Even if you think what you would say is obvious, please add. This is genuinely something I think makes sense regarding local bus routes given the longevity of light rail and how infrequently routes change, but I also suffer from confirmation bias, so I'm hoping for reasons this would be a terrible idea but obviously would prefer reasons it would be an even more amazing idea than I thought.
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Pretty much the point of trams are that they’re in populated areas, are in walking distance, and have many stops. They’re local public transport.
In cities they’re equivalent to buses, and in many countries existing trams where replaced by bus routes starting in the 1960s.
If you need longer and faster transport, metro and light rail are the modes to bring people to and around town.
Have you actually ever seen the tram network in North Rhine and Westphalia, Germany? Also in many places in the world the replacement of trams by buses has been since seen as a mistake and there are plenty of examples of extensive new trams networks introduced and in planning in cities where they got rid of them in 1960s.
Yes, thank you, I was born there. What is it you’re trying to tell me?
Yes, thank you, I live in Berlin, the city where one part decided to trash it’s tram network, replaced it with buses, and is now struggling to get it back.
Still not sure what you’re trying to tell me, where did I say it was a good idea? I said the two modes are comparable.
I would argue they're not equal. Bus makes a bad replacement for a tram and tram can't really replace the bus if there are no tracks. The reason why I was asking is because Essen and Mühlheim a.d. Ruhr plus some nearby areas have got sections where trams aren't confined to just the populated areas and do not have many stops and outside the city core they aren't Stadtbahn, but are that and much more outside the urban areas, act part of the way like the good old Strassenbahn but are marked as Stadtbahn. I guess I don't really have a point here, just rambling. But really there's big difference between what you can offer on rails (if you don't make stupid planning decisions and your system isn't falling into disrepair) and by buses. Yes, they're comparable mostly in the way that they're both moving dozens of people per unit. In everything else, how comparable are they?
Well, like I said, I agree buses aren’t a good replacement, but they’re comparable in the way they’re used in cities: as a short to medium ranged local transport. You wouldn’t want to take the bus from one end of Berlin to the other, you would take the S-Bahn, because that’s what it’s for.
Compare the bus network with the tram network in East Berlin. The buses (usually) run where the trams don’t, but they have a similar amount of stops. Of course there’s overlap between the modes, but the general idea is: tram/bus for short to medium distance, S-Bahn for medium to long distance, and U-Bahn bridging between them.
They’re also comparable in accessibility: with the U- and S-Bahn I have to enter a station. With the tram, I just step out my house, go to the next corner, there it is. Same with buses.
Fair point. Also a way of classification that I completely omitted inside my mind during previous days.
Our tram is called the Metro, which is light rail. It connects a small city to a bigger city, and loops around the bigger city. The residential zone along it is enormous, well beyond walking distance. Many people need buses to make use of it.
My mistake, I meant to type suburban rail (S-Bahn) not light rail.
Anyway, light rail is and extremely loose term and can mean a lot of things, up to a „light metro“, but it’s commonly understood to have exclusive tracks separated from roads. A tram (or streetcar) runs on the street.
Tram can have both, even on a single line.
There are many different concepts, but generally a tram shares a space with the road traffic, hence streetcar (German: Straßenbahn). There are other terms, e.g. Stadtbahn, that are used when they are separated from other traffic.
While there are no hard rules and different approaches, I think it’s not helpful to mix up terms. A tram is not a metro. And it’s not helpful to mix modes on the same tracks, since you will run into trouble with scheduling due to vastly differing occupancy rates.