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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

The 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.

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Keep in mind that Melbourne is a planned city and Sydney isn't. That makes a huge difference on the viability of modes of transport. So it's not really a good experiment at all.

Eh the trams are cute, and smooth, but painfully slow. 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. Real cities have metros underground, full stop.

Would I rather have trams than not have trams, absolutely -- but they shouldn't be relied on as a true solution to urban transport.

> 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.

Melbourne has a suburban heavy commuter rail network with an underground CBD loop. That's not the same thing as an underground metro like the NYC subway, Paris metro, Tehran metro, Japan, London Underground etc. All of these cities have urban metros in addition to suburban commuter rail (except Tehran I guess?). Melbourne's just not there yet and is still fairly suburban. Sydney's building a new metro system which will operate like the above mentioned systems.

I don't see the difference. Take Melbourne versus London. Both use electrified trains. Both have drivers. Both travel at similar speeds. Neither have to stop for automobile traffic (except for slowing down at the few level crossings in Melbourne).

Whether the line is fully underground or not doesn't seem to affect much (other than ventilation).

The technical difference is that metros have dedicated tracks and sufficiently frequent services that you can just turn up and go. In Melbourne (and Sydney), tracks are shared in complicated ways by many lines and other traffic (regional, long distance, even cargo) so any issue somewhere cascades in complicated ways, and frequencies are metro-like only in the densest corridors.

I think the metro distinction is often frequency of trains and usage of the tracks. Ie London runs trains every 2 mins basically from 6am - 8pm on virtually every line vs a heavy suburban rail which will run every 15 - 30 mins, share track with freight or intercity rail and so on.

I know it doesn't look too different to a passenger but operationally I think they are very different.

I didn’t mean to imply a general principle, but Melbourne and Sydney are roughly comparable in size and population, making a comparison interesting.

NYC, Paris and London are major cities. Teheran is between Sydney and Melbourne in area but has 3X the population.

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.)

Rails are notoriously bad for cyclists.

I live in a city with underground metro, buses, trams and trolley buses (Milan, Italy.) It's nearly impossible to change the route of a tram line unless there are rails and overhead cables everywhere but it's immediate for buses. Even trolley buses can move on batteries to drive around road works or car accidents. On the other side trams can be much longer than a standard bus and accommodate more people. The trend is to have tram routes that don't share the road with cars, electric buses and more underground metro.

> Rails are notoriously bad for cyclists.

These ones are basically a small bump, you don't even slow down when you go over them. If you're riding along them they can be slippery and you can get stuck in the grooves, but they're in the middle of the road so this isn't really an issue.

It's definitely an issue. A woman was killed when she rode over tracks and slipped, then went under a bus.

And: https://www.smh.com.au/national/tram-tracks-a-trap-for-cycli...

http://www.executivestyle.com.au/rail-lines-tram-tracks-and-...

It's a common issue for cyclists in Melbourne.

Now, a proper analysis would compare this detriment to the risks presented by busses, more cars, etc.

You're picturing someone crossing at a right-angle to the tram tracks, as one might cross a train track at a level crossing. In that case you would indeed only get a small bump!

But if you cycle in the direction the tram travels - as you would if it was a bus lane, or a car would in a lane shared between trams and cars - then [1] can happen. Wheel goes into the groove in the road, cycle can't no longer steer, so it can't balance.

Obviously, you might think "Well then, don't cycle along lanes with tram tracks" but that means retrofitting an existing city with new tram tracks makes it less welcoming to cyclists - unlike busses or a metro system.

[1] https://youtu.be/aE3W4kEBhuE

> You're picturing someone crossing at a right-angle to the tram tracks

I'm picturing that because it's the most common occurrence. When your traveling in the same direction as the tracks then those tracks are always out in the center of the road and your as far left as possible. The only times I've been caught in the tracks was when I'm trying to turn right from the middle in which case a hook turn is usually better. You also need a bit of caution when your crossing curving tracks.

They aren't notoriously bad and in practice barely an issue, there are far bigger things to worry about.

> 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.

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 :-)

agree in the centre. Sydney's trains are good for the sprawl, it can be hard to get to some Melbs suburbs without a car (even though there are trains in Melbourne)

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.

no it's the geography, too hard and bumpy or waterlogged to drill tunnels

You don't have to drill tunnels. The North Shore line isn't on tunnels for the most part, but it also never goes anywhere near the shore.

I guess it's true that now you might need tunnels (especially for the eastern suburbs). But these lines could have been built many decades ago.

I love that

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