Public Transport

I watched an interesting video recently about trolleys / trams.

Originally, the form of mass transit in cities was "omnibuses", which were horse-drawn carriages on wooden wheels with seats for many passengers. Horsecars, or horse-drawn trams, were an improvement on that. Because they used steel wheels on steel rails, they were much more efficient than wooden wheels on cobblestone streets. They required much less "horsepower" to run.

An American with the unlikely name of Mr. Train set up the first horsecars in England. What's crazy about this first tram system is that the rails were above the road surface, and at that time there was no permit system or anything, so he'd just been installing them wherever he thought there was good business. He was eventually arrested for "breaking and injuring" a road in London, which basically stopped his efforts. Can you imagine that? Some dude just came and put regular raised railway tracks on a road and started running horsecars along those tracks and nobody stopped him until more than a year later.

Eventually they settled on grooved rails so that the trams were less disruptive of other kinds of traffic (but they can still be really tricky for bicycles). They also switched from horse-drawn trams to steam-powered trams and then to a variety of things: fossil-fuel engines, cable cars, electric, etc.

Part of what killed the tram was the rise of the car, and the push by car companies to kill their competition. But, another part of what killed them was simply rubber tires. Remember that the original advantage of trams was the superiority of steel wheels on steel tracks vs. wooden wheels on cobblestone. Modern roads and modern tires also meant that the advantage of a tram was really diminished. That meant that a lot of places started replacing inflexible trams with more flexible diesel-powered (omni)buses.

But, of course, there's a hidden drawback that those people might not have considered. Trams use different kinds of wheels so they can get their own lanes, sometimes get their own bridges, sometimes even their own traffic lights. It's much easier to give them priority when there are shared lanes, because they're clearly a different kind of vehicle. When you switch from a tram to a bus, the bus is just another vehicle with rubber tires, so it gets caught in traffic in a way that trams didn't.

And, of course, if buses have to stop frequently to load and unload passengers and they get stuck in traffic, they're going to be much slower than cars, so it convinces people that public transit doesn't work and they need to have a car.

In the end, we don't necessarily need trams / trolleys / streetcars, we just need a public transit vehicle that has either dedicated lanes or priority over other traffic. Zurich, for instance, has trams, but it also has buses that get their own lanes, get their own traffic signals, and get priority over other traffic, so that drivers get out of their way or risk big fines.

Sometimes trams are the best solution. Rails means you can have multiple cabins in a row and not have to worry about how to steer around corners. With buses they can sometimes have one extra "trailer", the famous articulated (or better accordion) bus. But, one "trailer" is really the limit. Rails also means a predictable path, which means it's easier to make them fully electric, which generally makes them much quieter than a diesel bus. (That is, until they have to take a sharp turn).

In the end, I like trams, but trams aren't really necessary. What's necessary is rules that give priority to public transit vehicles. You tend to get that by default with trams, but you can do it with buses, mini-buses or even mini-vans.

Dense neighborhoods that were often similar density to suburbs.

The electric trams were bad, because they were never actually intended as transport - the electric companies just wanted an excuse to hook the neighbourhoods up to electricity, and electric trams were just their excuse for doing so. It wasn't cohesively designed, they didn't necessarily think it was better than cars.

Note that saying they were bad is not the same as saying they had to be bad - they were just poorly executed because they didn't give a shit.

Manhattan had car-sized streets, sure. But, they were used completely differently.

For example, vendors would come and park their carts on the side of the street, with the wares facing the middle of the street, and people would walk up and shop while standing in the street. There were a lot more people walking and standing in the streets. And, it was a lot more common (and a lot safer) just to walk out into a street, because a horse wouldn't typically run someone down, and when cars first came along they were very slow.

I don't really see super wide streets as being a problem. Especially in a place like Manhattan where there are huge skyscrapers, you want wide streets so buildings aren't in perpetual shadow. You just need to make sure to keep cars away, and to limit the speed of any remaining vehicles to something reasonable. Then the streets belong to pedestrians, as they should.

Yea, and when our neighbourhood’s main street(two way and street parking on either side) becomes pedestrian in the summer it’s awesome and full of patios. Large, lovely town squares have also existed for a long time, that’s zero excuse. You have to have more than just “human” scale, you also need to be able to handle a lot of people and a 5’ sidewalk, or maybe a 10’ street if you remove the car lanes’ width, just doesn’t cut it.