How Sydney destroyed its trams for love of the car

Sounds like an identical story to California redwood trees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoioideae

So the problem is corrupt and lazy managers, not that trams are bad.

"2.1km"

I hope theres more planned, thats barely worth going out of your way to catch.

The big thing about WestConnex was that it fed many lanes of traffic into a tiny crowded one lane street that has a lot of pedestrian traffic as well.

Maybe that's a bit of NIMBY but generally after new highways are built they are effectively choked off by the roads that feed in and out of them, especially ones where people want to exit on.

More like there are plenty of people born in Australia or who are longer-term residents than yourself who are jaded after seeing ridiculous developments or promises by successive State and Federal governments.

All that aside, I'm not against reasonable and financially responsible development. In my hometown of Adelaide the recent revival and expansion of the tram lines has been done in a successful and financially responsible manner (IMO): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Adelaide

There are other heavily trafficked areas that doesn't have any investment. Esp the poorer western suburbs, with overcrowded trains and few busses.

The tram and light rail investment benefits the property and businesses along the route, but the taxes are paid by the silent majority who derive little to no benefit.

This is a good argument, except that the tram line itself is a giant white elephant for the taxpayer. I doubt I'll ever catch it, and I live in the inner city. The allegations of corruption follow from the fact that James Packer decides to build the already controversial casino in Barangaroo, a pokey, poorly trafficked corner of the inner city and then all of a sudden the government pours money into investing in public transport leading straight to the doorstep of the casino. The tram line literally terminates there. I doubt the tram line will benefit even 1% of NSW citizens, yet we footed the bill. It's even more of a lemon than Westconnex.

A congestion charge isn't "banning poor from the roads" any more than other significant costs like vehicle and fuel taxes or inner-city parking. And in the absence of the congestion charge, London's roads would be utterly unusable for everyone, including "poor" people who need an emergency ambulance provided by the free Government healthcare.

If the congestion charge was eliminated, daily commuting to central London by car would still be a non-starter for even the most aspirational middle-class office worker—let alone the poor.

If you've ever been to London you'd notice that the mass transit system—particularly the tube—is dominated by smart-looking, professionally dressed people navigating the city. It's a great system, it's almost always better than driving, and its use spans a broad socio-economic group.

I hate this argument because it seems altruistic and empathetic but most of the time it's entirely self-serving. People wheel it out when something that would inconvenience them, specifically, is proposed.

Example: in Manhattan we still have free street parking. It's insane. Yet any attempts to remove it get this same argument of "what about the poor who need to drive?" To anyone who says this or thinks this I challenge you to walk several blocks of pretty much any street below 110th street and look at the cars parked there. On some I see Maseratis, Teslas, BMWs and so on. It's not poor people who own these cars. It's just another giveaway to incumbents and the wealthy for no good reason.

I lived in London when congestion pricing was first rolled out. The difference in traffic in the West End was night and day, overnight. It was unbelievable, so much so that Ken Livingstone (then Mayor of London) worried they wouldn't hit revenue targets.

The problem with London's congestion pricing is there's an exemption for those who live in Zone 1, basically (technically, it's a subset of Zone 1). Why? These are the people who have the least need for private vehicles (by virtue of good public transportation) and are probably significantly wealthier than the average Londoner.

This is also the problem I have with what NYC is doing. They're also flirting with congestion pricing. So far all they've done is make Ubers stupidly expensive (there are rides that 5 years ago would cost me <$15 that now cost $35), which is again completely wrong. Uber and Lyft make efficient use of vehicles. They're not driven once a week and otherwise block the street cleaners in their free parking. Private vehicle ownership for Manhattan residents needs to be punitively taxed and street parking should require an expensive permit. There should also be a lot less of it.

It's hard to get to some Sydney suburbs for the same reason. Though interestingly this includes rich areas like the Eastern Suburbs and Northern Beaches. I suspect fat-cat NIMBYs have been keeping the trains out for generations now.

> Real cities have metros underground, full stop.

I am not sure if this implies you think Melbourne is lacking a underground metro? Or perhaps you're just making a general statement.

FWIW Melbourne has both trams and a underground metro system that does a fairly respectable job serving the CBD, and good network coverage to inner suburbs.

I don't know if I'd call the overhead cables "a blight on the streetscape." and the tracks inside the CBD aren't particularly deep. How do they impact pedestrians and cyclists?

I take a tram to work every day, and any underground metro system would take a lot longer (It's a relatively short trip.)

> Real cities have metros underground, full stop.

European cities usually have these in progression: tram for small cities, tram+train for large ones, tram+train+metro for the metropolis. Having a metro doesn't mean you shouldn't also have a tram. I agree that building everything from scratch may seem cost-prohibitive, but you have to start somewhere. Lifetime of cities is long enough to build these gradually.

> Eh the trams are cute, and smooth, but painfully slow.

Trams are for shorter trips that metro/heavy rail. They are slower than either of those two, but don't need to be painfully slow -- this depends on the city layout, e.g. Berlin vs. Prague has a large difference in tram speeds (Berlin having the fast ones).

> Better passenger experience than buses, but the tracks and overhead cables are a blight on the streetscape and impact drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike. Overall, not worth it.

Also, strongly disagreeing with this too. Trams look great, including the tracks and overhead lines -- they just belong to a city.

I feel like the best solution for this problem is a reduction of traffic in core city areas by restricting car access.

I live in Melbourne and drive a Tesla, but without a wanky number plate. I would love to use public transport, but it's completely impractical for me. It takes me 25 minutes to drive to work or 45 minutes (or more) on public transport. That 40 minutes a day is very valuable to me. I also often finish work very late when the frequency of public transport drops which further increases the travel time. I also often have to take children to school or other events and public transport is very poorly set up for that type of travel, and quickly becomes much more expensive than driving (once you already have the sunk cost of the car) when you have to pay for 3 trips. Melbourne is a primarily suburban city with very limited public transport available to substitute for the vast majority of journeys. If I was a single person with no children who worked in the city I would ride my bike or take the train every day. But I'm not, and I don't, so I drive. I drive a Tesla so I'm not contributing to the foul stench of burnt hydrocarbons that is increasingly choking this city.

And, to be honest, while buses may not be stuck on rails, the process to change a bus route is almost never less than a few months and can take much longer.

It will always take less time to change a bus line than a train line - but this isn't a difference of hours vs. years, it's months vs. even more months.

The trams can't go diagonally, meaning if your destination doesn't align with the road grid you have to catch two of them.

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 buses pull over to the side of the road, usually into a lane that is used for parking, or at the most stopping only the one lane of traffic.

Most Melbourne buses are horrendous. They're unpredictable timing-wise, slow, noisy, uncomfortable and many of the routes are poorly thought out so they don't get anywhere in a useful amount of time anyway.

There are some express buses which at least are quick but they're still noisy and uncomfortable. Trams are a dream after using the buses.

> my tram lines with dedicated lanes don't have those problems

Dedicated lanes is the biggest factor. Plenty of trams don't have dedicated lanes, in which case the significant cost premium is a complete waste.

Buses can also have dedicated lanes with right-of-way. The ones I've been on in Mexico and Ecuador were quite nice. While I personally find rail more comfortable and also appreciate how route permanence effects property values, as a taxpayer even dedicated lanes and right-of-way don't justify the costs.

Historic lines are a different matter as the initial capital costs are already spent, and even if they cost more to operate it can still make sense. So it does suck that old lines were destroyed. But if you're gonna build new, I just can't abide paying the ridiculous premium for rail unless they're going underground or otherwise grade separated for a significant portion of the line. But if they're grade separated then by definition they're not really trams.

>One of my favorite things about Melbourne is never having to visit a shopping mall because retail spaces spring up naturally along tram lines

Been in Melbourne for 18 months now and have only just realised that this is one of my favourite things as well, I only appreciated it subconsciously until now.

Is that Burwood highway one?

But yeah, I feel like they do their best work in the CBD.

There are some examples that come to mind of trams I don't like. The tram that goes down Toorak rd is a huge nuisance, mostly due to how the council has mismanaged that road.

There are two lanes. That tram shares the right lane with cars and cars are allowed to park on the left lane. It completely bottlenecks the road - probably its intended purpose so people pay for Citylink bypass.

> I don't see either line making a financial return on the investment

Do they get a financial return on the roads they build?Infrastructure (and practically all government services) never make money, that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile.

A lot of times buses/busways get trotted out as the anti-transit alternative. Or are super watered down. In general if you have to build new infrastructure doing it with rails vs asphalt cost is not actually that different.

In general, for developed countries with high labor costs busways are a rotten deal since buses have such low per-driver capacity. And the most successful busways can't scale and end up getting replaced by light rail anyways. (Ottawa, Seattle, LA's Orange Line)