I’m a regular user of public transport.  I haven’t owned a car for over five years, so I get around by using public transport (mostly buses), walking, recently cycling, and the occasion use of a hired or borrowed car, but I’m not a great fan of trams.  

While I’m a fan of public transport, as it has potential to reduce greenhouse gas production and reduce the use of resources, I find that trams have some serious disadvantages when compared to buses.

The biggest issue is that, as trams are limited to tracks, they cannot use regular roads and therefore have limited options on stop locations.  For people whose trip origin and destination aren’t near to a tram stop other means of transport are required to connect to trams.  This means driving, or catching a connecting bus to and from tram stops.  

As an experienced user of public transport, I know that adding connections to a journey adds extra time because I have to wait for the connection.  And any delays in a leg of a journey can mean missing a connection, so connections make a journey much less predictable, which means starting a journey earlier to give certainty.  

 Trams usually get dedicated routes that they don’t have to share with any other vehicles.  This gives them an apparent advantage over buses, which commonly have to fight it out with the general traffic.  However, the advantage is only apparent, as buses can be given dedicated routes, too.

Busses on dedicated bus routes are far more effective than trams as they can leave the dedicated bus route and move closer to commuter destinations which reduces the need for connecting with other services, resulting in shorter and more reliable overall journeys.

Not far from where I live the city of Brisbane uses buses on dedicated bus routes.  Buses from many suburbs converge on a dedicated bus route and then travel efficiently into the CDB, circumventing the road traffic.  I’ve found these dedicated bus routes effective for getting in and out of the CBD when staying in inner Brisbane suburbs.

An advantage that trams do have is that they are usually powered by electricity and so produce less greenhouse gases, especially if the electricity is sourced from renewables.  However, buses can also be powered by electricity.  Modern dual-mode electric trolley buses have battery storage that charges while connected to the overhead electricity supply, which then allows them to travel a useful distance away from the overhead electricity supply on ordinary roads.    

Trams require tracks, which can be shared with other vehicles, but commonly aren’t.  Because trolley buses travel on what is essentially an ordinary road surface other vehicle can use the dedicated bus routes outside of busy periods, and on weekends when people are more likely to only consider using a car.  This is important in places that receive a lot of weekend visitors, such as where I live on the Gold Coast in Australia.  Visitors here, especially weekend visitors, don’t usually use public transport as they don’t have the necessary familiarity with the system, and usually need to move luggage and beach/sports equipment with them, for which they need their car. 

On weekends, when there is low demand for public transport and high demand for vehicle road space, and as trolley buses use essentially normal road surfaces, dedicated bus routes can be used for regular car traffic.  

An additional advantage of dual-mode electric trolley buses is that overhead cables would not be necessary where they are visually inappropriate or difficult to install, as the buses could run on their batteries for these sections.

As dual-mode electric trolley buses can move away from main transport corridors before discharging the majority of their passengers, stops along the main transport corridors can be smaller, and interchanges and car parks in what are usually congested zones will not be required.

While dual-mode electric trolley buses are superior to trams, neither will be an effective permanent solution to the problem of road congestion because neither of them addresses the real cause of congestion.  

Transport congestion is a consequence of imbalance between the supply and demand of transport options.  Dealing only with the supply, while ignoring the demand, cannot truly solve this issue.  As long as there is growth, especially exponential growth, any transport infrastructure will eventually be overwhelmed.  Ever-increasing demand is a consequence of continual growth, so if you don’t deal with growth no attempted solution will work.  To contain demand we need to stop increasing population by stopping new urban development.  Eventually urban development must stop (you can’t have continual growth in a finite space), so stopping it now before it makes Earth unliveable is the only real solution to the problem of congestion, and many other related issues.

You can find related posts here:

there's none yet!

Share this Choose the future! post using your favourite social media:

Would you like to add something, or ask a question?  

Add a comment below, and tick the box to accept the privacy policy:

(You can leave the 'Website' field blank.)