Sometimes when watching videos on effective ways of public transport and trams come up, I get a bit annoyed at people not addressing the fact that they seem to share the road with cars. Why do people twerk for trams so much as a form of light rail if they share the road with cars and are subject to being affected by traffic? Doesn’t that just make them rail buses without their own bus lane? Doesn’t that make them more obsolete? Why do people like them so much?

Edit: Also, does anyone have any resources about the cost to benefit ratio of different intratown/city forms of transport (bike lanes, BRT, trams and other forms of light rail, subways etc)? Would be much appreciated.

  • JoBo@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    They’re way better than buses. There’s a direct comparison here: Birmingham is a small city, including a plot of bus times vs tram times at different times of day.

    While the tram is substantially quicker at all times than the bus, the reliability of its timing, even during the most congested periods, provides an additional large benefit to users.

    We think that people generate the most agglomeration benefits for a city when they travel at peak times, to get to and from work, meetings, and social events. Our tool shows us that at the times when people need to travel in order to generate these benefits, buses are extremely slow. And since buses are by far the largest mode of public transport in Birmingham this is likely to have significantly higher impact on Birmingham than in Lyon where the largest mode of public transport is the metro, which delivers reliable journey times no matter the time of day.

    Our hypothesis is that Birmingham’s reliance on buses makes its effective population much smaller than its real population. This reduces its productivity by sacrificing agglomeration benefits. For the past six months, using our Real Journey Time tool, we’ve worked with The Productivity Insights Network to quantify that.

    …

    • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      There’s a direct comparison here: Birmingham is a small city

      If you want to have a large city comparison, look at Berlin.

      Berlin was divided after WW2 until 1989. West-Berlin, like most of West-Germany, removed all of their trams and replaced them for individual car use and buses. East-Berlin largely kept their trams.

      The difference between trams and buses are huge. The „schedule“ of the major West-Berlin bus routes have become a running joke among Berliners: „You’ll wait and wait and suddenly there’s a herd of them!“. It’s bad. Really bad.

      Trams are the reason I live in East-Berlin and would never, ever move to West-Berlin.

      • JoBo@feddit.ukEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        If you want to have a large city comparison

        Once again, Birmingham is not a small city. It’s a very big city but its reliance on buses makes it effectively much smaller than it could be because the commutable zone shrinks with the slowness of the buses at rush hour. Hence the snappy title of the piece I linked.

        Berlin is an excellent additional example of the effect on a big city. Thank you.

        • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Yeah, I know Birmingham, I just went with the joke, sorry. Maybe should have added some air quotes.

          Berlin is only „big“ because it gobbled up a lot of area in the past. Outside the central districts it‘s often just suburbs or even literal villages. and the public transport becomes… limited… 😬

          I guess a more honest comparison would be the West Midlands, roughly the same size, population close to 4 million (Berlin) vs 3 million (West Midlands).

          Still though, Berlin is a very interesting example not just with regards to public transport, but also with regards to housing, street lighting, etc. Really impressive what a mere ~40y of differences in government policies can accomplish.