Once upon a time Melbourne had freight trams!
Once upon a time Melbourne had freight trams!
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/534457
Do you think Melbourne should bring them back?
it kills me that cargo trams aren't completely normal, especially when you have entire neighbourhoods built around the tramway with their own downtowns filled with stores, it makes so much sense to just run cargo trams there in the off-hours and offload things to the stores!
They should add rolling pubs as well. Imagine if you didn't have to bring your own longneck!
They had a restaurant tram (actually three) that were only cancelled in 2018!
Berlin also had a tram bar but I can't find any information about whether it's still running: https://urban-transit.tumblr.com/post/87126397871/berliner-fahrbar-the-party-tram-available-for (sorry for the Tumblr link)
Damn, didn't know they cancelled those restaurant trams, those were still on my to do list. I always saw them loading up at Whiteman Street and it seemed like a cool thing to do once.
Something like a food truck on rails could be cool as well. Like it rolls by and you grab a shawarma
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Oh, I love that!
Obviously doesn't work everywhere but a lot of cities with rivers or canals have boat pubs that go up and down and around the place
They're pretty fun
Fascinating! I had no idea
@maegul oh hells yeah, bring 'em back!
Many cities tried cargo trams, and one would assume that the complete absence of them nowadays is for a good reason. Manual loading and unloading alone seems a complete nightmare. It's not worth the hassle.
Maybe. But there's too much of a chance that they were dropped within an unmitigated pro-car/truck frame of mind. It'd still be interesting to know what the tradeoffs are. For high density car free zones I'd bet they hold some potential value.
Viennas government always was very proud of their public transport department, it's one of their poster childs for showing off. I can guarantee you, if they could have made it work, they would.
Delivery cars are allowed in all car-free zones I'm aware of. And that's just fine. I know what community we are in, but those simply are necessary.
As with all things related to public transit, never assume the modern absence is for a good reason. Big car and big oil have spent a century shaping cities for their own benefit.
Freight doesn't move on its own, unlike passengers. For a freight tram to work, it would need to be extremely rapidly loaded and unloaded and not clog up the tracks while loading/unloading or have dedicated sidings which greatly increases infrastructure complexity. Freight trucks & vans have the benefit of being able to park kind of out of the way while a person unloads pallets and dollys of stuff.
Rail freight really makes the most sense for hub-hub movements or for pickup/dropoff of larger quantities of goods, its just too slow to load and unload to make much sense for last mile pickup/delivery in most cases with LCL loads unless its a large enough amount of stuff to warrant a siding, at which point you're at an electric engine picking up and dropping off freight cars so that they can be loaded/unloaded without tying up the engine from moving other freight cars.
I'm sure there's specific usecases where a freight tram would actually make sense, but I imagine most of those usecases would also be better served by a combine tram that does both passenger and freight
I'm a snow pea man myself
@maegul Once upon a time vienna hat trams for body transports... to the cemetery