busses can transport far fewer people than tramways. Tramways are on a different level. They transport about four times as many people and are far less shaky and bumpy which is important to elderly and frail people.

The word for a “tram bus” is trolley bus or O(berleitungs)-Bus in German, BTW.

An articulated bus is about 18 m long; the Seimens S70 (picking a tramcar from Wikipedia by chance) is 29.1 m long. So trams seem to be longer, and also the seating arrangements are different.

Couldn't you replace a tramcar by just running two buses, with most of their floor area for standing passengers?
@douginamug

believe me, this has been tried out. Also standing in a bus is far more complicated than in a tramway due to running on rails is much smoother. Many passengers can’t do it. It’s the rails, not the body of the vehicle.

also if the vehicles are not connected you have a very long piece of way you need for emergency braking. Again, it is the tracks …

Could you explain please? I don't understand this argument. If anything, don't buses stop over shorter distances than trams?

@douginamug

sure, but if you come to the scenarios where you need more capacity you can couple two or three tramway together. So that way you can run far more capacity in persons per hour in the same space.

And very long double joint busses do not behave very well in traffic, you can ask the city of Aachen in Germany, they tried.

busses are okay for going between villages (but not that great) but in cities they are just mind bogglingly bad. The main reason they are so popular is that fancy car drivers feel insecure (both physically and in terms of status) next to a tramway (they should, cars are just not as spacy and comfortable) and that it is much harder to bleed a tramway system out.
It’s a long term commitment to a city, a neighbourhood, walking and public transport.

Busses are inferior to a private car in every way. A tramway is superior in many ways. You can see it, because a proper Lady with a big hat and a weird dog can take the tram without issue, but not the bus. And let’s not even talk about wheelchair users and prams.

and building new tramway tracks is an excellent idea. They are cheap and work well. Technically but also symbolically. It’s a strong signal against cars and for walking.

A téléleferico is also very good in hilly settings and even faster to build, but people get just as angry as with the tramway tracks.

The main issue is that most people refuse both for completely selfish and silly reasons.

the solutions for traffic, heat and settlements are all well known and a bit boring/technically not that hard to do. The issue is that it takes guts to tell the usual suspects that they can’t have it their way this time.

There is an implicit value judgement that what was seen as the future by conservatives is literally a dead end and that they were just plain wrong. And they hate to admit that. It is silly but true.

rule of thumb: if you can’t imagine the Princess of Wales using it every day, don’t build it. If it wouldn’t work if literally everyone used what the Princess of Wales uses, don’t build it either.

It’s as simple as that. That’s all. It has to be comfortable, dignified, welcoming and radiate hospitality, but it can’t be inherently luxurious as in it only works if not too many use it. Infrastructure can never be like beach villas.

learning a lot on this thread!

Still, I think you (Nicolai) are a bit unfair on busses... ladies with hats & the prince of Wales can sure take busses. Many busses have lower steps than trams too.

Indeed, I'd rather eat into car space for bike lanes than removing tram lines.

It would be fine if bikes only had to cross tram tracks at 90 degree angles, but in #Leipzig there are a significant number of <45 and even some really slight ones.

not sure... lower rolling resistance -> less electricity? Lower maintenance costs because we have more auto industries than tram?