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0:00
I ride a bike pretty much every day here in Amsterdam, but to be totally honest, I don't even like bicycles that much. I do it because I'd be crazy not to when it's so convenient. Which is the case for the vast majority of people you see here. I've learned over the years that there really aren't that many car people, bike people, or train people. The vast majority of people just want to get from point A to point B conveniently and efficiently. which is why cities need to make it easy to use
0:29
transportation methods that make the city a better place to live. Now, that being said, there are still a few people who have a preferred form of transportation that goes beyond just convenience, and I happen to be one of those people because I love trams. They're my absolute favorite form of transportation within cities. So when I visit a new city, the first thing I do is take a tram and look out the window to get a feel for the place. But the benefits of trams go beyond
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transportation. And I actually think that trams make urban places fundamentally better. Which is why I firmly believe that if you want to create a truly great city, you need to be building tram lines. And then you can hear
1:21
The tram network here in Amsterdam is pretty great. Certainly in and around the city center, but also in many suburban neighborhoods as well. I find that for many places I'd like to go to, there's usually a tram stop nearby, which is really convenient. The stops are simple but functional, and they have screens that let you know when the next tram is coming. All of the trams are now the modern lowfloor kind, so there's level boarding with the platform, which
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makes it really easy and quick to get on board. The trams are reasonably spacious and comfortable. And though the seats aren't exactly luxurious, they're perfectly fine for short distances, and it's great to look out the window. It's one of my favorite ways to see the city because if I see something interesting, I can just get off at the next stop and walk there easily, making it a great way to find new places. The trams in Amsterdam have LCD screens like this one that clearly show which
2:16
stations are coming next and which other lines are available at each stop, so it's hard to get lost. The trams are pretty quick, too. They stop fairly often, but because they're electric, they accelerate quickly between stops, and the ride is very smooth. Trams are a critical part of the Amsterdam transportation network, so they even keep them open during major road construction. I love a city that's serious about their tram service. But the absolute best part is that all of
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the traffic lights have transit signal priority. So, as soon as the tram gets close to the signal, it turns green to let us go through. Okay. Well, technically not a green light, but two vertical white dots, but you get the idea. I routinely take trips around Amsterdam where the tram never stops at a red light once. We rarely get stuck in traffic either because most tram lines have dedicated lanes. So, while there might be a traffic jam for cars, the tram sails right past them. So, there
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are many times when it's faster for me to take the tram than to drive, especially during rush hour. These dedicated lanes are also used by emergency vehicles, which significantly reduces emergency response times. Yet another reason why cities should have dedicated lanes for public transit pretty much everywhere they can. But when access for emergency vehicles isn't required, tram tracks can run over grass, which makes the city look so much nicer. Seriously, look at how much
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better this looks compared to an asphalt street. I love grassy tram tracks. Trams are also electric, so they don't pollute the city air, and their low rolling resistance and high passenger capacity makes them one of the most energyefficient forms of transportation available. This makes it so much nicer to be in a city with trams rather than a city with a lot of cars and buses. The Amsterdam tram network is entirely run by renewable energy, which is incredibly important not only for
4:13
climate change, but also to reduce European dependence on imported fossil fuels. Modern trams are relatively quiet, too, as they're equipped with active sound dampening and other technical improvements. They're still not silent, of course, but they're much quieter than the same number of people transported by car or bus. That horrific wheel slip common in older designs has been mostly solved in modern trams through wheel lubrication, advanced wheel assemblies that can turn
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independently, and improvements in track design. And those beautiful grassy tram tracks actually absorb sound, too, which makes them even better. Tramas can provide rapid transit to urban areas, but they can also run at high speed to suburban areas or other cities in the region. And trams can be linked together to easily double capacity where needed. Trams can be double-decker for added capacity as well, though Hong Kong is the only place that still has these in regular
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operation as they're less practical. They're an amazing way to see the city, though, and only a tram could fit down these ridiculously narrow streets in Lisbon. There are also tram trains which can run on standard train lines outside of the city, providing inter urban service and then serving as trams for local service when they get inside the city. And trams can run underground if required, which makes them more like a metro train. I used to live in Brussels
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where they have several of these trains called pre-metro which are tram lines with many of the design elements of a metro. So they can be converted to a metro train if a higher capacity line is required in the future. Several pre-metro lines have already been converted into fully underground metro lines here in Brussels. Having these options available makes trams very flexible to handle different types of transportation requirements for different parts of the city. In North America, trams are
6:08
usually called street cars, really just for historical reasons. Older street car lines often run in mixed traffic with cars and have very short distances between stops, but that's not universal. There are also several US cities that have built new tram lines, and they still call them street cars. Though, you might also hear the term LRT or light rail transit. These are trams that pretty much always run in their own lane, have stops that are farther apart, and have higher capacities and higher
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average speeds. But again, this isn't always the case. Transit enthusiasts love to argue about the exact definitions, but in reality, these terms overlap a lot, and their usage varies by region. I swear some Canadian cities only use the term LRT because street car has a bad name. But whatever you call them, what I think makes trams better than any other form of transportation in the city is how well they integrate into urban environments. The ultimate goal of any city should be to make great
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walkable places, mixed juice, walkable neighborhoods with lots of interesting things at ground level like cafes, street vendors, parks, libraries, offices, and homes. The street should feel like an outdoor room with a feeling of enclosure and a unique sense of place. places where everything is at a human scale with liveless and vibrancy that gives people reason to linger and enjoy themselves. I believe that when it comes to designing great urban places, places like these should be our end
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goal. This is the kind of place we should want to build. So, anything else we build in the city should be compatible with a place like this. But how are people going to get to and from this place? Sure, a lot of people are going to walk here because they live nearby in apartments above the shops or a house around the corner somewhere within walking distance. And if we're designing urban places properly, then a majority of destinations that most people would need to go to on a daily
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basis should be within a short walk of their house. But even in the ideal walkable city, there will always be some destinations that are too far to walk. Whether that's your office or a medical specialist or a movie theater, there will be something you need to go to that's not going to be within walking distance. So, we need a way to integrate motorized transportation into this kind of highquality urban environment without compromising walkability. And the best way to do that is with trams. Tram
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should be thought of as a walking accelerator. They're a way to go from one mixeduse walkable neighborhood to another mixeduse walkable neighborhood faster than you could go by walking. Trams run at ground level, and this is a major benefit. With level boarding, it's easy to walk up to the tram stop, get on, and have it take you to your destination. It feels as natural as walking somewhere, which is why when done well, trams feel like they're accelerating walking. There is literally
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no other form of transportation that is more accessible than a ground level tram stop with level boarding. It doesn't matter if you're pushing a stroller or a suitcase or carrying something heavy or even using a wheelchair. There is no vehicle easier to get into than a well-designed tram. This is what truly accessible transportation looks like. And this should be the norm in cities everywhere. But importantly, trams provide this highquality transportation without sacrificing the walkability of
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the neighborhoods they go through. And this applies to new developments as well. One of the major benefits of a tram is that when it is built, it encourages development along the line. This is a much stronger effect with trams than with bus lines because trams are correctly seen as being more permanent. So when a tram line is built somewhere, it increases the value of that land because having a rapid transit line nearby makes an area more desirable. In fact, this was the reason
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why many early street car lines were built in the first place. Property developers would buy land on the edge of the city and then build a street car line out to that land to make it more valuable. In the US and Canada, these were known as street car suburbs, and they are often some of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city today, even if the street cars have been removed. The 1930s really was the peak of North American urban planning. It's all been downhill since then. Of course,
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the best cities in the world are still doing this today. And I've talked before about Iberg in Amsterdam. When this neighborhood was built, the tram line was built first before any of the homes were completed. This ensured that when people moved in, they already had highquality public transit service available. And I also noticed something similar when I recently visited the sunny tropical city of Bergen in Norway. Their new line 2 LRT extends through underused industrial land, which is not
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being used efficiently today. But building the LRT through here makes this area much better for new urban development. This is in stark contrast to where I grew up in Canada, where every new neighborhood is built so that everybody needs to drive and then they try to fit in public transit later when traffic congestion has become unbearable. But I've talked about that in previous videos, so it's not worth repeating here. Several American cities have built new street car lines over the past few
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years with a specific goal of encouraging new development, which has worked extremely well in some cities, the best example being Portland. Though in other cities, it seems like spurring development was the only consideration. And there wasn't much thought put into making these street cars a good long-term public transit service. But that's a whole other discussion. So, if you'd like to learn more, I have a great conversation with RM Transit about this on my podcast, The Urbanist Agenda. I'll
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leave a link to that episode in the description, or you can look it up on your podcast platform of choice. Of course, it is possible to build great urban places without tra, but trams are a catalyst to good urbanism. Tramas transport huge numbers of people without much disruption, and they don't require a lot of large infrastructure. Dedicated tram lines narrow the street, which we know results in slower car speeds and safer streets for everyone. It's just generally easier to build a good
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streetscape when there are trams on the street. And there are many examples of this from cities all over the world. Like I'm pretty sure that this is the nicest street in Houston by a very wide margin. People often say that East Berlin has better urbanism than West Berlin. And I agree. There are many reasons for this, but I believe that one key factor is that the Americans ripped out the tram lines from West Berlin to make more room for cars, while the Soviets expanded and improved tram
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service, which led to East Berlin having better walkable urban places that have persisted to this day. Tramas can even be seamlessly integrated into pedestrian places without destroying what makes these places work so well. Look at how well the trams integrate into Alexander Plats, a pedestrianized square in Berlin. There is no other form of surface transportation that would fit so well into a place like this. And plus, it's a great way for Jason Bourne to evade CIA operatives.
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On the tram. I don't think he's on the He's on the tram. Consider this square in Rotterdam. This is a pedestrianized area and it's really nice. People can and do walk wherever they want. There are tram rails here, but they're sunken into the ground so that they're barely noticeable. And when a tram needs to come through here, it does. Tram run on rails and so they're really predictable. Everybody knows where the tram is going to go, so they wait a moment for it to pass and then continue
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walking. Now, compare that to the center of Kroningan. The city center here is mostly pedestrianized, but there are areas like this one that need to be accessible by bus. And look at what it does to this square. Suddenly, this is no longer a pedestrian area with public transit. It's a road with asphalt and curbs. So, a lot of people avoid the road and cross only at designated crossings. This is an inferior experience for people walking and it detracts from the otherwise great
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urbanism here. As a result, Croningan redesigned this square to remove the buses and street, which okay, it looks great and it makes this area better, but it also makes it harder to get to the center by public transit. If Karonin had a tram network, it could run the trams through the city center with minimal disruption, which would allow it to maintain good connectivity by public transit while also preserving the highquality walkability of the area. Of course, the
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other form of transportation that fits very well into great urban places is an underground metro train. Here's a good example of this from Lisbon. This metro entrance is in the middle of a very walkable area with dozens of destinations immediately available. This is the best way to design an urban metro station so that it is tightly integrated with the rest of the neighborhood. Japan also does this well with metro stations and train stations being very tightly
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integrated into the surrounding shopping centers and office buildings. and with exits that lead directly to highquality walkable streets. And I talked about that in a previous video. So, the area around a metro station should be a mixeduse walkable neighborhood to get the most benefit from that expensive investment in transit. But consider this metro station in Montreal, Canada, where you exit the station at the side of a suburban style strode. This kind of land use devalues
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the expensive investment in public transit by turning the most valuable land in the city, the land around rapid transit stops, into a car sewer. Now, you might be wondering, why would they do this? Why do they put a metro station right next to a high-speed road for cars? And the reason is that there used to be street cars here. Just like every other city, Montreal used to have an extensive network of street cars, but they were torn out to make more room for cars. Today, a lot of these former
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street car streets look kind of rundown and crappy because in general, people don't want to shop next to four lanes of car traffic. This was very common in Toronto, too. For the first few decades of subway building, Toronto would build a subway line under a street car line and then remove the street car. In fact, this was a stated goal of the subway system. It was built less as a way to improve public transit and more as a way to make more room for cars. On the
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surface, on the opening day of the first subway in 1954, the guy who was in charge of the Toronto Transit Commission was quoted as saying, "The Queen Street subway should be started at once, eliminating 80% of the remaining street car operation in the downtown area and freeing many main streets for one-way traffic." And even though this was done to make more space for cars, it has led many people in North America to believe that street cars are inferior to subways
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and that the end goal of any street car line is to be converted into a subway. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the benefit of trams and how they relate to metros. Consider this street in Rotterdam. This is the Cole Single, which was recently redesigned to make more space for walking, cycling, and public transit. This tram used to run down the middle of the road, but one half of the road was cut off to cars completely and turned into this giant sidewalk and bicycle path. It's great,
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but what's important here is that this tram line runs right on top of a metro line. In fact, they share several of the same stations. Roderdam didn't remove this tram line when they built the metro because they understood that trams and metro trains serve different purposes. Trams are useful for short-d distance trips within the city from one walkable neighborhood to another, and they stop regularly to service many different destinations. They're the walking
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accelerator. Metros, on the other hand, are meant for long-d distanceance travel. Metro stations are expensive, whether they're for underground subways or for elevated rail. So, there are fewer stations and those stations are farther apart. But that's okay because these metro stations are meant for long-d distanceance travel, which means that trains can't stop too often or it would impact travel times. But since stations need to be placed relatively far apart, there will inevitably be
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areas along the line that aren't within walking distance of a metro station. And this is where trams come in. While metro stations may be the catalyst for great urbanism near their stations, trams enable great urbanism along the entire line. The whole time you're underground on the metro, you can't see anything. So, it feels really disconnected from the street life. I like taking the metro, but I find that I don't really discover interesting new places like I do on a tram, and I never get a good
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feeling for the city when traveling only by metro. Tra stops can and should be closer together than metro stations. And that's easier to do because they are significantly cheaper to build. And since they're supposed to be a walking accelerator, they should be as close to as many destinations as possible. In fact, for travel within a city, a good tram line can actually be faster than a metro line. Metro stations are far apart, so it's likely you'll need to walk some distance to get to the
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station. And when you get there, you'll have to go down underground to get to the train, which also takes time, especially if you need to use an elevator. Then, while you may travel very quickly between stations, you'll have to do it all again on the other side, waiting for elevators, walking upstairs, walking down hallways, and walking to your destination. For a tram line, the nearest stop is likely to be closer both to your origin and to your destination.
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And you board it right at street level. No extra hallways, fairgates, escalators, or elevators required. So, while the tram may travel slower than a metro train, the whole trip could actually be faster. Although there are also lots of trams that travel plenty fast, this one is going nearly 70 kmh. There are several tram lines in Amsterdam that intersect with metro lines at multiple stations. because it's understood that trams will take you closer to your destination, but the
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metro will travel faster for long-d distanceance travel. So, there are lots of situations where you would want to transfer from the tram to the metro and vice versa. In short, trams are not inferior metros. They serve a different purpose, and a truly great city will use both. Though since metros are about 10 times as expensive as trams, they should mostly be used for connecting suburban destinations to the city center with the bulk of the coverage in urban areas being handled by
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trams. There are also some people who believe that trams should be replaced with buses, which is an even more wrong understanding of public transit. Buses in general have a pretty bad reputation. Some of this is deserved, but much of it is not. In particular, there is a very strong stigma against buses in the majority of cities in the US and Canada. They're seen as a vastly inferior form of transportation that's really just there as a kind of welfare for the poor.
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This has nothing to do with the buses themselves, but rather because public transit has been so chronically underfunded and compromised for so many decades in favor of drivers that nobody would voluntarily choose to take the bus if they could afford to drive. But that isn't the case in places with functional public transit, such as real London, where I lived for several years. Since the buses there offer a viable alternative to driving, I would routinely see people of all kinds taking
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the bus regardless of their level of income. But that aside, it is less comfortable to ride a bus than a tram. This is particularly true in North America because buses there are worse than buses in Europe. There are a variety of reasons for this that I'm not going to go into, but I'll leave a link in the description to an RM Transit video if you'd like to learn more. Buses rock back and forth and the ride can be very bumpy and getting on and off the bus is nowhere near as easy or
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convenient as it is for a tram. Diesel buses are loud and they really stink. They're
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horrible. Electric buses are so much nicer and I'm glad that these are becoming more common. though they're still not as environmentally friendly or energyefficient as a tram and their batteries need to be replaced about every 10 years. Trolley buses are a good option in some places, especially cities with a lot of hills, though they have higher upfront costs than traditional buses, and they still carry far fewer passengers than trams. Typically, about 2 and 1/2 times as many buses are needed
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compared to trams to transport the same number of passengers. Buses do still have their place in a good transit network, though. They're particularly useful for low-volume feeder routes that connect lower density areas of the city to the rest of the transit system. But when it comes to high capacity routes in urban areas, those should be built using metros and trams, not buses. And even though the stigma against buses isn't justified, it does exist. And trams are seen by most
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people as a superior transit option. So, if the goal is to get as many people as possible onto public transit, then trams do that better. Trams are also a better fit for cycling. Yeah, that's right. I said it. Trams are better for bicycles than buses. I sometimes hear cyclists cursing trams because that gap next to the tram tracks seems like it was precision engineered to trap bicycle wheels. And I get it. I've fallen on street car tracks before. It's dangerous
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and it hurts like hell. But direct your anger appropriately. This isn't a problem with tram tracks. It's a problem with shitty cycling infrastructure. I fell on Dundas Street in Toronto because I was squeezed between the tram tracks and the parked cars. But if those parked cars weren't there, or if there was a proper bicycle path, then I never would have had to get near the tram tracks. And that's the way it is here in Amsterdam. The vast majority of time there's either lots of space because
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parked cars have been removed or there's a protected bicycle path and people cycling only cross the tram tracks perpendicularly. Plus, there are potential solutions to this such as this street in Basil, Switzerland. Here they installed rubber covers that can be pushed down by a tram wheel but not a bicycle wheel. Trams are also predictable, so I feel much safer riding next to a tram. Riding next to buses is much much more dangerous because they can turn into your path at any time. And
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the worst are those shared bike and bus lanes because buses drive faster than bikes. So the bus always needs to pass people cycling, but then the bus needs to stop and then all the people cycling need to pass the bus. Another alternative to trams that is often proposed is BRTS or bus rapid transit, which are bus lines that run in dedicated lanes. They often have well-designed island bus stops with ticket machines, electronic signs, and other elements that make them very
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similar to tram stops. BRTs are often sold as an alternative to trams because they are less expensive and easier to implement than a tram or LRT project. Though, some BRT projects are so wildly overbuilt that they're even more expensive than a tram. The Missaga Transit Way in Canada costs $34 million per kilometer, which is insane. Incidentally, when I went to confirm the final cost numbers on Wikipedia, I noticed that I'm quoted in the criticism section. But the truth is, whenever a
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BRT project is significantly cheaper than a tram project, it's because it's been compromised in some way. This is so common that it has a name, BRT creep, where the original plan for a proper BRT gets chipped away so much that the BRT turns into a JAB or just a bus. BRT creep became so common in the US that in 2012, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy introduced a rating system called the BRT standard that can be used to determine if a bus system deserves the term BRT. A few
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years ago, my hometown of fake London had plans to build an LRT, but the plan was chopped down significantly and downgraded to a BRT, which if the latest renders are accurate, looks like it's well on its way to becoming just a bus. This is a really, really common outcome for BRT projects, which is why I'm pretty negative about them. The most common excuse given to downgrade from an LRT to a BRT is financial concerns. But in my experience, the underlying reason is
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because they want to make compromises to avoid inconveniencing drivers, which always ends up delivering inferior transit and a worse experience for transit riders. In the long run, though, trams beat out buses financially. Tra require a higher upfront cost to install tracks and overhead lines, but trams have lower operating costs because they carry more people than buses. And the vehicles last about 2 and 1/2 times longer as well because trams have a simpler mechanical design. So, in the
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end, trams are actually cheaper than buses. And this isn't a trivial amount of money either. I remember when Toronto was forced to temporarily replace the Queen Street car with buses and the transit agency said that they were spending a million dollar a month to maintain the same service level with buses because of extra labor, maintenance, fuel, and logistical costs. There's also a political reason why this is important. It is way easier to get funding to build new transit than it is
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to get funding for operating transit, at least in developed countries. So, anything you can do to reduce the operating cost is a good thing, even if it makes the initial capital costs more expensive. For what it's worth, BRTs can be a better financial decision in developing countries where labor costs are low and there is already a lot of local expertise in maintaining buses compared to rail vehicles. and BRT systems are easier to build in phases where a normal bus line continues to
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operate as parts of the line get converted into a BRT over time. It is also technically possible to convert a BRT line to an LRT line in the future, but this will only happen when the BRT line has run into capacity issues, which means that inevitably your city's busiest BRT line will be out of commission for years while it's being upgraded to an LRT. And that process doesn't always go as planned. And it may be that BRTs are suitable in lowdensity suburbs where ridership will never get
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to high enough levels to justify an LRT. Though even suburbs shouldn't discount the ability for an LRT to bring in more new development than a BRT, which alone could justify the higher initial investment. So, there are some valid situations where a BRT can make more sense over an LRT or tram line, but I honestly think those situations are pretty rare. In my opinion, if you live in a developed country, your city should not be building a BRT. Now, some people will say that
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buses are better than trams because they can drive around obstacles. And yeah, trams can get stuck sometimes. Though on a dense tram network, there are still options for detours. But the real solution is to make a clear route for public transit. We need to take public transit seriously and ensure that it is functioning well, not let stuff block the lane and make the transit experience worse. We got enough problems with BRTs becoming JABS without the same disease
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infecting LRTs. Of course, the most common reason why people think trams, or more likely street cars, should be replaced with buses is because they drive their car in the middle of the city and they're upset that they need to wait for public transit. I heard this constantly in Toronto where it's routine for suburbanites to complain that the street cars are in their way and blocking traffic. They have it completely backwards. Of course, every one of these street cars has a capacity
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of 130 people and they're very well used, but they are routinely held up by a single occupancy driver making a left turn. So, let's be clear here. It's the cars that are in the way of the street cars and not the other way around. And since the only solution to car traffic is viable alternatives to driving, letting cars block the street cars is only going to make traffic worse. The trams work really well in Amsterdam, and our family uses them regularly, but they're not perfect.
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There are some cities that do tra even better, like Vienna or Zurich, which has some of the highest transit passenger satisfaction scores in the world. Unfortunately, since the pandemic, there has been a chronic shortage of tram drivers and a serious shortage of funding as well to the point where Bay wants to remove some tram lines. They reverse their plan to remove tram line 19, but it looks like tram line 3 might actually be removed in March 2026 with different segments of its route being
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picked up by other tram lines. This means that trams aren't running as often as they should and wait times can be longer than they were a few years ago. and the fairs are becoming more expensive to cover the gap in funding. This could lead to a vicious cycle where transit becomes worse every year while also becoming more expensive, meaning fewer people take transit and the funding problems deepen. This is only going to get worse as our new right-wing government plans to cut 110 million per
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year of public transit funding, proving once again that voting left doesn't guarantee you'll get a great city, but voting right does guarantee that you won't. It is critically important that cities properly fund their public transportation so that transit can be a viable alternative to driving as it is here in Amsterdam because the alternative is a place like Toronto where car traffic is crippling because public transit is no longer a viable alternative due to decades of chronic
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underfunding. These street cars in Toronto are barely functional. They get stuck in traffic. They get stuck at red lights. They crawl through intersections. They have totally unreliable schedules and arrive in bunches. And boarding in the middle of the street is stupid. But to be honest, there are so many things that Toronto does wrong with its street cars that I'm working on a follow-up video on just that topic. It's useful to talk about transit done wrong as a way to learn how
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it's done correctly, but I don't want to end this video on such a depressing topic because there are lots of cities that do tra properly and they reap the benefits. They're a highcapacity, accessible, and highly efficient form of transportation that seamlessly integrates into great urban places. And they make it easier to build those great urban places. They encourage new development and they make neighborhoods better places to live. And there's no better way to explore your city than
33:48
through the window of a tram, which is why every city in the world needs more trams, especially if they have grassy tram tracks. I'd also like to share something else I use regularly, and that's incogn. Incogn is a service that automatically removes your personal data from the internet. Your personal data ends up in hundreds of databases every time you shop or use online services. And many of these companies sell your information to data brokers who compile it and resell
34:17
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34:44
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35:10
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35:37
incogn.com/notusbikes or use the promo code notbikes at checkout for 60% off an annual subscription. Thanks for watching and thanks to incogn for sponsoring this video.
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