Hacker News Reader

You don't even need to be a wealthy country. Tram service is excellent in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, where they've had electrics trams for more than a century:

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

To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans.

View on HN

> To someone from a place with modern, well-maintained light rail, I imagine Bay Area streetcars seem as quaint and outdated as old Ford cars in Cuba look to Americans.

This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist attraction. Few people go to Edinburgh just to ride on a modern tram, but some people visit Scotland and take a trip on a steam train (with or without the Harry Potter theme).

> This is why San Francisco's streetcars are a tourist attraction

San Francisco's Cable Cars are a tourist transaction. They do also move thousands of officeworkers to downtown daily, though.

But the streetcar system is much larger than the cable car system, and it is definitely not a tourist attraction.

I think that what confuses people is that they run historic street cars down the surface Market St for the tourists, and more modern street cars underground (under Market St, above ground in the suburbs) for the locals

Reply on news.ycombinator.com