, and Ashton-under-Lyne for the Ikea, and it does that on time

Can't say the same about the buses, especially with the multiple operators and day-tickets that aren't shared

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PeterJamesUK@reddit

Bury arcade club is one of the few places I go to on the tram too - such a gem of a place!!

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WillSym@reddit

Not no more! Bee Network bought out all the operators and unified the routes and fares so now you can one-ticket-any-bus OR tram to most places, I think there's a couple of exceptions the rollout hasn't reached but it's pretty smooth getting bus or tram these days.

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The government(s) trashed the trams because cars were the thing of the future, and now they're trying to block cars as much as possible without providing any alternatives.

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SorryAboutScunthorpe@reddit

No autistic person would ever call a tram a train.

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neilm1000@reddit

Would you want trams like the one pictured in UK cities?

You’ve completely missed the point of a tram. It’s a step above a bus, a step below a metro system. In town centres, they’re a walking accelerator, and due to their fixed route nature, better suited to narrow town centre streets and pedestrianised areas. They have the ability to provide both local and medium distance service like buses, while bringing along the benefits stated in my previous comment.

A good example of a bus route that would benefit from conversion to tram operation (if it were not for certain constraints), is the late 472 in London. It provides a link between multiple dense areas, with varying suitability for pedestrianisation, lots of passengers board and alight at it’s stops, so it’d benefit from the lower dwell times enabled by a tram’s multiple doors. The journeys made via it are medium and local, connecting many points of interest together, as well as several connecting modes. To build a metro in its place would be highly expensive, infeasible, and wouldn’t be able to serve many of the points of interest enroute.

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

Nope, I have not. If you want to increase mass transit capacity, putting trains on roads does nothing to achieve this.

The advantages of such light rail systems only show on segregated lines where the ability to run at higher speeds is allowed. But that could be matched by a bus running on the same infrastructure.

As has been shown by the New Routemaster, multiple doors on buses are possible as well, as long as you accept the higher incidence of fare dodging that goes with it.

Trams are absolutely not suited to narrow town centre streets, as modern multi carriage trams have the turning radius of an oil tanker. Once the battery powered bus was made feasible, the last defence of the road-going electric train evaporated. They are in all criteria a compromise without one single facet in which they shine above others.

"A walking accelerator." Thats how general you have to be with terminology to make trams sound even halfway practical.

This last part is the one I just had a realisation about on a different strand of this thread. And now I realise it, I can't understand why it isn't the only argument.

Modern low floor multicarriage trams ace accessibility. I mean fuck your aesthetics as an argument when this is in your back pocket. (Also, maybe, but power lines.) There is not a bus or train above or below ground that has the roll up roll on ease of a modern tram. To the point where I'm now wondering why bus design hasn't evolved to match it. A two door design with no seats between the wheels might get close, but I'm not aware of such a design.

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not_a_morning_person@reddit

I appreciate you being open to alternative viewpoints.

I think I’ve seen buses in Seville in Spain where they were quite wheelchair friendly in the middle doors. And I’ve seen trains in Switzerland that you can ski onto and off from. So I think there are accessible options for other forms of transport. But yes, with trams it’s a kind of ‘comes as standard’ feature which is a real plus.

For aesthetics, search for Harbour City tram stop. None of the photos online really do it justice on a nice day. But it’s a great example of having grass on the lines, and it runs alongside the road for that stretch of the journey. It’s really a great look and on a sunny day it makes the whole place feel brighter, while serving function.

One thing I’d like to see is a study over time at either house prices (sub optimal) or footfall in different stop locations pre and post tram installation. Because it does seem to be a tool of change in a way that a bus stop doesn’t. But I’d love to see the data and whether that stands up.

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

Skiing onto a train is...I don't know how I feel about that. It sounds far too St. Moritz for my proletariat tastes, but also sounds cool as fuck.

I'm so conflicted.

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Available-Toe-7096@reddit

And yet more and more towns and cities are looking at bringing in trams. They must know something that you don’t, a hell of a lot more I imagine…

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

Politicians like the idea because it appears to do multiple things for less investment. And as was shown vividly in Edinburgh, they're a failure at every one of those aims.

They're sold on being fast, running on existing roads (as if they can just roll on like a bus,) and simultaneously restricting road use for cars which is implicit as no-one wants to out and out state it, but is tacitly understood. And supposedly cheaper than building a properly segregated railway.

Politicians like the photo op of getting pictures in front of the shiny new trams, which is more difficult with an underground train designed to do a job than look pretty.

Trams fail to be class-leading by any metric. Unless you go by the loss Edinburgh Trams have made every year since launch.

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While we’re at it could we reopen some of the stations closed by Beeching?

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Teembeau@reddit

Why? They reopened a railways down in Dartmoor and each train carries fewer people than a coach. Cost £45m which would allow you to run a couple of coaches for decades.

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It's about 950 a day at Okehampton which isn't too bad.

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neilm1000@reddit

They reopened a railways down in Dartmoor

Yes and no, the line was in operation anyway and Okehampton station did have occasional mainline services (the sunday ones from 1997) along with ther summer heritage stuff.

and each train carries fewer people than a coach.

It depends how often you use the tram. If you use it daily it is much cheaper. If you use it once a year it's much more expensive to you. Plus Notts trams already lose £25m a year.

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KeyJunket1175@reddit

Plus Notts trams already lose £25m a year.

In other European countries public transport is a service provided in exchange of our tax. No such thing as profit/loss. It's simply a cost for the budget. Even Detroit in USA has a free to ride monorail. Even if there is a fee, it should be negligible for a person on minimum wage. I earn above the median here, public transport is still far from negligible...

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Bastrato@reddit

100% agree. I'm affluent but I don't use the tram because the numbers don't add up. Particularly if I am with my wife.

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Capable-Campaign3881@reddit

How much are the trams in Nottingham ?

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Bastrato@reddit

£5.80 for a day rider.

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Outrageous_Editor_43@reddit

Yep. The tram prices are appalling! It is cheaper to drive into the city and park in a Zone 2 (even a Zone 1 if there are a few in the car!) than get the tram. I don't have a car anymore and hate the amount I have to pay to get my daughter to school.

Just don’t look at Edinburgh as a case study. Poor execution, overspent and making a huge yearly loss

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Jack_Kegan@reddit

Why are trams meant to be better than busses?

Yeah, but trams are faster, which is more convenient. Buses are slow, and the UK still has a stupid setup of single door entry on most buses, with the driver's area being responsible for payment, which is slow again.

Again, in reference to poland, you have a card that is used on buses and trams and you just tap it getting on. It's way more convenient. Yes this could be added to buses here, but then you're still stuck with single door buses for the most part, to remedy which you'd need to replace the fleet. If we were replacing the fleet, adding more bus only transit routes, etc which is expensive, I'd rather add trams which are also expensive, but quicker.

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

On what planet is a bus not able to travel as fast as a tram?

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AgileSloth9@reddit

Every planet? Buses are subject to traffic. Trams aren't as much.

(if we were to replace all buses with trams)

....I feel like I should be posting this in r/someonedothemath

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CarpeCyprinidae@reddit

If it were natural gas generated electricity for these trams, which would create less pollution: buses burning ~~petrol~~ diesel, or the power plants using natural gas to generate the needed electricity to power each tram?

Even if all the power was from natural gas they'd be significantly cleaner, for several reasons

1) gas fired power stations have economies of scale and usually run at their most efficient power output
2) they dont create the other side effects of diesel fuel use (particulates etc)
30 they also dont create the pollution at the location they are used, surrounded by city population....

And in any case there are often times when the UK power grid is 100% zero emissions as long as you accept the claim that Drax Biofuel power station is zero emissions, which is a pack of lies - and sometimes even its zero emissions not counting Drax....

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DamnitGravity@reddit

they also dont create the pollution at the location they are used, surrounded by city population....

My evil, cynical mind couldn't be stopped from thinking 'oh, so as long as it's waaaaaaay over there and not bothering us, it's ok!'

Which I know is not what you meant, but again, cynical.

Thank you for explaining it like the idiot I am and not mocking me for having a dumb dumb no-science brain!

Nielips@reddit

Roads require a huge amount of constant maintenance that tram tracks don't, it's why we still have lots of railways from +75 years ago.

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VladamirK@reddit

They also require power infrastructure which needs constant maintenance.

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YesTesco@reddit

Trams typically get their own lanes to avoid traffic and can go where cars can’t as a result. You could build a road, but then it gets clogged full of traffic and then when the next winter comes round it starts falling apart.

Building a tram track requires far less maintenance than a road does. You get a pot hole on a street by intense traffic and boom there goes the council budget.

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Jack_Kegan@reddit

The photo hadn’t loaded in for me so I see the idea

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inevitablelizard@reddit

Easier to electrify without heavy batteries maybe? Imagine the wear on the roads battery powered buses would cause.

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BrightonTeacher@reddit

Trams are cooler

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jaymatthewbee@reddit

I regularly drive through Carlisle, I don't know if they would class Carlisle as large enough for trams, but also a lot of the roads would need to massively change. There are a lot of weird junctions and roundabouts that trams would struggle with. They'd have to knock down or build around a lot of the buildings that the roads wrap around.

Trams are easier to add in when the roads aren't overly complicated lol

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Bennjoon@reddit (OP)

And sorry to be pedantic but; “Carlisle is widely recognized as the largest city in England by geographical area”

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Bennjoon@reddit (OP)

https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/25849936.cumbria-mps-demand-stagecoach-improve-bus-services/ we are dealing with with very sad bus service atm 🥲

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Bennjoon@reddit (OP)

Well the buses get through them so they can’t be that bad

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ToastedCrumpet@reddit

Trams and buses are two very different things mate.

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

Again, you use the term "car traffic," which shows your limited view of the mix of road users. How do you think every shop on a city centre gets its stock in? Especially the wee corner shop run by a sole trader. How does that Amazon Prime parcel get to the office its addressed to? How does the taxi get to the train station, or the visitor to the hotel? How do buses get through, as your pet project will never replace the flexibility afforded by a mass transit system free of the constraints or rails and lines?

And cheaper should never be the deciding factor. It kills or constrains so many infrastructure projects that could otherwise be of significant benefit.

That and cheaper is rarely the word bandied about once the realities of building trainlines on roads are brought into focus.

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KeyJunket1175@reddit

Your questions are answered in various ways in the many European city centres that have been pedestrianised for decades. You can reinvent the wheel or choose an existing solution. Either way, the current car heavy mentality here is ridiculous. Even the US is more modern in this regard, at least in some select regions.

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Your argument falls straight out of the gate by assuming that street running is beneficial in any use case. If it can run on railway lines, those lines can continue underground.

And yes, electric buses can run on rails if needed: In Japan, Buses That Can Also Ride the Rails - Core77 https://share.google/4DYVFclqJpyU2Oc67

And electric buses running underground is a proven idea: Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel - Wikipedia https://share.google/ujFo5gdExQmeNYrUW

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Enraged-walnut@reddit

The big problem with sticking everything underground is simply the cost. You get more for your money keeping things at street level.

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

Almost all European countries made this mistake and almost all of them are now having to rebuild them. At the time buses were seen as more futuristic and more economical, nobody predicted the massive rise in car ownership and traffic that made buses unreliable.

France closed every single one of their tram systems by 1971 and have since rebuild 28 of them.

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Laxly@reddit

Influence of car manufacturers

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Realistic-River-1941@reddit

That's a US thing (maybe), not a UK thing.

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jaminbob@reddit

This is the case in the US but not really in the UK. Buses were just seen as better, cheaper, more flexible. A lot of systems got damaged in WW2, bristols' being the best example probably.

The pre-ww2 trams were very clunky and rough. Modern trams are almost as different as high speed train and local diesel branches.

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Teembeau@reddit

Why not electric busses with guided roads? They don’t even need to be guided, can just have dedicated bus routes.

I really don’t understand why it has to be trams. Fixed rails that take an age to build and cost a fortune (Edinburgh trams were a disaster to install) to what exact benefit over electric busses and dedicated routes where required? Yes, a tram can be bigger but autonomous driving should be round the corner so more electric busses won’t be a drawback soon.

I wish id gotten on the footing of the political ladder when I were younger sometimes for my local council. So I could stop these fannies wasting millions on stupid shit

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elephvant@reddit

Trams would only be viable for their cost if our population was much denser.

Theyve been a colossal waste of money every time.

The trams in Edinburgh have - after an admittedly tortuous initial building process - been a success. Both locals and visitors use them in large numbers, people have a generally positive opinion of them, the line's already been extended once and there are multiple proposals for further expansion with the next one already almost decided.

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-Rhymenocerous-@reddit

One successful example does not mean it univerasally applies everywhere else.

Remember the monorail episode on the Simpsons? Kind of the same. Some flashy sales pitch and the council drinks the cool aid. Then it costs an insane amount of money to reconfigure the existing infrastructure and its ROI ends up being so high / lengthy the prices of the service reflect that, which in hand will cause less people to use it and ultimately deem it redundant.

Also the tram in Edinburgh went massively over budget (£1b in lending over the £500m estimate). The list of failures for thr Edinburgh tram system actually had a public enquiry raised over it as all the problems encountered were completely avoidable. (Again, drunk the cool aid and not enough research was put into place resulting in massive failures) but if you deem that successful or are just unaware of it then, well.idk what ti say.

Leeds is no different, same.as Sheffield. Nottingham is the same also reporting £24m in losses in 2024. Building tram systems here cost over double than what they do in europe.

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elephvant@reddit

One 'successful' example does not mean it univerasally applies everywhere else.

That's true. But...I never suggested it did. What it does do, though, is show they haven't failed 'every time' and can be viable. Edinburgh's hardly the most densely populated city, and they work very well here.

Also, I obviously am aware the initial tram building went over budget since I brought it up myself and called it 'tortuous'.

Finally, yeah, I have seen the Monorail Simpsons episode - it's one of my favourites ever. But it's a Simpsons episode (with an insanely catchy song) about a comically over the top conman, not a realistic examination of the viability of trams in British cities.

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-Rhymenocerous-@reddit

Hilarious being downvoted for stating actual facts.

I guess people are content with their local govs wasting millions of budget £'s instead of doing something worthwhile with their tax money.

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SentientRon@reddit

Politicians are not for the people; those who deviate get replaced. Expert money wasters. If you were a politician, you'd be picked off and forced to follow the rules like everyone else. I structure my business to pay the least amount of tax possible, legally.

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-Rhymenocerous-@reddit

I didnt draw an an exact comparison. I said "kind of the same"

“Lots”

Sees cities in France smaller than Cambridge with tram.

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Oh wow, I didn’t know that

I just remember being there, like 17 pound for 24 hour travel, just step out of the hotel, hop on and get off when you want, get in the opposite one when you return

I’m not sure if I was just lucky with location , it could have issues else where, but I just remember thinking how many people would use it constantly for travel all over the UK

Trains feel like a far more expensive mode of transport, but I suppose I’m comparing it to big trains and not the underground so I could be wrong

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FlatlineReaper@reddit

No, start filling pot holes

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Quailking2003@reddit

7 UK cities already have tramways. They include:

Birmingham Nottingham Sheffield Croydon (London) Blackpool Edinburgh Manchester

The bigger issue is network design. Compare, say, Nantes with, say, Cardiff (to name two similar-sized cities that happen to be twinned with one another).

Yes, Nantes has trams, but it also has a lot of buses. Many of the bus routes cross the centre along useful corridors for travel in central Nantes. They do not attempt to serve every destination in the central area – you can always change to another frequent line if your destination is not on your route. As one moves outwards, the network forms a polar grid, with some stops being on routes that run orbitally (e.g. 10, 20, 50) – again, you can get to where you're going, whether it's in the city centre or not, with a single change.

Cardiff has a stereotypically branchy network that prioritises giving every bit of outlying areas of Cardiff an infrequent direct service to a confusing morass of stops located around the city centre, with routes terminating in weird loopy things in the city centre that make local journeys in central Cardiff difficult. And although some routes serve roads outside the centre that run orbitally, they only cover segments of them before turning off to head for the centre, making destinations outside the centre unnecessarily hard to get to. It's a lousy network design that just assumes that the only thing anyone wants to do is to go from some outlying place to Central Station and get out of Cardiff. Yes, trams would be good, but sorting out the bus network to be more like that in Nantes would be a much quicker win.

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Hour-Process-3292@reddit

No… monorails on the other hand

We already have these beauties where I live

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bigbadbob85@reddit

In the UK cities that have them, they tend to be pretty useful. I'd like to see more extensions of the existing networks and maybe some new ones.

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You can only fit more people into a tram than a bus by taking up three times the road space, and by only giving seats to a minority of passengers.

If your only experience of an underground system is London, I can understand why you assume all such systems must be hot and unpleasant. A system that stays underground keeps temperatures more stable.

And then, your bias shows through. Your assumption that road traffic only equates to commuters in cars, therefore you can restrict access while sitting on your tram smelling your own farts. ((c) South Park) Mass transit should be fast enough, frequent enough and cheap enough to make personal transport by car a distant second choice, not by taking up the space road traffic needs. Because deliveries aren't getting made by tram.

Do you check things before saying them?

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SuccessfulSpeed333@reddit

I'd love it. The town I'm in used to have it a long time ago.

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Goatmanification@reddit

Same in my city (Southampton), I'd love for them to return.

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Goatmanification@reddit

Yes. Literally all I want in life is fast, frequent and reliable public transport.

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Physical-Industry-21@reddit

i just imagine shit like this...

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Cheap-Rate-8996@reddit

Monorails aren't trams. I do have a slight dislike for this episode because it's poisoned the well a little bit around new public transport infrastructural projects (although that's maybe not as problematic in the real world as how the show depicts nuclear power - literally staffed by Homer Simpson...).

And monorails do have their strengths. They can climb and descend steeper gradients than standard railway lines. If you have a city somewhere very mountainous, and it's simply not practical to build a standard rail line on the ground, then having an elevated monorail system makes sense. The Schwebebahn in Wuppertal and the Shonan Monorail in Japan spring to mind as valid use cases. But if you can build a conventional train or tram, then yeah, it's better to do that instead.

Sorry for the rant, I just think monorails get a bit of an unfair reputation. They have valid use cases. They're not like, say, the Hyperloop or something lol

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Bennjoon@reddit (OP)

Lmaooo old but gold

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St4c3y_R@reddit

Yes, far more environmentally friendly.

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darybrain@reddit

Folks my way don't want to walk to the end of their road to catch a bus let alone walk to some tram stop that would be much further away so everyone drives. I'd prefer a lot more buses that run much more frequently instead of every 1-2 hours and run much later in the evening rather than finishing between 8-9pm depending upon the day.

Pretty much every town and city would benefit from them. I would love for every housing estate to connect up to a tram network so you could easily get around. Bonus points for free public transport.

Encourages exporation and taking your time in the town centre to see and visit more shops and amenities and keeps the roads clear.

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conrat4567@reddit

Trams should never have been discontinued. My town used to have them. You could get anywhere, just hop on and off. Victorians and Edwardians had the right idea

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mintyharbor@reddit

It's a great idea in principle, and Manchester's Metrolink proves they can work well. The upfront cost is huge, but the long-term benefits for reliability and the environment are undeniable. Seeing more cities get proper tram networks would be a game-changer.

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frestair@reddit

Their are lots in major cities in UK but the cost is huge due to the need of deep foundations, and once built the route can’t easily change, but their is an alternative called light rail being tested in Coventry without the need for deep foundations, just needs shallow grooved foundations, no overhead lines, runs on its own battery. Smaller trained though so might work for lower capacity areas.

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Teembeau@reddit

Ridiculously expensive, hard to change based on shifts in demand. We got rid of trams in this country in the 1920s because buses were cheaper.

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Teembeau@reddit

Really? How does a tram add £30m of economic value over a bus?

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jsm97@reddit

Two main ways - Land Value Uplift (The value increase in surrounding land), as developers can charge more for flats near tram lines and in some cases can make the difference between whether a housing development is financially viable or not, shops and retail units receive more footfall and the units themselves are more valuable. That injects more money into the local economy.

The second way is harder to wrap your head around but it extremely important - Agglomeration. Highly productive businesses in close logistical proximity to other highly productive businesses become even more productive and increases the effective size of the labour pool, which has value.

Other things like traffic delay time reduction are also directly quantified in terms of £. All of these things are also true for buses, but usually to a lesser extent. When deciding whether to build a tram line we'll quantify the existing situation (a "do nothing"), more buses (a "do minimum") and a tram line (a "do something") and see how the costs and benefits stack up

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Teembeau@reddit

So, do the developers pay for the tram to be built, as they're getting so much benefit?

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jsm97@reddit

They contribute yes. Almost everywhere in the world tram and rail infrastructure is built using a public-private joint venture model. The government is responsible for making the business case and contributing some of the funding and the private sector makes up the rest. The better the business case and the higher the level of trust in the goverment to build a project on time and on budget the more the private sector will pay. The Elizebeth line and Manchester Metrolink are highly successful projects that were 50% privately funded. The disastrous Edinburgh Tram ended up being only 15% privately funded.

But the important thing is that no single private company can ever receive 100% of the financial returns so no single private company will contribute 100%.

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Some potential futures for Edinburgh: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1OuxvAuupT-QL3bl5bovEznffWPC8k4I

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Parker4815-2@reddit

Buses are better. They can go anywhere provided the road is wide enough. They can go longer distances. They dont need infrastructure. And they can also be electric.

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Onor0@reddit

But trams are higher capacity, have a longer lifespan for rolling stock, and usually are faster.

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Onyx1509@reddit

In practice though most bus systems are not very good. To bring a bus system onto the same level as a typical tram system you need to segregate it totally from other traffic (including taxis and cycles) at least in the core area / on main roads and also sort out ticketing so people aren't faffing around buying from the driver. Actual bus networks tend to be a very very long way from this.

Classic_Rate_8448@reddit

Never liked trams. Buses can divert, go round blockages etc etc.

Trams definitely have their uses and advantages, just never seem worth it. They worm great until they don't. And it causes chaos when they install/maintain Tram infrastructure

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Meowscles_dad@reddit

Only the ones that have tracks, they look like they’d be a nightmare on the roads.

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

Yep. Trains don't belong on the roads.

Either a fully separated railway to allow them to run at full speed, or not at all.

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TruthsNoRemedy@reddit

Yes, they make a lot of sense.

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francisjosephmurphy@reddit

In what way do they make sense compared to buses?

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Consistent-Pirate-23@reddit

Blackpool has them, they aren’t all that. I was there when Storm Amy happened, trams were off for days and the official advice was “just get a bus instead” with tram staff stationed at bus stops to give travel advice.

Lines were blown down and glass panels were blown out of the stops (incase anyone is curious)

I prefer my trams on rails not just left alone in the wild.

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Total-Combination-47@reddit

but but....organically vegan trams are better for the environments.

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spikewilliams2@reddit

Total waste of money. They extended the Sheffield tram system to Rotherham a few years ago and it cost millions. They could have bought 50 electric buses for the same price, giving more capacity and more flexibility.

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Minimum_Possibility6@reddit

Unless it's a BRT system then teams are superior. They have larger capacity, quicker loading and unloading times, and often but not all the time have dedicated segregated routes.

Buses unless given priority protected lanes, reduced stops, auto triggering lights at junctions or dedicated junction bypasses cannot compete.

Buses excel in more suburban sprall where there is less density, but for getting into cities the tram is always better.

Heck Birmingham up untill the more recent expansions of the tran was lagging behind in GDP for cities of it's sizes across Europe directly because of an over reliance on buses resulted in more congestion and buses being stuck in traffic essentially reducing the catchment area.

The team extensions are designed to help this, but HS2 was designed to move trains from the north around the city and away from the internal lines allowing for a tfl style overground system.

and if demands of the town change and you need more transport in another place, what happens to the tram?

The problems with trams is that you have to think 30 years ahead, as it's a huge investment and no-one can see 30 years ahead. 20 is a push. Build a tram to take people to the town centre and they all start shopping online, you've wasted a few hundred million quid.

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jsm97@reddit

This is one of the greatest advantages of trams. They're permanent. You can build your life around them. You can sell your car in the knowledge that the tram you take is always going to be there in a way that you just can't with buses. Buses don't actually cut car usage the way that fixed infrastructure does.

France has basically templated modern tram systems for towns of about 100k and over, and it’s common for communes to place joint orders for vehicles. This approach to design and procurement really reduces overall cost. It helps that French towns usually have an integrated transport system, so buses can be rearranged to act more as feeders to the tram, and it’s the same ticket for all modes.

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