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- cross-posted to:
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Why should someone not like trams? I love them because you also get to watch out of the windows compared to the metro
Trams are great, but they don’t arrive as regularly as the metro and when you’re in a city with harsh winters, I’d far rather wait on a metro platform than a tram stop. I often prefer the metro when I have the choice.
@linucs I would have loved to have ridden the Leeds trams through Middleton Woods. Sadly long gone, before I got to Leeds.
But I did get to ride trams in Cairo in the late 70s-early 80s. *Not* the sleek machines the city now has. Probably built in the 1930s (?), wooden coachwork; gloriously unreliable; and just plain fun to ride!
My nearest transport is a nice grassy tram track. Trams can rumble past street cafes and pedestrian areas with less disturbance and smell than a busy car road. But they don’t have the speed of an underground or rural train. Commuters usually want the fastest option. Trams have their place as part of an integrated system. But they take up surface space and get held up when they intersect with traffic or deep snow. Safety-wise they do occasionally hit an errant car or person on the line. A friend was hit and in a coma after not spotting a tram while crossing at a bad place. But people in the city normally get out of the way as they don’t want the driver to ring his loud bell at them.
So trams have their pros and cons.
I like the trams. I like the trees. I like the greenery in the city. I don’t like that the tram pathway looks like a field to play in from the perspective of a young child.
Many trams don’t actually drive that fast. Some googling suggests this is Helsinki. Their trams run at 14km/h. That’s easily slow enough to react to a kid running onto the track.
Also this seems to have roads on either side, so I don’t think there would be many children playing in that area.
From the perspective of the tram driver there are a lot of trees along the tram way. Those trees could make a blind spot for the driver if a kid was playing along the tracks.
My point is that why replace one danger cars and then write off the other dangers as irrelevant. With some effort I think we can get both dealt with. However, if this is Helsinki how has this actually performed? That can help guide risk assessment too.
or you could just teach your children not to play on the tram tracks. the world is full of pointy edges. must we bubble wrap them all?
If we cannot teach adults to drive the proper speed successfully, to not be impaired, to not play with their mobiles, and to pay attention what hope do we have for kids?
I live in america and kids play in the streets all the time and cars are a serious danger. Most of our urban streets are smaller than this and the cars are going much faster. 14kph is less than 9mph, and the lowest speed limits in my area go is 25mph. When these trams are going slow enough to run along side, the danger of hitting someone that you didn’t see in time is FAR lower. Even if someone did manage to get hit by a tram at this speed (or slower because they would likely already be hitting the breaks) they are much less likely to be injured. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you that they could both be dangerous but you are talking about the danger of trams vs cars as if they are equal. Most of the necessary safety measures are already in place (ie, the 14kph speed) and I am far less worried about kids running around in a world of trams than a world of cars.
I couldn’t locate this particular spot but it’s suggested to be in the city center. It might be this one: https://www.google.com/maps/@60.1690393,24.9398838,1100m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
Kids aren’t gonna randomly start playing there. If you look around on the linked map, there are parks all over the place. It is much more likely for kids to play there, where it’s nice, than on some major road.
Google isn’t spitting out any results no matter how I search for it but I’m under the impression that kids in Finland go to school on their own basically starting with kindergarten. At least there are plenty of countries where they do, so kids are obviously capable of navigating public space safely and independently. I know I did. I crossed 3 main roads on the way to kindergarten.
It’s not a problem in Helsinki as there are plenty of green spaces for children to play in that aren’t the tramway.
there’s been like 3 deaths total from tram collisions in the last 200 years 💀
That’s good! It doesn’t mean we have to ignore the bad things that can happen with the alternatives to worse options. Even at low speed there’s still a high chance of serious injury in a collision.
i’m not sure where you grew up and live, but as someone who grew up in a very large city (10m+), i can tell you that children aren’t stupid, if they grow up in an environment in which they’re given an appropriate amount of responsibility in the face of danger, while also explained the possibilities of danger and how to avoid it, they grow up to be pretty responsible, and certainly wouldn’t be endangered (or really bothered in any way) by something as trivial as grassy tram tracks
The stroad this replacee is far worse, and often the only place for kids to play, and it makes space for actual parks.
I don’t think they’ll have a chance of being hit by these trams, as they first have to cross three lanes of traffic either side of the trees (not pictured).
Would be one hell of a game of Crossy Road.
I don’t know about “peak urbanism”, because this is a far cry from the elegant systems in like Singapore or China but yeah, this is so much better than having cars clogging the streets.
Let’s just make sure to remain sceptical of the state in this regard and ve vigilant. They’ll use every chance they get to introduce smart city stuff in there that’ll be harvested forever without your true consent.
elegant systems in like Singapore or China
how’s grass on tram tracks contradictory to any of that
It’s not, the picture just shows very terrible german trams on even more terrible rails and since I have to take these every day, you can trust me that they’re uncomfortable, shaky and stand no chance against whatever they’re using in Singapore, for example.
these tracks are in helsinki, and these are finnish trams, i think skoda may be exporting them to germany, and i don’t know what you guys do with them there, but these are pretty comfortable personally (even comparing to SBB trains, which travel so smoothly that it makes me dizzy, bc there’s very little sensory points of reference)
you’re most likely having a poor experience bc the tram tracks have fallen into disrepair, bc even comparatively old trams (from the 1970s and the like) can be pretty comfortable on proper tracks (take budapest, their fleet consist largely of older models, but due to good track maintenance and relative straightness of tracks themselves, it’s a pretty good experience)
not sure why you’re extrapolating your particular experience onto something so vast and vague as “public transport systems outside of china and singapore”, not to mention that a decent amount of comfort is a baseline that good systems of public transport operate off of, with accessibility, frequency and location being more important factors
You are totally right, that was way too broad an assumption. I guess you’re right and my government just doesn’t maintain the rails. I only took issue with the use of “peak” here, but going straight for an authoritarian pseudo-utopia wasn’t necessary.
