Who lives in a city with trams?

[and]

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[Itchy]

I've lived in 2 cities with trams, 3 if you count Hong Kong. 4 if you count the town of Yeung Long in northern Hong Kong.

But I never used to take it in Sheffield and the Hong Kong Island tramline is more of a tourist attraction than anything else though the Yeung Long system is a proper system (more on that later).

I can tell you about Manchester Metrolink though, my thoughts are:

It is expensive £4.50 for a return before 930am, £4 for after, the weekly and monthly tickets are a scam in that they price in travel for 7 days so you still end up paying £3.80ish for a weekly.

In the mornings 7.30-930 and afternoons 430-630 it is packed to the gills, with the small slim line carriages the UK seems to love if you get on at say whitefield the 3rd stop from the start (Bury) there are no seats meaning standing.

It used to be dirty but its cleaned up a bit more as at the terminus of Bury and presumably altrincham they have people do a quick sweep of all the junk in the cars.

It also used to be filled with violent chavs (but then they stuck about 50cctv cameras in each car). I've been attacked on one more than once (no different to buses)

Ticket inspectors are horrible people and insulting as hell, I once had a ticket but it was buried deep in my pocket as I took more than 2 seconds to get it out I was told to get off.

The stations at night are incredibly desolate and unsafe, poorly lit, dirty and generally a chav magnet with poor lighting always give you the impression there is some thug waiting in the shadows to cut your throat.

They have mugging ticket machines that always miscount your money and steal £1 or £2 extra off you.

it is uncomfortable, the metro company promised to overhaul the tracks but never got round to it meaning it is not smooth enough to sleep (though its not safe enough to sleep on board)

Everything generally looks worn and neglected tbh, in that the hand hold rails are peeling paint with metal burrs!, the floor is chewing gum circle city and the seats have grafiti and scratches since forever.

However it is reasonably fast 23 minutes to the city centre (used to before they made it terminate at victoria). But if you have to cross the city centre it can take a very long time as the trams just stop and trap you between stops for 10-15 minutes. And they come every 15 minutes in the evenings so they are not all bad.



The Yeung Long system is a bit better

Costs $6.2 for the longest possible trip Tai Tong to Butterfly junction (about 50p) but this is because of the incredible population density.

It is generally 60-80% full at all times with very few seats to maximise passenger space, but this is again due to Hong Kong's tendancy to have staggered starting and ending hours (the job offered in HK a couple years back was start at 11am finish 7pm or 12 and finish 8pm).

Its fairly clean and goes where you want to go, but unfortunately they are rather slow, because they stop quite often again due to population density, while Bury and radcliffe are 2.8 miles apart, and Radcliffe to whitefield another 2 miles apart, the stops in Yeung Long can be as little as 300 metres apart which means for super short trips you may as well just walk, though this is confounded by the idiocy of HK people who will stand in doorways and or spend time holding open doors so their 100 year old granny can shuffle onto the tram.
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[Kickstart]

Hi

Edinburgh trams are just there to be politically correct. Part of a long established war against private motorists in the city.

Once running watch the various fiddles appear. Such as ignoring the accidents they cause so they can claim they are safe.

All the best

Keith
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[stinkwheel]

Any major project carried out in Edinburgh was always going to be nothing short of a total fuckup.

The only time Edinburgh traffic flows smoothly is when the bus drivers are on strike.

We should be thankful that Alex Salmonds first act on becoming first minister was to kick the proposed rail hub to be built under Turnhouse airports main runway into touch. (which the tram was supposed to go to and would have meant closing the airport to build)

I believe he also told Edinburgh council he wasn't going to bail them out if they overspent on the trams and gave them every oppertunity to come clean on the costs at the outset.

Nobody except jakeys who can't be arsed walking up Leith Walk will use the fucking thing once it's built anyway.
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[Paivi]

I grew up in Helsinki and we've had trams for over 100 years, and love them. The transport system is integrated, so you pay the same for the tram as you would for a bus. They're by far the fastest way of transport, and very rarely go wrong. Another city also had trams but they got rid of them in the 60s and now want to reinstate them, but it's a very costly exercise.

Absolute bloody pain though when you're biking in the wet and hit the rails sideways. They are also involved in quite a few accidents, as they cannot brake as efficiently as a bus can, and quite obviously cannot take evasive action.

They should be green/yellow in colour, no other colour will do. For a time we had orange/grey ones, which we hated, and they were eventually replaced with the traditional colour scheme, which seems to be a common one in the world.

https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2065/2124907514_4ededd44b6.jpg

Quite an interesting history on the Helsinki trams here.
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[Skudd]

Where I live the tram lines are buried just a few inches bellow the road surface. Cobbles too. There used to be a very good tram line around Liverpool and into the surrounding suburbs, but the trendy buses came along to replace the trams because the buses could go anywhere, unlike the tram.
what is needed is for all trams to be scrapped, all bus lanes to be scrapped and a more open road network. If more roads were opened up, many have been made one-way, single track roads, then most of the congestion will melt away.
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[Azonicben]

Nottingham trams arnt too bad will be a lot more useful when they extend the link right out to the `burbs, near my dads place.

£1.50 for a single or £3.00 gets you an all day tram and bus ticket.(unlimited journeys)

I used to live in the city center so i have a lot of friends there,with a tram stop just round the corner from my new place, its very handy for me.(Apart from the level crossing, tram plus train track. Its got something against me! barriers always seem to come down as your walking to get your tram, you stand waiting for ten minutes and after a train and tram going the other way, you get to watch "your" tram depart, desperatly needs a footbridge)

I will be using it tonight for piss-up logistical assistance.
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[rhone81]

[and]

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[pa_broon74]

They have a sample tram sitting at the West Ed of Princes Street, it looks disturbing like the bus its supposed to replace.

I get it from a sustainability point of view, if we ever get to the point when oil based fuel is an issue (which we will probably) atleast they'll still be able to run. (As long as they're plugged into a nuclear power plant and I suppose the business the people work at are too.)

Other than that, the whole CO2 thing (which I think is a bit of a crock) is a red herring, as Ulthar said, it's not going to save any Polar bears in that respect.

It's a political thing and if I was being cynical then I'd say at best, it was a bribe to the greens and at worst, the other parties wouldn't allow the SNP administration to dump it because they knew it would become a huge fuck up for the which the SNP would seem to be responsible.

All I know for sure is, it makes getting from one side of the town centre to the other (which is about a mile across) really fucking tedious.


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Didn't catch anything.

[Kickstart]

[pa_broon74]

Mmm...

You credit me with more depth than I deserve. I hadn't thought beyond there being no need for diesel for the new trams.

I do wonder about how the rails would work with other road users, and as far as I can see, they'll be going up the side of some roads but the middle of others. I envisage the odd squashed granny.

Personally, I eschew public transport. You just don't know where people have been...


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Didn't catch anything.

[LordShaftesbu...]

[sickpup]

You can still see tram lines around the City if London and te Bethnal green area if you know where to look.

Bishopsgate which is one of the major roads leading into the square mile still as tram lines about 4 inches below the latest road surface. I can remember these still exposed on the road surface when I was a child in the late 70's early 80's.

If you look in this link you can still see, just about tram lines running across to the left of where it says Hemming St.

[Marcg868]

Itchy sums up Manchesters metrolink pretty well. Expensive,dirty and chavtastic. Its a bit smoother now tho as they replaced the 50 odd year old heavy rail track.

Train from Bolton is cheaper, more frequent and cleaner
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