This is another #teamaustralia #teamchallenge post introducing Australia and in particular my city of Melbourne in this one to the world.
Out of all the Australian cities only one kept her trams alive across the entire city and that is Melbourne. The others succumbed to the interests of big oil and the bus companies who argued that trams were old fashioned, noisy and dangerous and had to be replaced. This repeated itself around the world in most cities that had tram networks with a few exceptions. In this day of global warming Melbourne gets the last laugh as many cities are going through the pain of retrofitting their city with electric traction and bringing back this clean form of transit. At the same time Melbourne’s network has grown and grown over the years.
We had cable hauled trams much like those in San Francisco up until 1906 where they were phased out for electric traction in the city. One private suburban stub line was changed earlier but that line didn’t survive but did pave the way for proving the concept of electric traction. The cable trams live in in the coastal city of Portland where they’ve been modified to be diesel powered.
On our network today we still run a selection of the original wooden W class rattlers but they are the newer ones from the 1950’s and 60’s and have been fitted with modern traction and braking equipment. Most of the lines run single car or up to five car sets. Our newest trams were built this year and there are more in production.
We even have one hat restaurants that roam the rails at lunch time and of evenings where you can enjoy fine dining while watching the world go by. This is an unforgettable experience.
The trams mostly run down the centre of the street. During peak times only trams are allowed on the tracks. In the city and busy areas have dedicated stops protected from the traffic. There are devices designed to slow the traffic at many of these stops. Trams have priority over cars and cars must stop when a tram is stopped with its doors open. In the suburbs there isn’t any protection and not all car drivers are fans and there is the occasional near miss. Fortunately the modern trams have dash cams so karma finds those drivers. Visitor drivers may not be aware of the rules so always be careful and check they’ve stopped before stepping off the curb or alighting from the tram.
In the city itself, where trams are on that street, a special kind of right hand turn has to be made which really confuses visitors, the car wanting to turn right has to start in the left lane and move forward into a painted lane on the road between the left running lane and pedestrian crossing and must wait there until the lights for the direction they want to go turn green. Even then sometimes they get cleaned up by trams running the red lights. Trams are encouraged to stop at red lights but stopping a 50 ton vehicle full of passengers with steel wheels on steel track doesn’t always happen.
The tram is so much a part of Melbourne culture that there is a full size replica in the city as a sculpture sticking out of the ground at the corner of Flinders and Spencer Streets.
There are major tramway museums in Hawthorn, Bylands, Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria and Loftus in Sydney. Trams continue to run in Adelaide on one heritage route and one modern route and Ballarat and Bendigo in historic tourist service. Sydney recent resurrected their light rail.
As it happens from my work on fare systems I know how to drive W, Z, A and B class trams.
You can find Melbourne trams running in other places around the world such as San Francisco and Seattle.