I believe buses are almost universally better than any kind of city light rail. Please no more light rail in cities, more buses.
How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
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Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#22Sydney is still being influenced by overseas trends right now as trams become popular again across large western cities. So do they actually make rational decisions or just follow whatever anyone is doing at the time?
Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#23I believe buses are almost universally better than any kind of city light rail. Please no more light rail in cities, more buses.
Once we have electric buses (battery powered) I think this makes sense.
And it would also make environmental sense in some cases to build a new road over a new train route. Because you can then run electric buses (maybe self-driving eventually) which can then easily open up new routes where trains would be unpractical for commuters.
Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#24> “London has resolved its traffic problem by replacing trams with buses, and Sydney should do the same,” he advised.
Interestingly enough, London has not seen it fit to reinstall trams, instead choosing to continually expand the Underground (subway) network and apply congestion charges to the inner-city traffic. And as it happens, one of the more valid criticisms levied against Sydney's new line is that its capacity will be insufficient from Day 1, and it really should have been built as heavy rail instead.
Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#25The Melbourne's retention of the trams has provided a wonderful A/B experiment. Although I consider Sydney a more attractive city (sorry, city of my birth!) Melbourne frankly is a much easier and more enjoyable city to get around and live in.
Sydney suffers IMO from it's harbour topology (topography?). There are a lot of points where the only way to get from A to B is over a specific bridge. But I'll take the awesome views :-)
Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> buses aren’t stuck on rails What's the difference to you, as a passenger, between being stuck on a tram rail, and being stuck on a bus route? You can't ask a bus driver you take a de-tour from their route, can you? > disruptive to the rest of the traffic No the rest of the traffic is disruptive to the trams!
The trams can't go diagonally, meaning if your destination doesn't align with the road grid you have to catch two of them.
You can pick frequent or point-to-point service but you can rarely have both. Transfers are a perfectly normal part of a transit network.
Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#27I believe buses are almost universally better than any kind of city light rail. Please no more light rail in cities, more buses.
I used to work with a public transit evangelist tragic (in his spare time) and he hated buses and bus-ways. I could never understand it. I think there's an element of permanance to light/heavy rail where the physical infrastructure is there (ergo it can "never" be taken away, ha ha) while a bus-way can be turned into a road.
I think there's some legit reasons (capacity) that light rail is better than buses in many circumstances, but there's a fair bit of fetishism in the anti-bus mob. It also seems to line up pretty well with 'not liking transit unions'.
Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#28As someone who moved to Melbourne (and doesn’t have a car), I don’t have the love for trams that Melbournians do. They’re slow and disruptive to the rest of the traffic. At the same time buses aren’t stuck on rails and usually get you places a lot quicker. They’re also easier to get a seat on as the Melbournians I know hate buses and refuse to catch them.
Couldn't disagree more. Buses are much slower, often have long and winding routes (because they're not stuck on rails), get stuck in traffic and can't hold as many people, my tram lines with dedicated lanes don't have those problems. I doubt you'd see many people taking buses for trips where trams are an option.
The permanence is also a feature. One of my favorite things about Melbourne is never having to visit a shopping mall because retail spaces spring up naturally along tram lines, these are easy to get to, open and walkable. It was also a big factor in where to buy an apartment, I'm pretty confident the tram lines will be there long after I die but bus lines can be changed on a whim.
It's a crime that Sydney and Brisbane got rid of them.
Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> buses aren’t stuck on rails What's the difference to you, as a passenger, between being stuck on a tram rail, and being stuck on a bus route? You can't ask a bus driver you take a de-tour from their route, can you? > disruptive to the rest of the traffic No the rest of the traffic is disruptive to the trams!
What I meant is that if a tram breaks down on the track, or there is an obstruction on the track, any other tram is stuck dead in the water. A bus can drive around stationary objects. The trams in melbourne suburbs usually drive down the middle of the road, and stop in the middle of the road, meaning people exit in the middle of the road and have to walk across it to the footpath, halting the traffic. Conversely buse…
> Conversely buses pull over to the side of the road, usually into a lane that is used for parking...
This can actually be pretty bad for travel time as well, because then the bus has to wait for a break in traffic to get back on the road. Now in the US many places build bus stops out to the road lanes so that they don't have to waste time pulling in and out of traffic.
This seems less a problem of trams running in the middle of the road and more of a problem of localities that don't build suitable waiting areas next to the tram tracks. Example: https://nacto.org/wp-content/themes/sink_nacto/views/design-...
Re: How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car
#30As someone who moved to Melbourne (and doesn’t have a car), I don’t have the love for trams that Melbournians do. They’re slow and disruptive to the rest of the traffic. At the same time buses aren’t stuck on rails and usually get you places a lot quicker. They’re also easier to get a seat on as the Melbournians I know hate buses and refuse to catch them.
I wonder if this is something to do with their implementation, because in every place I have lived and been with trams the trams were faster than buses since buses were stuck in auto traffic. I love trams and trains. Tracklife for me.