Hacker News Reader

Comment by cousin_it | Hacker News Reader

Cars shouldn't be allowed to block trams. If someone does, fine them heavily. I live in Zurich, which has an awesome tram system, and I never get stuck in traffic on a tram.

Overall I like trams much better than subways. There are tram stops every 200 meters, you can hop on and off, you get to see the city instead of a concrete tunnel, and you don't need to drag your kid stroller up and down the fucking stairs.

Cars, on the other hand, suck. It's one thing to have a city with a million people, but it's quite another thing to have a city with a million cars. Suddenly the whole place is paved over, the air is disgusting, and you can't walk anywhere anymore. Sense of freedom, my ass. It's great that Switzerland makes owning and parking a car so expensive.

View on HN

> Cars shouldn't be allowed to block trams. If someone does, fine them heavily. I live in Zurich, which has an awesome tram system, and I never get stuck in traffic on a tram.

Doesn't work. In Graz Austria one of the lines goes where most traffic is. They cannot change that because it's the only road and people need it. There is not enough space to move the tram away. End result: at 5 when everybody leaves work, the tram takes 30 minutes for something that would otherwise take 5. It's also overcrowded with students at that time because there are not enough trams going as there is not enough space.

They either need to remove the cars or build a subway, there is not much alternative.

An underground railway has a much higher capacity. The Victoria Line in London runs a train every 105 seconds at peak time in each direction, with a design capacity of 864 people per train. (I think that's the most frequent line.)

A long tram, such as Edinburgh's, can carry about 250, and will be slower due to street traffic, junctions, and more frequent stops.

I wonder why not use both underground and trams. A system designed like that could work like a skip list - you take "the tube" to quickly cover big distances, and use trams to cover the last mile or two.

It used to be that way in many cities. NYC, for example, used to have a surface rail system and streetcars in addition to the awesome subway.

London used to have that, here's a map of the trams pre 1952: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_London#/media/File:Tra...

But most tube stations are only around 10 minutes walk apart, so it's not often necessary to use both in most of the busier areas.

That's interesting. What if they did the same thing for buses?

I love light rail, but it takes much more of an investment. If people would be fined for blocking buses, it might make it a better alternative.

EDIT: The other comment here is right, a bus line won't compete with trains for capacity.

Actually they're doing just that. In essence using high capacity buses on designated tracks, which are physically separated from the road. As a user it feels like a mixture between metro and bus, while being much, much cheaper to implement than a designated metro, or light rail system.

I used it in Lima and was pretty impressed about its efficiency.

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Metropolitano

In Philadelphia, we have "subway-surface trolleys" which go underground for a portion of their journey. I've never seen this in any other major city.

MUNI in San Francisco is also like this. Very useful.

Boston does that.

Frankfurt has it. It's still called subway, but everything apart from the city center is overground.

The Green line(s) in Boston are like that, underground in a large portion of downtown, up on the street the rest of the way. Some share the way with cars, some use a separate right-of-way: a noticeable difference in travel time and convenience, or at least the perception thereof.

Shared right of way is pretty clearly "deprecated" in Boston these days (considered unpractical, they'll never build another one and they'd be glad to get rid of the one they have).

The two tram routes which have been cut in the last 50 years were both shared-right-of-way and there's only one short piece left.

I think that's mainly for the river as the MFL does the same thing.

In Kraków, Poland, we have a single tram line like that.

There's a streetcar line in Toronto that does that, and a light rail system that's currently under construction that will be underground for a portion of the line.

The Eglinton-Crosstown LRT in Toronto will do this when it opens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com