Tram
From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.
A tram (or tramway, trolley, streetcar, tramcar, straßenbahn) is a railbourne vehicle (lighter than a train) for conveyance of passengers (or, occasionly, freight). Trams are distinguished from other forms of rail based in that they travel along tracks laid down in the right-of-way of city streets as well as on researved track. Another distinguishing factor is the short length of the vehicle, which usually consists of a standalone car or three at most. A special type is the cable car.
In the United States, private railroads for mining or logging were also known as trams in the early 1900s. Nowadays, vehicles bringing people in from parking lots, usually at amusement parks, are known as parking trams.
Tram systems are common throughout Europe and were common throughout the Western world in the early 20th century. In Canada most cities once had a streetcar system, but today Toronto's TTC is the only operator of streetcars in that country.
In Australia trams are only extensively used in Melbourne, all other major cities having dismantled their networks in the mid 20th century. (Sydney does have a new light rail line, and Adelaide has a tram line originating from the city centre, terminating at Glenelg).
In the United Kingdom, tram systems were widely dismantled in the 1950s, and after the closure of Glasgow's extensive network in 1962, only Blackpool's survived (for more information, see Blackpool Tram Upgrade), although a cable-operated line continued to operate up the Great Orme in Llandudno. However in recent years new light rail lines have been opened in Manchester (Metrolink), Sheffield (Supertram), the West Midlands, Croydon and Nottingham (NET), with a system in Leeds under construction and several others under consideration.
| Contents |
History
The name "tram" is from Low German traam, meaning the "beam (of a wheelbarrow)", although some sources claim that it is derived from the name of engineer Benjamin Outram.
Appearing in the first half of the 19th century, trams were at first pulled by horse. The first trams were built in the US; they circulated in 1832 on the New York-Harlem line and in 1834 in New Orleans. At first the rails, protruding above street level, caused major trouble for pedestrians and caused accidents. They were supplanted in 1852 by grooved rails, invented by Alphonse Loubat. The first tram in France was inaugurated in 1853 for the World's Fair, where a test line was presented along the Cours de la Reine, in the 8th Arrondissement.
The tram developed after that in numerous cities of Europe (London, Berlin, Paris, etc.). More rapid and comfortable than the omnibus, trams had a higher cost of operation because they were pulled by horses. That's why mechanical drives were rapidly developed: with steam power in 1873, and electrical after 1881, when Siemens presented the electric drive at the International Electricity Exhibition in Paris.
The technical modernity of electricity and more importantly its convenience resulted in its rapid adoption, once the technical problems of production and transmission of electricity were solved. The first electric tram opened in Budapest in 1887.
Golden Age
Trams experienced a rapid expansion at the start of the 20th century until the period between the two world wars. There was a rapid increase in the number of lines and increase in the number of riders: indeed, it became the primary mode of urban transportation. Horse-drawn transport virtually disappeared in all of the European and American cities by 1910. Buses were still in a development phase at this time, gaining in mechanical reliability, but remaining behind compared to the benefits offered by trams; the automobile was still - for a time - reserved for the well-to-do.
A temporary disappearance from many cities
In several countries the advent of personal motor vehicles caused the rapid disappearance of the tram from the urban landscape in the 1950s. The technical progress of the bus rendered it more reliable, and it became a serious competitor to the tram because it didn't require the construction of costly infrastructure.
Governments thus invested mostly into bus networks. Indeed, infrastructure for roads and highways meant for the automobile were perceived as a mark of progress. The priority given to roads is illustrated in the proposal of French president Georges Pompidou who declared in 1971 that "the city must adapt to the car".
Tram networks were no longer maintained or modernized, a state of affairs that served to discredit them in the eyes of the public. Old lines, considered archaic, were then bit by bit replaced by buses.
Tram networks disappeared almost completely from North America, France, the UK, and Spain. On the other hand, they were maintained - and in some cases even modernized - in Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Austria, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan, and Eastern Europe. In France and the UK, only the networks in Lille, Saint-Etienne Marseille, and Blackpool survive from this period, but they are each reduced to a single line.
Return to grace
The priority given to personal vehicles and notably to the automobile led to a loss in quality of life, particularly in large cities where smog, sound pollution and parking became problematic. Acknowledging this, some authorities saw fit to redefine their transport policies. The bus had shown its limits on account of its low capacity and its difficult coexistence with automobile traffic, which made it slow both on the road and commercially. Subways required a heavy investment and presented problems in terms of subterranean spaces that required constant security. For subways, the investment was mainly in underground construction, which made it impossible in some cities (with underground water reserves, archaeological remains, etc.). Subway construction thus was not a universal panacea.
The advantages of the tram thus became more visible. At the end of the 1970s, some governments studied, and then built new tram lines. In France, Nantes and Grenoble lead the way in terms of the modern tram, and new lines were inaugurated in 1985 and 1988. Strasbourg moved forward as well when it opened in 1994 a line with distinctly novel train designs, specified by the city, with the goal of breaking with the archaic conceptual image that was held by the public.
The public, who realized with each installation of tram lines their benefits in urban flexibility and redistribution, or else the reduction in automobile traffic in the downtown, encouraged numerous city governments to so equip their streets. Thus, in France, where the government carries out an enthusiastic policy in matters of public transit, they financed a wave of inaugurations, in Montpellier, Lyon, Orléans and even Nancy. The cities already equipped with trams do not hesitate to extend their lines, indeed even making new ones.
Regional Variations
Europe
In the Netherlands many local railways were referred to as Trams, even where the steam locomotives did not have enclosed motion. In Belgium an extensive system of tram-like local railways called Vicinal or Buurtspoor lines had a greater route kilometre length than the actual railway system. The only survivors of the Vicinal system are the Kusttram (which almost reaches France at one end and the Netherlands at the other) and two lines near Charleroi.
Recently the tram has seen a huge revival with many experiments like on tires as in Nancy or hidden wires as in Bordeaux as the municipalities find it a quick fix to the traffic problems.
Hong Kong
There are also double-decker trams, see Hong Kong Tramways and railed vehicles pulled by cable up the hills at steep incline, such as Hong Kong's Victoria Peak Tram.
United States
The term tram does not have the same usage in the United States of America as in most of the world. In the U.S. a "tram" is more likely to describe a small tourist bus in the form of a mock-streetcar or an aerial tramway, such as those used in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Roosevelt Island, New York City. The word is also used to describe people movers in many places.
In the US, an animal-powered tram would be characterized as a horsecar, an electrically powered one as a trolley, either as a streetcar and a modern version as a light rail vehicle (LRV). A US system is called a light rail transit (LRT) line if it is at least partially on a reserved right-of-way. The term light rail is sometimes used generically to describe any trolley line except heritage railways.
The first lines built in the United States (and indeed the world) were in 1832 from New York City to Harlem by New York and Harlem Railroad and in 1834 in New Orleans.
Most US trams were removed by the 1950s. Among the reasons, the US firm of General Motors formed a separate subsidiary named "National City Lines", whose business mission was to buy out tram/streetcar operations all around the US and replace the trams with fleets of buses. Not all trams were removed; the San Francisco cable cars are the most famous example of trams in the United States. More conventional tram/streetcar operations survived complete abandonment in Boston, Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, New Orleans, and San Francisco. All of these systems have received new equipment. Some of these cities have also rehabilitated lines, and Newark, New Orleans and San Francisco have added trackage in recent years.
More recently a number of American cities have built new light rail systems which operate partially in the right-of-way of city streets. These systems could be called trams by Europeans and Australians but are generally not known by that name within the US.
Technical Developments
Later trams, known as cable cars, attached to a moving cable underneath the road. The cable would be pulled by a steam engine at a powerhouse. Monongahela and Duquesne Inclines in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, are also called trams, but are more accurately funiculars. Modern trams generally use overhead electric cables, from which they draw current through a pantograph, a bow collector (less commonly) or a trolley pole (the former is more common and used on all new tram designs). The modern street railway was made possible by the inventions of Frank Sprague, who installed the first large-scale electric street railway in Richmond, Virginia in 1887. By 1890 over a hundred such sytems had been begun or were planned.
There are other methods of powering electric trams, sometimes preferred for aesthetic reasons since poles are not required. The old tram systems in London and Washington - the latter came to an end in 1962 - used live rails, like those on third rail electrified railways, but underneath the road from which they drew power through a plough. Today, no commercial tramway uses this system. There also have been street compatible third rail current collection systems, known as surface current collection, more recently as ground level power supply.
Double track tram lines are sometimes at narrow passages single track, or, to avoid switches, have the tracks intertwined, e.g. in the Leidsestraat in Amsterdam on three short stretches (see map detail).
Since the 1990s, low floor trams, allowing passangers in wheelchairs or with perambulators to access vehicles more easily, have begun to replace traditional trams where you needed to climb some steps to reach the passanger cabin.
Urbanism
Advantages
- The initial investment is high, but it remains affordable for a medium-sized city. A kilometre of tram generally costs only a third of the investment for a kilometre of underground subway line, since no boring is needed, but the public roads must be rebuilt to incorporate the rails and also cable lines must be installed.
- The aerian systems, such as the monorail and the light metro require a special urbanism with large avenues and buildings in which to integrate the stations. It is also very difficult to compare their prices.
- The infrastructure needed by the trams usually requires an extension of the pedestrian sectors.
- Unlike buses, trams give off no exhaust emissions.
Disadvantages
- The initial cost is larger when compared with the bus, which is usually preferred by smaller cities
- The speed is lower when compared to the subway unless long lengths of reserved track are involved (if most of the route is off-street than it is called Light rail) (maximum around 7,000 passengers/hour, compared to 12,000 passengers/hour for the subway)
- dangerous for the cyclists, because they share the same roadway with the trams
- occupies urban space above ground and it needs modifications to traffic flow
Evolutions
Complementary to the traditional tram, these evolutions make it possible to cover more space or to cross slopes inaccessible to the traditional tram.
Tram-train
The tram-train uses a system which makes it possible to circulate on tramcar lanes in the downtown area, while circulating on the regional rail network. It requires components compatible with the traditional railroad (indication, power, resistance).
It has been primarily developed in Germanic countries, in particular Germany and Switzerland. Karlsruhe is a notable pioneer of the Tram-train.
This system should be brought into service in the Paris area in 2005.
See also
- List of light-rail transit systems
- Light rail
- List of transport museums
- Tram stop
- Ultra low floor
- EuskoTran
- Poznanski Szybki Tramwaj
- Citadis
- Eurotram
- Combino
- Sirio
- Streetcar suburb
External links
- Light Rail Transit Association (GB)
- Light Rail Central (US/CA)
- Light Rail Now advocacy (US)
- Light Rail Netherlands (NL)
- Light Rail Atlas "Holland's Light Rail-pages for a world audience" (NL) varying content in multiple languages
- The Cable Building Broadway Cable car line (US/NY)
- Trams in Hungary (HU)
- Market Street Railway (US/CA)
- Tram in Europe (EU, Europe)
- History of trams in Cieszyn, Poland (PL)
- National Capital Trolley Museum (US/MD)
da:Sporvogn de:Straßenbahn fr:Tramway ga:Tram ja:路面電車 nl:Tram pl:Tramwaj ru:Трамвай fi:Raitiovaunu sv:Spårvagn tt:Tramway
