Tr(rule)am

187 comments

Depending on your definition, this actually is not peak performance.
Subways are.
Obviously, the tunnels are absurdly expensive, but nothing moves as many people as quickly around a city as a subway.
They're also extremely reliable, meaning people are even more likely to actually use them, and their above-ground footprint is essentially zero.
- Subways are for mobility (moving large numbers of people rapidly); trams are for access (getting you close to your destination). They complement each other and a well-designed city would have both.
  
  STOP I can only get so erect
  You're going to make me write a cute green-urbania fiction of my self-insert walking around a beautiful city with parks everywhere and using the sub-rails to go far distances and then get on cute retro san francisco style over land trams to make my way to walk-only brick roads and then walk to some book store, the corners piled high with books, with books stacked outside the store under a cloth awning, owned by a wise old man of unclear nationality who spends his days reading the books he sells, who knows me well enough to offer a glass of tea.
- I have to disagree. Accessibility of underground transport is abhorrent. Changing from underground to aboveground buses and trains is also shit. The space use of public transport in comparison to car infrastructure is completely negligible. If anything put all the cars underground as they are ugly and stinky. This picture also give you happy chemical because it is green and is not another dead, sealed asphalt hellscape.
  
  I quite like underground transport, the stations can be absolutely stunning.
  
  wym accessability is abhorrent?
- But I like watching things outside the trams.
- Skytrains my dude, similar footprint, same tech, and I assume it costs significantly less, and is able to dip underground when there absolutely ISNT the footprint for it above ground
  
  Monorail!
  
  Would sky trains be as reliable? I assume subways are more reliable partially due to not being exposed to the elements.
- If San Francisco informs, light rail streetcars are a gateway to underground subways. It gets the city in the habit of getting on a railcar to go places while the greater infrastructure (the tunnels) are built.
  MUNI is mixed undeground and street. BART is over and under and being extended to this day.
- Tunnels also don't take away space from people. This nice looking tramway could be a nice promenade for people instead.
  
  Without trees. And with asphalt. Basically another asphalt field.
- Yeah, I guess it depende of definition. For example there is also extra costs with lighting and ventilation for example for subways.
- Completely agree, however I think this is decent intermediary between the larger investment into subways, especially depending on geology
  
  Also if you really want you can put trams underground.
- Totally agreed, but the image looks so nice with the grass, subways don't have that
  
  Grass is kind meh. Trees are better.
- Living in a big city there's nothing more reliable than a subway. Driving you might always get stuck in traffic. But if you take the Metro your travel time is guaranteed to be as predicted.
  
  True. 45-50 minutes on metro or 35-100 minutes on car.
- The problem is moving people to tunnels

I cannot understand people that argue their 6 lane stroad is better than this in any way. It may feel more convenient for some, but at what cost?
- Probably because public transit requires people to be around other people, and they'd rather get around in their little bubble without interaction (except giving a BMW the finger).
  
  This but also a lack of experiencing good transit
  
  This is what headphones are for, fuck cars
  This is from someone who feels physical discomfort when someone interacts me unprompted
- I think the key thing is most people don't like change. They know stroads. They may not love stroads but they work and it's what they've used. I've been all over the place in this country and by and large public transportation SUCKS and creates more headaches than anything. Just hopping into a car is 1000x easier. So that's the view I think most people go into this with. In the cities where public transportation is good, it's a complete game changer, but they are few and far between so most people don't have a good reference point. They see people pushing public transportation and think of their own shitty system and say F that.
  
  They’ve also had to invest in their car personally and they don’t want to have their investment nullified. Who do they sell the car to if they’re no good anymore?
  Of course, there will still be roads and you might still need the car; but if you have the car why not just drive straight to the place you need to go?
  So personal transportation itself is a bit of a problem - you need to make the replacement better than the current status quo. If it doesn’t save people time, if it doesn’t allow people to transport goods as easily as vehicles do, they’re not going to want to give up their car; because at the end of the day it will ultimately complicate things for them.
  It’s a huge challenge towards gaining acceptance for public transit.
- I mean, you can kind of understand it since you listed one way it's better: It's more convenient for some.
- It is only less than half of stroad. You stil have another half to add for people.

Just today I saw this list of the largest tram networks in history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_tram_and_light_rail_transit_systems_ever
The largest existing one is Melbourne, at a little over 250 km of tramways. Los Angeles at its peak had over 1700 km of tramways.
Truly insane what we tore up. A crime against humanity.
- Truly insane what we tore up.
  Didn't know much about this so just looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
  
  Why does every problem ever always boil down to capitalism?
- I think many of them simply got converted to sub ways and such.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suburban_and_commuter_rail_systems
  
  A few of them did, but certainly not the majority.
  Atlanta's streetcar system got entirely torn out, paved over and converted to buses. We didn't get a subway system (on entirely different right-of-way, and much less of it) until decades later.
  
  In truly large urban areas with a budget and needs, yeah.
  In small towns?
  In best transatlantic accent The automobile wins the day. Huzzah!
- And toonanity.
  
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  And toonanity.
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The combination of those trees and overhead power lines might be problematic in some climates, but overall, I'm all for getting as much greenery into city centers as possible.
- This is at Helsinki, Finland. So all kind of weather is present here.. Well except hot and dry 😄
  
  On the other hand, there's a billion saunas around the city if you want hot and dry
  
  Do we actually have a boulevard like in the pic? I recognized the trams but don't know a place like in the pic

Off camera, there's a lawn mower driving as fast as it can away from the approaching tram

I'm stuck in stupid America, but my British friends tell me of regular rail delays because of leaves on the rails. I assume that isn't a problem with these trains, so why is this a problem in the UK?
- It's a big problem for anything using rails. https://youtu.be/ZEuFSw-CMzU?feature=shared
  
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- Maybe they're just taking a piss? Same for the whole train system shutting down due to a single snowflake.
  
  I've been looking into it since I posted that and apparently it makes the rails slippery and the trains have to slow down because of it and trains have to slow down because of it.
  https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/leaves-line
  So I guess the answer is that these trains have to slow down too.

One small problem. Pantographs and tree lines.
It is beautiful though.
- Eh, it's nothing that actually having enough budget to fund proper maintenance (e.g. tree pruning) can't solve. Presumably, any city on-the-ball enough to build decent infrastructure like this in the first place has got that covered.
- Proof of concept, trees I agree don't do too well with electrified infrastructure

What's not to like?
- I'm looking at unadulterated communism here and I hate it! Remove the green and the tracks and let honest working people park their lifted F 350 to go grocery shopping and bring little Braendin to school!
  
  Well, more communism for me
- Green space being used for vehicles instead of for people, even if it is public transport.
  
  It can and should be both whenever possible.
  Unlike roads that need to be completely covered in asphalt, rail only needs, well, rails. The rest can be occupied with greenery, and this is a fantastic example of doing just that.
  It is still visually pleasing, still captures CO2, and as a bonus reduces noise coming from the trams. Everybody wins!

devils advocate:
branches would fall in the tracks
wild animals might populate and then get harmed.
not citing pros
both can probably be mostly solved fairly easily i think
- "Would"? The picture isn't fake, plenty of tram tracks look like this.
- -concidering it is in the middle of a city there are basialy no wild animals -this isnt more dangerous to the remaining few than any 4 lane Road -there are city maintenance workers who take care of the trees -during realy bad storms there are also branches on the streets
  vs
  1 billion different advantages
  The actuall biggest problem would be leaves on the rails in autumn.
  
  A small brush system ahead of the actual wheels could take care of some of the tree debris. Even a small to medium sized branch would probably have no effect, the tram is heavy enough to just cleave branches apart. The negative of that is the maintenance teams probably have to clear out stuff that gets stuck under the trams.
  
  There are plenty wild animals in large cities. Foxes, rabits, racoons ... Berlin famously has a large boar population. Having a more human friendly city with green tram lines and less car traffic will surely increase animal populations. However I doubt it would be a problem that isn't easily solvable or is still preferable to the current situation.

me like tramz

Please go back to the fuck cars subLemmy or whatever the fuck it's called. I don't want to also block 196 for being annoying as shit about weird topics that don't make sense and you can't back up.
- You havent Been in 196 for long have you?
  
  I have. There is a lot of actually good memes and then once in a while some fucker posts here instead of a community that I have blocked like fuck cars or politics.
- Fuck off
- This is a queer socialist community better block it now
- don't make sense and you can't back up
  Wrong and wrong?
  Trains are more space-efficient than cars and can therefore solve traffic congestion.
  There you go. Not that difficult to grasp.
  
  Trains are barely more space efficient and what would we do with current roads for cars anywhere? If we just leave them there, nothing would be gained. And cars are just easier to travel by and make more sense in general.

The building in the background on the right is a good point of reference https://maps.app.goo.gl/nzUaXj6BJLrFNfe67
- yep roads take twice as much space

GIB THAT TRAM

Looks like a modified pic from Finland
- Looks like average Europe
  
  It's not average even for Helsinki. It's a brand new line (I thought it was an edited photo) that I had never seen before. Pretty cool but not average in the least.

I would love it very much

No thanks. I don't want to be at the mercy of some driver who can and will deny people service however and for whatever reason they please.
- By law, they can not.
  
  Ohh yes they can, and they do, all the time. Laws can't protect people against their behavior because laws are enforced after the fact. Prevention is key here.
- Man, it's gotta suck being this afraid of everyone.
  
  It sucks being justified in being afraid, yes. And I am very, very justified in my stance, not just by historical standards but through personal experience and experiences of the people I care about. Public transport is the pits and a last resort people are forced to be dependent on for poverty. It CAN'T be the way forward for our people.

But I do like it

I believe small single seat robo-taxies would allow a lot of the gaps to be closed and resistance removed.
But more than this you need to plan cities to be smaller urban areas with high density that have everything you need in walking distance. Which also means "less efficiency" in the capitalist sense.
- Yeah, robo taxis are a dumb idea that should stop being proposed forever. https://youtube.com/watch?v=GcKUYbChE3A
  
  I wanted to search for video that talks about megataxis, gigataxis and MetroVagonMash's gigataxies. You did it first. Thanks.
  
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  Yawn, obviously privately owned monopoly would be bad. I can imagine China doing this well as a public utility.

I've lived in cities with trams for the past 10 years and i think buses are less cool but more practical. Installing the rails is expensive and disruptive, they take a lot of room on the street (with the stop included), and if a tram gets stuck the next one can't go around, it just sits there and waits.
- Regular railroads periodically place railroad switches for reversive movement(or how it is translated) so if one train stucks, trains behind it can use "wrong" track. Same in subway. Why don't you complain about subways then?
  
  Oh, so all those times i was stuck inside a tramway were just bad dreams i had.
  You're off the rails (intentional). I just said that i have personal experience with tramways as public transit, and i get responded with a dubious generality and a passive-agressive meme from fifteen years ago. And for some reason a whataboutism with subways??
- Busses get delayed/stuck way more often