Originally Posted by
GoldfishMan
Trams are not "outdated", they're not useful in the current form because of the Govt's "vision". Their vision is a network made up of very few lines with huge trams running those lines, but that completely contradicts a lot of the benefits of using trams.
The first benefit is the fact that the tracks are relatively easier to lay than other forms of transport.
Compare the difficulty of laying an above ground tram track against digging a tunnel to lay an underground train track. Or compare it against setting up an elevated monorail line.
The other benefit of trams is it is relatively easy to scale up the size of the transports on the lines. You want bigger trams to hold more people, you just scale up the trams and the power. With a monorail, you'd be constrained by the max load on the line itself. Underground trains are a different story though. There, you'd be looking at a negative constraint: the line would've been so costly to build, you would be hard pressed to justify running smaller trains on them.
Last benefit of trams is they're not constrained by the method of power delivery. Sure, at the moment batteries and all that tech are not strong enough to power a tram, necessitating the need for overhead power lines. But, imagine if some time in the future the tech is good enough so that you can run trams on battery power, solar power or a combination of them. Then you wouldn't need power lines, all you need are good solid tracks.
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