Even if you think what you would say is obvious, please add. This is genuinely something I think makes sense regarding local bus routes given the longevity of light rail and how infrequently routes change, but I also suffer from confirmation bias, so I’m hoping for reasons this would be a terrible idea but obviously would prefer reasons it would be an even more amazing idea than I thought.
Add to all these reasons that roadworks are easily circumvented with a bus.
Can’t light rail leave it’s tracks temporarily or am I thinking of another form of transport.
A train, which a light rail is, can not leave its tracks.
Well sure it can, the issue is getting back to it!
Depends on the road layout; if it’s a long straight road then light railway makes sense. It’s less maintenance, easier to operate, can move unhindered because it doesn’t get stuck in traffic (edit: provided they don’t share the roads).
For spaghetti road layouts though, I don’t see the benefit, but I could be wrong since I’m no expert.
There is no reason rail has to be constrained to the road network. Eminent Domain is literally for things like this.
It depends on the type of light rail.
Here in my city the trams share some of the roads with regular traffic, which not only means they can get caught in traffic (though they have priority where possible), but it also means the rails become a real tripping hazard for cyclists (over 800 injuries since 2015 at the last count). There’s been an active campaign to introduce more safety measures but the council has been reluctant to do anything about it.
The tramlines are such a well-known hazard to locals that they actually put people off from cycling, which is surely counter-productive.
Light rail transit has its own right of way. Sharing the road means it’s a tram/streetcar.
Yes, technically a tram at that point, though the system has sections of dedicated rights of way too, and has recently been expanded onto some old traditional rail lines in a tram/train hybrid system.
Croydon?
Sheffield. Though I imagine most modern UK tram systems are in a similar situation.
Dammit, you caused my omnipotence to fail! 😭
Are these the indented rails? Those will throw you off your bike instantly… Cycling lanes AND tramlines can coexist, but I guess the problem here is when you want to take a turn and the rails are in the middle of the road, so you’re forced to just go over them? I guess they could implement some kind of underpass for cyclists and pedestrians.
Having wider tyres ~2"/50mm or so pretty much eliminates the risk (and gives a comfy ride). If you really like the speed of narrow tyres, it’s really quite safe with the right technique – crossing tracks at an angle to avoid mishaps (I find 30° is sufficient, 90° is never a problem), and when they’re slippery, treating them like ice. It becomes second nature soon enough.
I think there are some rubber/elasromer inserts which have been developed which also eliminate the groove – it presents a flat surface to bikes, yet squishes down for the tram wheel flange under the immense weight.
You’re looking at mountain bikes or the sturdier gravel bikes to fit 2" tyres. Your average commuter bike likely won’t have rhe clearance. And yes, even tiny 23mm road racer tyres can cross tramlines with the right technique, but the requirement of a proper technique is still a barrier to entry.
We’ve been calling for those rubber inserts, but so far to no avail.
What kind of safety measures or adaptations exist currently to address an entire city’s infrastructure of tram/light rail lines?
It’s more reliable, usually runs on electric rather than buses, can run more frequent without causing congestion.
Only real con is that you need some time, money and maybe more space to add it
But isn’t it a case that our governments keep pushing austerity and thus our infrastructure doesn’t improve thus do things like run shitty services. The outlay is more expensive, but no one has ever said a light railway doesn’t pay for itself.
Yep, yet another reason for more light rail
no one has ever said a light railway doesn’t pay for itself.
Most metro rail systems lose money. They cost more to operate than they generate in fare revenue.
This is OK because they provide a useful public service and should be funded by tax dollars. Light rail should not be expected to turn a profit. It should be expected to benefit the community it serves, which it generally does.
Don’t they have light rail in India that has been running for like 50 years?
I want to know when the cars on the roads will have to turn a profit on a per-trip basis. People seem to demand that public transit be profitable for some insane reason, but in general never ask the cars pay their own way around town.
Both the roads and mass transit are services, just like the post office and the military. They’re costs of having civilization, not some kind of business enterprise the government is undertaking.
@azimir @NaibofTabr
Has anyone done a true cost analysis of cars?
All the external costs incling health, environment, climate change, Middle East Wars, Police…
#Urbanism #TrafficationThat I don’t know, but I assume there’s at least a few models doing that calculation. It’s hard to be accurate as your impact scale goes outward, but I can assure you it’s not going to look good for gas powered cars on the global scale calculations. They’re really hard on the planet and the people around them.
Heh, well, if the petroleum industry and the development of automobiles ends up destroying the environment, then the cost-benefit analysis would seem to be moot.
Both the roads and mass transit are services, just like the post office and the military. They’re costs of having civilization, not some kind of business enterprise the government is undertaking.
Kind of depends on how you look at it… If you consider that the government’s ultimate goal is to grow the economy so that it can collect more tax revenue, then the entire country is the government’s enterprise. Improving the enterprise’s infrastructure would seem like an obviously beneficial expenditure.
It’s more abstract, but the real question is whether spending more tax money on mass transit would benefit society more than if the money were spent on something else.
It’s not an either/or thing. Buses are great (if they are well funded) and light rail is also great
exactly.
you can’t assess the merits of an integrated transport system by arguing which one one mode of transport betters all others.
some places /routes (at some times) might work best with one option.
but most places / routes will be better served by several types at least at some times of day.buses are one of the most flexible public transport options, fill gaps in space between high capacity modes, and fill gaps in timetables, and they sometimes fill gaps in affordability usually being cheaper.
give them bus lanes and priority at junctions, and they’re a lot cheaper and more flexible than trams.
i always think that a busy packed bus lane is making the business case for a train, but filling the gap in the meanwhile. and sometimes a train is impractical.
they didn’t only get rid of most of the trams in the uk due to cars wanting more roads. it was also because buses were cheaper and provided much better routes that could flex to travelers needs…
The problem with buses is that most of the fleets are still running on fossil fuels. Buses also produce a shocking amount of waste in used tires. 
Yes but depending on utilization and the size of the city they can have a much lesser impact compared to the creation of a light rail network.
Light rail is infinitely more expensive to construct and it only takes one delay/accident and all subsequent trains after cause a log jam…vs a bus which can route around it.
A better solution uses corridors dedicated to buses that are electric powered.
Something like this was done in Colombia with these routes being connected by ground hubs, similar to subway stations.
Here in NYC, we switched to hybrid electric buses many years ago and are currently transitioning to all electric buses. I’m not sure about other cities. 
Yes, we certainly can route around it, but having lived in London for most of my life, I can tell you that we seldom route around it. However given the capacity that light railway how. If we keep the vehicles moving on the main arteries, we can move more people alleviating the frustration.
You have loops on the network for unidirectional or switches on strategic places to reverse in case of engineering works or incident.
This is a common misbelief. Trams and light rail usually have points where the units can go around if one unit has derailed, unless the unit has tipped over, which in itself is very very rare. Good planning is crucial. “A better solution uses corridors dedicated to buses that are electric powered.” Nope, nope, nope. You have to present arguments to this claim, maybe then I can be bothered to counterargument such nonsense.
Electric busses are actually a lot more complex logistically than electric trains. With a train, you just need a bunch of big-ass transformers and overhead wires. Expensive to install, but very reliable and relatively low maintenance over many years.
Batteries on the other hand are heavy, relatively fragile, degrade quickly, and very expensive. With a 100KWh EV, about 1/3 of the total cost is the battery, so it would likewise increase the cost of a bus.
Charging is another problem, instead of the whole system using energy real-time, you now need a distribution system that can take hundreds of busses at night and charge them all back up, requiring a massive amount of power in a somewhat short time. While it’s nice that energy is generally cheaper at night, you still need the infrastructure that can take that load.
So, it’s not to say that there’s no place for them, just that our main focus needs to be on rail in most places. There are lots of low-density places with cheap power and temperate weather that absolutely need BEV busses, but a lot more with challenging weather, older grids, and medium density that are a better fit for rail.
IMO electric busses needs to have a trolley bus infrastructure on some route so the bus is recharged during the day. Won’t cover 100% of the energy needs, but will spread out the charging time.
I feel like I remember reading about tests on a roadway that could charge your car as you drive on it, like a qi charger. If that gets hammered out, dedicated bus lanes with the charging tech would limit the cost to implement to one lane while busses still have the freedom to reroute if needed.
There’s some infrastructure like that for trucks in germany. Currently in pilot stage: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538030/germany-ehighway-siemens-vw-group-electrified-cables-wires-overhead-electric-hybrid-trucks
You can charge electric buses at termini though. Albeit this doesn’t change the challenges much. The electric buses are best suited for lines where the higher capacity isn’t needed and where the line is not likely to be longer than a little over 15 km.
Trolley buses do exist…
That’s like saying a ship is more expensive than a car. It depends.
A tram is not „infinitely“ (what absurd statement is that anyway) more expensive than a bus.
Construction cost is not everything, and they’re not even that much higher, you also need to consider service life (much longer with trains), energy cost per passenger mile (much lower with trains thanks to the lower resistance), etc.
What is best is always depending on the specific circumstances.
The biggest limitation of buses is capacity, and a highly used tram is cheaper per passenger mile than a bus. Try replacing the S-Bahn in Berlin with BRT, see how far that gets you. You’d probably need to bulldoze a new highway… speaking of which:
Germany is actually hellbent on building a highway right through its capital Berlin, which currently clocks in at 700 milion € for 3.2 km. I expect the whole thing to end at ~2 bn € for ~7 km.
So I think the costs of public transport are really not the issue people should be focusing on.
You wouldn’t even have to go for the “replacing the S-Bahn” to show how ludicrous a BRT is as a suggestion, unless you’re not paying the constructors and drivers a living wage, which is why it makes sense in say Colombia and not in Germany…just think about replacing the M-lines of Berlin tramways with a BRT. It would have to be couple meters wider, would be terribly unreliable and inefficient, not to speak of noisy and bumpy. Now who would want to have that? Not to mention how much the upkeep of two lanes of dedicated BRT costs vs. maintenance of steel on steel rails and catenary. (Most of the time you’d find the latter to be cheaper.) In Helsinki, Finland we are currently waiting for a new tram/light rail option to replace a bus service that should have been a modern tram/light rail line in the first place: https://raidejokeri.info/en/ In the neighbour municipality Vantaa some parties were trying to push for a BRT option but the independent research suggested light rail/tram option to be the best and this is what was chosen: https://www.vantaa.fi/en/housing-and-environment/traffic-and-transport/vantaa-light-rail (they call it light rail but in some ways it’s also reasonable to call it a tram)
Ah yes, and we can put those corridors underground in a big circle.
Like some kind of hyper-loop!
But why put them on rails? As a kid I remember busses running on electricity from cables that were located above them. Isn’t that the best of all versions?
Trolley buses are good. But light railway lasts longer and does less damage to the road for vehicles that actually need to drive. Also you can go autonomous with light railway which is far easier on tracks than without.
Short answer: no.
Those are called trolley busses. They are pretty good, especially due newer ones that have batteries for any needed detours etc
They still have those buses in Dayton, Ohio.
Tyres wear down and produce nasty pollutants, and metal-on-metal is more energy efficient.
Rail has some advantages. Efficiency, Tyre dust. Long term cost. It’s a bit harder for the next government to dismantle it. Higher capacity, more predictable path/easier to give intersection priority. Much much easier to automate if given dedicated right of way. Better accessibility.
Rubber wheels have advantages too. Quieter, more flexible (especially with a buffer battery), lower per-vehicle cost can increase the number of services.
I think the first goal should be getting any service that doesn’t get stuck in traffic. Then grade separation and consider the tradeoffs for rail.
Another problem with light rail would be mountains. Trains don’t like those. On the other hand, cable-cars and cog railway exists and seem to be viable solutions. The city of Lyon even has both and since the cog railway starts on a flat terrain, it is able to switch between both.
Trams are the cosiest things to sit in. I enjoy being half asleep in the morning and just look at all the people being busy. Wish my town had some more grassy lines, but they don’t lack on where you can go.
(edit: I want to add that I am also happy with the buses here, don’t think there is a reason to be either or and rather focus on reducing cars in town and in its suburbs. Obviously easier to do for smaller towns).
Light rail/trams are better especially for avenues etc. But busses are more flexible, and you usually need a combination of both for best results
Buses for longer journeys make sense. We have a bunch of buses in London that run from the city centre out towards the green belt. Buses for those especially long journeys makes sense.
Why not just build a train for long journies? Cheaper over time, more capacity, and reduces road dependency.
We need more tube lines to be fair. But also I want to service as many people as possible.
Buses are awful for long journeys. Trams for longer journeys make sense. You need the buses to get you to the tram stop.
Could a tram do Trafalgar Square to Leyton Bakers Arms? I feel like it would leave a lot of people without public transport options.
I have no idea why you’re directing this question at me.
London has the tube. It does not need a tram.
Obviously buses are needed to get people to the tram/tube/train stations.
This thread has precisely fuck all to do with London. London has very good public transport already. It’s everywhere else that is expected to do without.
sorry to make you feel targeted, I just felt your comment warranted a response. Didn’t mean to make you like you have a target on your back. But also, London could improve. It doesn’t need as much as the North, but it could do better.
If you would demolish all the other options, then it would de facto do just that. But nobody has even suggested the kind of baffoonery.
It’s literally the title of this post 😵💫
I was referring to the numerous options that exist alongside the said rail option in most real world places. But yes, most of the time the bus is the worse option of them two. Less accessible, economical etc.
Also how swirly is the bus route you’d replace by tram, light rail or whatever?
Pretty much the point of trams are that they’re in populated areas, are in walking distance, and have many stops. They’re local public transport.
In cities they’re equivalent to buses, and in many countries existing trams where replaced by bus routes starting in the 1960s.
If you need longer and faster transport, metro and light rail are the modes to bring people to and around town.
Our tram is called the Metro, which is light rail. It connects a small city to a bigger city, and loops around the bigger city. The residential zone along it is enormous, well beyond walking distance. Many people need buses to make use of it.
My mistake, I meant to type suburban rail (S-Bahn) not light rail.
Anyway, light rail is and extremely loose term and can mean a lot of things, up to a „light metro“, but it’s commonly understood to have exclusive tracks separated from roads. A tram (or streetcar) runs on the street.
Tram can have both, even on a single line.
There are many different concepts, but generally a tram shares a space with the road traffic, hence streetcar (German: Straßenbahn). There are other terms, e.g. Stadtbahn, that are used when they are separated from other traffic.
While there are no hard rules and different approaches, I think it’s not helpful to mix up terms. A tram is not a metro. And it’s not helpful to mix modes on the same tracks, since you will run into trouble with scheduling due to vastly differing occupancy rates.
Have you actually ever seen the tram network in North Rhine and Westphalia, Germany? Also in many places in the world the replacement of trams by buses has been since seen as a mistake and there are plenty of examples of extensive new trams networks introduced and in planning in cities where they got rid of them in 1960s.
Have you actually ever seen the tram network in North Rhine and Westphalia, Germany?
Yes, thank you, I was born there. What is it you’re trying to tell me?
Also in many places in the world the replacement of trams by buses has been since seen as a mistake and there are plenty of examples of extensive new trams networks introduced and in planning in cities where they got rid of them in 1960s.
Yes, thank you, I live in Berlin, the city where one part decided to trash it’s tram network, replaced it with buses, and is now struggling to get it back.
Still not sure what you’re trying to tell me, where did I say it was a good idea? I said the two modes are comparable.
I would argue they’re not equal. Bus makes a bad replacement for a tram and tram can’t really replace the bus if there are no tracks. The reason why I was asking is because Essen and Mühlheim a.d. Ruhr plus some nearby areas have got sections where trams aren’t confined to just the populated areas and do not have many stops and outside the city core they aren’t Stadtbahn, but are that and much more outside the urban areas, act part of the way like the good old Strassenbahn but are marked as Stadtbahn. I guess I don’t really have a point here, just rambling. But really there’s big difference between what you can offer on rails (if you don’t make stupid planning decisions and your system isn’t falling into disrepair) and by buses. Yes, they’re comparable mostly in the way that they’re both moving dozens of people per unit. In everything else, how comparable are they?
Well, like I said, I agree buses aren’t a good replacement, but they’re comparable in the way they’re used in cities: as a short to medium ranged local transport. You wouldn’t want to take the bus from one end of Berlin to the other, you would take the S-Bahn, because that’s what it’s for.
Compare the bus network with the tram network in East Berlin. The buses (usually) run where the trams don’t, but they have a similar amount of stops. Of course there’s overlap between the modes, but the general idea is: tram/bus for short to medium distance, S-Bahn for medium to long distance, and U-Bahn bridging between them.
They’re also comparable in accessibility: with the U- and S-Bahn I have to enter a station. With the tram, I just step out my house, go to the next corner, there it is. Same with buses.
This.
I think of buses as the caterpillar to a tram’s butterfly.
You can start with a comprehensive bus network, and as a particular route stabilizes and the bus starts struggling to meet throughput needs, that is an indicator that a tram may be worthwhile.
Starting w/ a tram line is a pretty big financial bet that it will be useful/needed, as once you build it, you’re locked-in to that specific route.
My pet conspiracy theory is that most bus routes are a false compromise sold to voters.
I would think adding railways to places would take a long time, cost a ton of money, and without enough population it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know what specific area of the world you are thinking, but most of the world is pretty empty outside of major cities, and most of them probably do have rail service.
I have old rail running right behind my house that people always want to start using again. It’s in pretty rough shape so the eyes is it’s easy to expensive to get it up to spec and the amount of public interest is too low that it become unfeasable.
Buses on the other hand, can get plopped down instantly wherever they will fit on existing infrastructure. They can go where the demands is. You can have a spare one on the lot. I’d think it’s easier to become a bus driver than a conductor. And ultimately if you need more buses, just but another, and if you decide to scrap the program, sell the bus and you have no useless remaining infrastructure.
Overall I’d it had the choice to take a bus from A to B or rail, I’d probably choose rail I’d the pickups and drop s were the same, but again, that’s also much harder to do with a train. There’s room for both, but here I think trains make more sense for longer distances and buses for local.
Probably biassed as I’m a bus driver but the city I’m in has a tram and it’s fantastic until one gets blocked or broken. Benefit of busses is they can detour if needed, and if one breaks it doesn’t (always) block the entire route
edit: extra annoying when they break down and I have to carry a tram load of passengers on one double decker bus
It’s also very easy to reconfigure bus routes, just slap some new paint on the road.
EV buses are not that easy to “configure” though
Biggest drawback for anything on rails really, it works either really well or not at all. I think it is still worth it, but I am also incredibly biased towards trains.
Yes but it makes economic sense only on the routes with top demand that pass through the center or CBDs or other high traffic areas
The busiest core routes should be served with light rail, allowing an efficient high-frequency service for the most common journeys, and most parts of a city should ideally have some kind of connection to that rail system within a kilometre or two. But you can’t just put rails and stations literally everywhere, so buses (or trolleybuses with batteries if you’re so inclined) remain useful for less common routes, gaps between stations, the neighbouring areas of rail routes or last-mile connections from light rail to within a short walk of a person’s final destination.
Buses are also necessary as a fallback during maintenance or unforeseen closures on the rail network. Even if it’s just a temporary station closure, that one station will likely be the only one in walking distance for quite a few people (especially if we’re talking about an interurban network where a small, outlying town or village might only have one station connecting it to the rest of its metro area), whereas that same area could have several bus stops, giving pretty much everyone there a way to continue getting around, perhaps even to get a bus to neighbouring stations.
And bus routes don’t change that infrequently. Certainly, not infrequently enough that you’d want to tie them to placing or removing fixed infrastructure like tracks or wires. Diversions also happen sometimes. All of this isn’t to argue against light rail, but to argue for a comprehensive multi-modal vision of public transport. Let passengers use the right combination of services for their particular journey’s needs.
