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Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

This seems to happen to a lot of things.

In my city (random Spanish mid-sized city, around 250K population) there is often debate about building a light rail or tram public transport line. But it is always dismissed by the administration for being too expensive, pharaonic, disproportionate for a city of this size, etc.

Doing some research on the history of the city, I discovered that not only there were several tram lines in the early 20th century, but there was even a tram line that went all the way to a nearby town of population around 15K, 22 km away. If anyone proposed a tram line like that today, I think they would be dismissed as being kidding for proposing such extravagant spending.

This, in a context where Spain is a much richer country than it was back then. I often wonder what went wrong.

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Classic trams and modern light rail are different beasts.

Trams were popular worldwide back in the days where automobiles were far too expensive for most people and buses hadn't taken off yet, and since they were the only practical means of transport for medium distances, even small cities had massive ridership. They also ran right on the road, sharing space with cars, which was OK because there were a lot less cars and cars were not meaningful competition.

These days cars are affordable, and light rail has to be better than cars to be competitive, and do so well enough to entice a significant portion of the population out of their cars to be affordable. In practice this means dedicated right of way, which is far more expensive to purchase and fit out as a rail line than just laying some rails on an existing street. And of course modern safety, environmental and just plain bureaucratic regulations also inflate the prices of public works considerably compared to the good/bad old days, particularly in the US.

> They also ran right on the road

Sidenote: so do many modern tram systems.

Sure, but sharing right of way with cars is slow, dangerous and generally avoided whenever feasible.

Yes, has all the disadvantages of a bus system with the added disadvantage that changing routes is tremendously expensive since you need to lay new track.

See SF’s muni train for an example of this double disadvantage. the trains run slowly and unpredictably stopping at red lights with the traffic

> with the added disadvantage that changing routes is tremendously expensive since you need to lay new track.

That disadvantage is actually a good thing when you're buying real estate, a bus route can change but my tram stop has much more permanence.

It also doesn't have to be an either/or thing, my local trams are dedicated in large parts but on road where congestion is lighter.

Yes, that's a very good summary of what happened.

I'm aware of those factors, but I still think we took a wrong turn. Maybe not in the US due to the population sparsity and sprawl, but in Spain and many other European countries, if we could connect every town or city of more than 10K people by either rail, light rail or tram (instead of having spent billions on highways), that would cover 80% of the population. A large majority wouldn't need a car, and could instead use Uber-like services for the last mile. Pollution and emissions would be much less of a problem, and quality of life in cities much better.

But that's what happens with gradient descent, it can lead you to a local minimum...

If it can make you feel better, I know a lot of Italian cities are going back to trams in dedicated lanes. This is on the back of the clear advantages enjoyed by those cities (Rome, Milan) who didn't actually rip out all tracks after the last war.

There is an element of busywork too: local officials are always elected by promising change, they have to be seen doing something. So on odd years they put in something, and in even years they take it out...

> A large majority wouldn't need a car, and could instead use Uber-like services for the last mile.

They wouldn't need it, but I bet that majority would still want it.

In Europe? I doubt it. The car doesn't quite have the same cultural significance as a symbol of adulthood/independence here, at least not to the younger generation.

That's what they pretend. However, the reality is this:

* car sales do not drop, they oscillate depending on various governments subventions;

* vehicle fleet keeps rising (albeit slowly because the market is saturated);

* car owning per household has always been and is still on the rise (despite household size constantly decreasing);

* the distance travelled with cars keeps rising as well.

And visually, the amount of cars parked in the streets and along roadsides becomes insane. You already thought it was full 30 years ago, but now it is fuller.

Oh, and the cars become bigger every year. Not American-big, but still, on the way to it. For example, pickup trucks never took off in the French countryside in the last 50 years, not a single bit; but for a couple of years, it has started :-/

Three elements:

1) "suburbia" is now a thing in Europe too. Regular people cannot afford to live in city centres, they are the preserve of the wealthy. As population grows, more and more people are pushed further out, and they adopt suburbanization: big malls that cannot be reached if not by car, semi-detached houses in gated communities, etc etc. That's a lifestyle built for cars.

2) People will buy what manufacturers will sell. In a global market, car models are increasingly built with more than one country in mind. Inevitably, US tastes loom large.

3) The Hollywood influence cannot be underestimated.

Welcome to the Netherlands then. Most people ride trains between the cities. It does help, however, that most of the population lives in cities that are 30-40 minutes away on a train.

The Netherlands is approximately the same land area and population density as the NYC metropolitan area[1], so it is (as you say) a very different environment from the entire US or even Spain.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/NY...

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Here are the areas overlaid: https://imgur.com/a/s9pq7

It's more like the area from New York to Boston

Well, since smitherfield used the CSA (combined statistical area) it's actually rather close. 34,493 km^2 for the New York CSA, while Netherlands is 41,543 km^2. So about 83% of the size of the Netherlands.

> that would cover 80% of the population. A large majority wouldn't need a car, and could instead use Uber-like services for the last mile

I'm sensing a bit of a Catch-22 in this hypothetical: How would the success of Uber-like services been impacted if 80% of the population no longer needed cars?

I still have the urge to put an asterisk by success for Uber because they're just burning piles of money still.

> Uber-like services

That's a convoluted, backwards and very funny way of saying "taxi". :-D

Interesting take. Where I live (The Hague, Netherlands), trams are slowly turning into light rail systems. Where trams historically shared the roads with cars, they are now increasingly running on separate tracks (elevated or otherwise). This allows for different kinds of (more comfortable) trains, because they do not need to be built for collisions with cars.

I lived in a Swedish city of a similar size. They had a tram network that was dismantled bit by bit until it was completely shut down in 1973 because it was seen as unmodern. And now 40 years later they're all talking about building trams again since they're so modern...

In Marseille,France there was a tram when I was young (mid 80’s). They dismantled it. Then build it back in the 2000’s...

Even in the US you see this. There was a light rail line[1] that ran west from Washington DC connecting several small farming communities in the early 1900s. It was dismantled and turned into a bike trail and now we are spending billions of dollars[2] to build a Metro expansion parallel to the old rail line.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_and_Old_Dominion_Ra...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2016/02/1...

the so subtle notion of progress..

What is interesting about the renaissance of light rail to me is that for many cities it's a restoration of how the city was originally designed.

Relatively modern cities, especially north american ones, would have grown along with the tram network, adding on "streetcar suburbs" as the city grew.

For example if a neighbourhood comprises of one major street lined with commercial with residential everywhere else, that was likely once a streetcar line.

At some point these cities threw out the trams and replaced them with buses and cars, but these cities weren't designed for that infrastructure.

Newer cities that are designed around cars are unwalkable stripmall deserts. It will be much more difficult to turn these into walkable transit oriented communities.

In early 20th century:

1) Communities were more local and relevant than today. This also means travel was more local and relevant.

2) Trams didn't have as much competition with other viable, automated means of transport.

Does your city have buses? If so, what would light rail do for you that the buses can't?

many places in the US are like this as well. trains used to criss-cross many cities and towns, but those lines have since been paved over for roads or just fallen out of use altogether.

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