City racism

[blameless]

And yes, Vienna is indeed fucking mint.

[Guy Profumo]

Looks like the mythical Rotherham tram-train. Only it exists...

They exist right enough.

It's just the service that doesn't.

[diggedy derek]

My dad won an award for lifetime services to the tram industry a while back. Now my son's massively into them also. It's nice.

[WOM]

Well, shit. What did your dad do?

[ursus arctos]

Boston's system is mixed.

Most of the lines are what would be considered a metro in most places (with some above ground and elevated portions), but the Green Line (which has several branches) is as blameless describes, belying its origins in the streetcar network that once connected the city to the inner western suburbs.

Red Line


Blue Line


Green Line

[diggedy derek]

WOM, "he looked after the interests of light rail and tramway operators in discussions with Government bodies on safety regulations, accessibility and economic matters. He also used to deal with bus-rail ticketing initiatives and smart card issues." He did this kinda thing (which was always opaque to me as a kid) for the best part of 40 years.

One thing he was quite involved with which I can literally point to is that they made doors on certain trains, trams and other rail vehicles a different colour to the rest of the vehicles – a common sense measure to help partially sighted people.

[WOM]

Well, good on him. Nice that he was recognized for it.

[WOM]

Meanwhile, Toronto's streetcar (tram) system is enjoying another blow. These lovely new Bombardier units were all supposed to be in place ages ago. We're still waiting for a good chunk of them to be built and delivered.

And now they need to be returned and re-welded.

To recap, Bombardier can design and sell streetcar systems. They just can't build and deliver them. Apparently this hundred year-old technology is too complex for 2018.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...dier-says.html

[Gangster Octopus]

They [the Rotherham tram-trains] exist right enough.

It's just the service that doesn't.

Any clue as to the latest start date?

[MsD]

Well, good on him. Nice that he was recognized for it.

Yes, it's tram-endous.

[blameless]

ursus: interesting, I had no idea Boston had "real" metro too as I was only ever on the green line (I was paying a visit to Northeastern U).

[Capybara]

So how about Karlsruhe then? Lovely place, ey?

It probably is, but it was full of road works that didn't seem to be actually happening when I was there last year, which is about standard for me when I visit 'lovely' places. But the weather was nice, there was a beer festival and a football match so it wasn't all bad.

[Flynnie]

The T in Boston is pretty good. It suffers from inevitably being compared to its southern neighbour the NYC Subway, which is a remarkable achievement if a mess these days. But in terms of coverage, there really aren't many places in Boston it doesn't go to. It's probably the best metro network besides NYC and if it isn't, only Chicago seems like a realistic second place candidate.

The only other bad thing about is the Green Line can be a real mess at rush hour, since it branches off past Fenway Park and goes to three of the big five Boston universities (BU, BC, Northeastern, with Hahvahd and MIT the holdouts) so it can get really crammed.

[WOM]

Good work, everyone, btw. From 'city racism' to 'trams...yay or nay' in two posts.

See also the 'Bestselling Authors' in Books, which went from its thread title to fresh produce to kitchen sizes/storage and back to authors within one page.

[ursus arctos]

Concur with everything that Flynnie said about the T. It is a solid system that is being improved by the (slow) restoration of commuter rail links and ferries

A great deal of recent high value development in Boston outside the traditional core is unthinkable without it

[EIM]

I fucking love trams, lads and lasses. A tram doesn't mean a good city, but a good city has a tram. Montpellier has trams, lovely town. Seville? Lovely city. Hong Kong, lovely trams, great city. Manchester and Nottingham? Can go wither way this, can't it?

That Newark City Subway thing is very exciting to me. Some aesthetic.

[treibeis]

Berlin has trams, and Berlin is fucking mint.

That's a relic of the East. West Berlin has about 793 metres of tramlines.

Edit: Before anybody says, "So what?": I don't like East Berlin all that much.

[EIM]

Lisbon is meant to be nice. Has trams.

[ursus arctos]

Is and does

[Amor de Cosmos]

What's the OTF consensus on these?





Trams?

Or something else entirely?

I wasn't sure whether your top pic referred to the trolley or the skytrain running above it [irrelevant trivia] the Volvo dealership in the background is where I bought my car [/irrelevant trivia]

[treibeis]

Vienna also has trams, and Vienna is also fucking mint.

I've been to Vienna twice. Both times, I went to half-decent restaurants. Both times, I saw blokes asleep with their face in their soup. In the boozers I went to afterwards, I saw blokes asleep with their face on the table.

That doesn't make Vienna bad - Ulrich Seidl comes from Vienna; it just makes Vienna a place where I always see blokes sleeping with their face in their soup / on the table.

[EIM]

I once saw a fella eating an £18 roast beef dinner with a KFC variety bucket under his chair that he kept dipping into every other mouthful. In London. Only saw it once, but it's stuck with me enough to get London the nickname FATBASTARD CITY

[ursus arctos]

Places one can go on Viennese trams

I’ve done a number of these and never seen a bloke with his face in his soup or on the table, though I have seen foreign visitors to Heuriger under the table.

[diggedy derek]

Bus trip: wage slave on your way to your corner of the capitalist grind
Tram trip: man about town on your way to your next dizzying rendezvous

[Tubby Isaacs]

And are practically silent, because they don't generate their own energy.

The Cambridgeshire guided busway solves that one. The buses have the regular, noxious, diesel engines so you can here them coming (though an occasional cyclist still somehow gets mown down). But they run on tracks... except the bits through the towns where the old rail alignment got built over ages ago. There they go through the regular traffic. Brilliant, eh?

I think they're a good idea. Never been on the Cambridgeshire Busway, but it seems to suffer from what people expect a railway would have done. Given the capacity constraints on mainlines, I think it would have just been a shuttle with a couple of stops.