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What form of public transport is best for your city?
Posted by Hels • 7/25/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: public transport
I'd imagine that any city of a reasonable size (for example, over a million people) would want to keep all cars out of the centre of town. This would largely eliminate petrol pollution and would greatly reduce parking and traffic problems. But which public transport system should best replace private cars in the centre of town?
Buses pollute, trams are slow, trains are expensive to establish. Every system might have to be a compromise. Anyhow I have argued my case in melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2009/07/melbournes-trams.html And I do realise that every city has its own issues.
User Comments
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Strictly speaking this should be in "Shameless Blog Promotion," but here's my own view on mass-transit:
hailingfromgeorgia.blogspot.com/2009/03/guidelines-for-effective-mass-trans...-
Sorry for putting the URL in, Jeremy; I was trying to save space. So I will type it out now.
My argument is simple. By the time World War 2 ended, the entire population of Melbourne (now 3.8 million people) was finally serviced by tram lines that started in the centre of town and extended as far as the outer suburbs. When most other cities in the world ripped out their trams and substituted smelly, smoke-filled buses, Melbourne kept her elegant, green ladies that were able to glide graciously through the tree-lined streets without petrol.
Why was this decision important? Trams run on electricity and don’t consume petrol. Each tram has two spacious compartments, one at either end of the unit (closed by sliding doors), and a large space in the middle full of seats. It is a green, quiet and comfortable method of moving the public around.
But it has two major disadvantages. Firstly the city’s streets need to be wide enough to take the tram lines down the centre of the road, and still allow at least one lane of cars on each side of the road. Secondly each tram can only carry a limited number of commuters in comfort (eg 100). Even if you link two trams together, they still could not carry as many people as a 7-carriage train can.
I agree with you, Jeremy, about trains. As you said, they have the advantage of not being part of the road network and thus ignoring traffic and stop lights. Plus trains have a higher effective speed, way in excess of normal city-driving conditions. They also have greater energy efficiency and can be built with a 0 carbon footprint if electrified with nuclear or wind power.
I also agree with your focus on natural lines. It makes sense to place public transport where you have a very high density of traffic flowing between effective points on a single line.
But train lines, even light rail, are expensive to lay. Trams require ONLY electric lines to be laid above or below, and rolling stock. No expensive engineering. (By the way, we still need more trams).
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Walking would be great but then places that you want to go to seems so far away. -
My sports car! yeah!
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