On 05/05/15 21:50,prescottt@... [TramsDownUnder] wrote:
>

>

> Capacity is the total carrying capacity of the tram. The number of

> seats is pretty irrelevant.


Not when it's 'take the car down to Lygon street for dinner or take the
tram'. So it's a choice between sitting in your car or standing in a
seat deficient D1 tram, I'd recon the car will win every time. Before
people cut in I know D1s are not seen on Lygon Street, but they are in
Chapel street another popular eating street. My wife has friends living
in Brunswick, every time we visit, it's lunch/dinner in Lygon Street
some where.

And if they reduce the frequency of your service from every 10 minutes
to every 20 but claim the same capacity as the new trams hold twice as
many, another reason to take the car instead of the tram. And if you
have to take 2 trams to get to your destination, with reduced service
frequency the interchange penalty gets even worse. Another score for the
car.

Id say a big part of the attraction of the inner suburb trams is their
service frequency, you just wait at a stop and something will be along
shortly. If you start to have to look at timetables to see if it's worth
waiting or not, a major part of the attractiveness of the service is lost.

The traffic's bad enough on those popular strips in Melbourne as it is.
Some will argue it's the trams and things would be better with out them,
but by observation a lot of the delays are people trying to reverse park
cars into the few parking spots. The tram D1 I caught down Chapel Street
on Sunday was spending nearly as much time stopped for people parking
cars as it did for passengers.