Trams in Europe

The first thing that catches your eye in the first three cities of the expedition (Berlin, Munich and especially Zurich) is the huge extensive tram networks, with dedicated lines, special tram traffic lights, cool transfer points, etc.

In Munich and Berlin, the tram is an auxiliary thing, and the majority of people travel by metro and trains crossing the entire city (after all, the cities are quite large), but in Zurich there is no metro at all - citizens in the 60s rejected in a referendum the project to build a metro, as well as the project to bury the tram underground and said that they wanted to travel while looking out the window at Lake Zurich and the Alps, and not a tunnel.

Electric trains, by the way, are a separate interesting topic - in Moscow they simply go to train stations, drop off passengers there, and they run in a crowd to the metro.
In Munich and Berlin, underground tunnels have been made, and electric trains simply cross the city underground, stopping at several underground interchange nodes, where they are connected to the metro and trams.

Moscow has long had a plan to connect electric trains under the city center, but it requires a lot of research and design, so the mayor’s office prefers not to bother and stupidly build roads where the preparatory stage is not so complicated.

In general, a lot of interesting things can be told about these cities, which is what we will do at the exhibition and lectures when we return to Moscow, while on the trip I will write posts on various topics, slightly taken out of context.

So, about trams.
Many European cities suffered in the 50s and 60s from one of the main urban planning mistakes - rolling tram rails into asphalt. This happened everywhere according to approximately the same pattern: the level of motorization grew, cars began to run out of space, and it was then that motorists noticed large spaces in the city, used for strange iron jalopies, running every 5-10 minutes.

Here it is, the solution to the traffic jam problem!
You just remove the metal rattling coffin on wheels, make asphalt there, start the bus and that’s it!

40 years have passed and they thought about this problem again - the problem of traffic jams not only has not been solved, but has even worsened.
What happened?

A simple logical mistake occurred - politicians and urban planners mixed up the task.
They began to try to increase capacity measured in vehicles rather than people.

On a tram line, where one tram runs every 5 minutes, you can run 50 cars, it would seem that the capacity has been increased by 50 times!

But 50 cars transport ~75 people in these 5 minutes and this is the limit, they won’t get through any more.
A tram, even one that runs once every 5 minutes, can carry 200 people, and a tram can also be launched once every 2.5 minutes and then it will generally be able to transport 400 people.

And this system still has a reserve - the tram can run once every one and a half minutes, and be twice as long (but here it will need slightly different paths).
In any case, even in their simplest form, tram tracks, which occupy the same area as a highway, carry 5 times more people. And optimized 10 times.

Therefore, when we dig up the rails and make one car lane instead, we reduce the road capacity by 5 times.
You can’t install a five-lane highway instead of a tram, so cities where trams were removed began to choke in traffic jams.

Some cities, such as West Berlin, are now forced to rebuild the tram network, which is expensive and difficult, but necessary for the normal functioning of the city.
Others, like Zurich, have avoided mistakes and now do not have problems with traffic jams. The third, mainly in the United States, began to try to satisfy the population's needs for movement by building roads rather than returning trams, and now the urban environment there has deteriorated and it has become impossible to walk around the city.

Let's take a look at a few examples.
For example, East Berlin.



On the border of East and West Berlin, the rails simply break off, in several places it is very noticeable.
Someday a monument to urban planning stupidity will be erected there.

It’s clear that trams should be comfortable and not create a hellish vibration that makes a chandelier shake.
When a tram passes over the Stroginsky Bridge, the roar is heard throughout Shchukino, but it is not the tram that is to blame, but the bad and old rails. With good rails, the only noise in the tram is the almost silent motor and the pantograph rubbing against the wire. If you hear the noise of a wheel moving on the rails, this means that the wheels or rails are not in good condition.

The rails in Berlin are good; there was a tram right under my hotel window, about 5 meters from the building, and it didn’t interfere at all.



A tram is much more expensive than a bus when purchased, but this is compensated by the fact that it can be repaired an unlimited number of times.
For example, this tram is 40 years old.



It looks like this inside.



Once every 7 years the carriage undergoes a major overhaul; in Rome there are trams that are 70 years old.
They only get cuter with age.

The most important thing for a tram is the speed of its movement around the city.
If a tram travels at an average speed of 13 kilometers per hour, stands at stops for 5 minutes due to turnstiles, and is jam-packed, then only those who cannot afford a car use it.

But if it runs on separate tracks, has priority at traffic lights, passes stops quickly and is more or less free, many will choose it as the main way to move around the city.

Berlin tram inside.



If the city is large, then the so-called “last kilometer” (the walk from transport to home or office), as well as transfer points, becomes an important part of the process.
We'll talk about the last kilometer later, but now about transfers. Here is an example of an ideal transfer in Munich.



The exit from the metro leads immediately to a concrete platform of one level, without curbs, stairs or fences, and buses and trams enter this platform.



From the escalator to the tram there is a 5-meter path without changing the level.
Beauty.



The photo exhibition will include comparisons with transfer points in Moscow.

The tram is also very cheap compared to other modes of transport with similar capacity.
A kilometer of the most sophisticated, silent and with grass between the rails of a high-speed tram costs about 8-10 times cheaper than a kilometer of the metro.

And if we take some megaprojects like the senseless Alabyano-Baltic tunnel, which cost 63 billion rubles, then with this money it was generally possible to build ~100 kilometers of the most expensive high-speed tram lines, with complete noise reduction, etc.
For comparison, this is a third of the entire Moscow Metro.

But our trams are launched and become decrepit, they turn into transport for transporting beneficiaries and are gradually uprooted from the streets, while expensive tunnels, highways, interchanges and chords are built and built.
Let's face it, it won't take us 40 years like the Europeans to understand this mistake :)

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