A big factor contributing to retention of trams in most cities that still have them

General Transport Discussion not specific to one state
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Myrtone
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Joined: Sat Apr 28, 2007 11:29 am

A big factor contributing to retention of trams in most cities that still have them

Post by Myrtone »

Has anyone here noticed that Melbourne's tramway network is not only one of the few surviving outside Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States but is one of the few in the world, including those places, that is still primarily street running. The other other surviving first generation tramway in the whole of Australasia or Oceania is that single line in Adelaide, which does run mostly on off-street track.
There is a surviving tramway in Rio De Janeiro that runs partly on an former aqueduct called the Carioca Aqueduct. The two surviving tramways in Mexico City are also on reserved track and have been upgraded and now classified as light rail.

Practically the entire tramway network of New Orleans is on reserved track in the medians of their boulevards, as is most of Boston's network. Boston also has some underground running in the busiest part of the urban area as do Philadelphia and Newark, and both Pittsburgh and San Francisco have tram tunnels through large hills, all this underground running practically guaranteed that trams would remain.
That of Toronto is one of the only two in the Americas (the other being San Francisco's cable operated system) to survive without using these alternatives.

It seems that most surviving systems even in Europe and the C.I.S also use a lot more of these alternatives to street running than Melbourne, Hong Kong Island, Calcutta or Toronto.

Back in the 1940s, when there were a lot more tramways in Australia and New Zealand, all of these systems were primarily street running.

Back in the golden age of tramways, most systems were primarily street running and reserved track was the exception, not the rule.

By 1978, when modern era tramway revival began with the Edmonton light rail, most surviving systems used a lot of reserved track (then as of now)*, for additional examples, all the surviving systems in Belgium, two out of three surviving systems in the Netherlands, these being in the three largest cities in that country, most surviving systems at least in West Germany, all the few surviving systems in Norway and Sweden and most surviving systems in Eastern Europe.

*This does not include the few systems that have completely closed since 1978.
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