Tramway de Marseille, France
The electric tram is now making a comeback. Not the one at the head of the previous page, impressive and even beautiful in its own way, but models that are silent, comfortable, and when running in dedicated right-of-way, faster than the car. They also provide economies of scale, relative to the bus, especially when coupled, carrying up to four hundred passengers, providing an excellent complement to underground rail systems.. They compete in speed and service quality with the private car while reducing significantly carbon emissions.
Their fixed infrastructure, in rail and overhead wires, remains relatively expensive, but far less than that required for underground rail systems. They are spreading rapidly in the more compact and densely populated European cities, more conscious of the environment. Their introduction in the US and Canada is lagging, due mainly to the archaic financing structures of large cities which limits access to infrastructure funding. In addition, enormous investment in expressways and inhumanly wide streets has already been sunk into facilitating car use. However, there is no major city that cannot provide the high-density corridors trams need and there are certainly none that can proclaim their high quality of life while continuing to permit the continued damage to public health and safety caused by the private car.
For photos of a wide range of tramways in various countries please
look at the Projet
montréal site. If you live in the Montréal area,
why not donate?
...
