A jerky stop or start is the greatest problem.

When the Gold Coast line first opened, drivers were presumably not pausing in ‘first notch’ long enough for the brakes to pump off, and people were getting jolted, including the Mayor as seen on TV. Within a few days that was sorted out, and nowadays I have no fears sitting, standing, or walking about the tram without holding on to anything, although my ‘conductor’s legs’ are alert for any mild power surges..

Line speed on most of Stage 2 is 70km/h which is used, although every inch of the way has speeds posted, usually conservatively slow and often for no apparent reason. Lower speeds are religiously observed.

I never move about a moving bus without a firm grip on anything, while Melbourne trams are little smoother than buses, probably the result of many ‘could not care less’ drivers.

As a Melbourne driver myself, there was never a fall reported on my tram in 6 years of driving.

Written as I ride 02 past the school on Queen St where the 40km/h limit is in force 24/7 😡

Regards,

On 22 Mar 2019, at 6:42 am, Prescott lenkaprescott@...> wrote:

They can adjust the acceleration rate etc in the tram computer, so it's not necessarily set by a decision of the manufacturer, but according to what the operator wants. I think a problem with a lot of modern systems is that the people working for them usually come from a non-tram background and think that if you accelerate and brake an electric vehicle too fast, all the standing passengers will fall over. They don't appreciate that there's no jerk in an electric vehicle and it's jerk (as traditionally experienced on vehicles with gearboxes like buses) that is the cause of unsettling people's stability, not the actual acceleration/deceleration. I've had plenty of standing rides in Czech trams accelerating at up to 1.8 m/s/s and I can say that it's no problem except that you should hold onto something, which is plain common sense anyway when standing.

When you look at the Czech videos just posted, it's little wonder that I find the NSW practice of signposting the approach to stops at 10 km/h absolutely maddening. A Czech tram will typically decelerate from line speed (usually 50 km/h on street) to halt in the length of a 60 metre platform. That is, it's still at line speed at the tail of the platform and at halt when it reaches the head of the platform. There is nothing during this to unsettle the standing passenger and nobody falls over. I'm sure it does help though to have an experienced oeprator who knows how to run a tramway system and trains their drivers accordingly.

Tony P