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Crazy take by ABC news' Alan Kohler "Why Melbourne's trams were a big mistake" (youtu.be)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/melbourne@aussie.zone
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cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/36550420

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[–] 4 points 2 days ago (1 child)

Agreed, trams do fill a necessary niche in public transport, and if we could reduce the amount of car traffic, the roads wouldn’t be as clogged. Maybe more tram lines in circles around the city, connecting to major roads and train stations? We still have many of the land reservations where those tram lines were foolishly removed. Anything to reduce one person, one car traffic is a good idea.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 2 days ago

    Yeah absolutely, there are so many low-cost opportunities to better connect the tram network (routes 3, 5 and 67 should all be slightly extended to connect with the train network for example).

    As well as changing existing tram routes to have tram-only lanes, so they don't get slowed down by traffic.

    Further, all traffic lights trams go through should be changed for tram priority to reduce time wasted at lights.

    And the quality of the track needs to be somewhat improved to allow for high tram speeds (trams can go like 70-80km/h, and do so in sections where they can, like the St Kilda line. But in many places they don't.

    Basically, there's a lot of not that expensive (compared to heavy rail) changes we could make if we wanted to. But instead we spend billions building more lanes, which will never fix traffic.

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