News & Discussion: Trams

[how good is he]

Ok I agree with the logic if cars were just sitting on main roads/thoroughfares all day & adding no benefit. However I am thinking more about the businesses (in this example around Kent Town) and the outcome of removing all of the on street parking coupled with limited off street parking. Most of these on street parks are limited to say 15 mins ~1 hr to keep customers (and businesses) ticking over ie. the life blood of the business; so a removal of these car parks could severley effect their business/income/jobs,

[Haso]

With all due respect for some of you who might be able to see some reasons for the city loop now… but I cannot see them until Adelaide magically has tram lines coming from the suburbs as it is proposed with four tram links. I am afraid that will not happen soon. Labor party has been in government since the 2002 election and that is 16 years. I am afraid that it really does not matter anymore are they good or bad or average, the people will vote for some change and that means… good bye to trams for a long time or maybe, maybe just one line. I dearly hope that I am wrong in my prediction.

At present, I do not see the city loop as a feeder or as a connector or whatever else until then. The trams will be mostly “white elephants” without any real purpose and most of the time empty regardless of the chosen route, especially in the south area. For sure I will travel on them once when they open but that will be it. Trams in the loop will probably be free but even that would not be enough to attract enough passengers and generate mass development along the route, particularly in southern areas. CBD's always had their own dynamics regardless of what we would like. Like it or not, in Adelaide we have practically only two busy areas - Rundle & Hindley Sts and the Central Market area and not major activity in other areas of the CBD. Today we also have free City Bus connectors, they run only until 7 pm, and whenever I have chance to look at them they are more or less empty like a very good portion of the city after 7pm. They are busy only around 9am and 5pm. I would like to know how many people use 99A and 99C daily as that route vaguely resembles the city loop? Yes, you can add 98 but only the CBD portion.

At the moment, City of Adelaide has population close to 24,000. That number include also North Adelaide. If we cut out North Adelaide the number drops close to 12,000. Almost 20% of that number are international students living in small clusters, mainly in the northern part of the CBD. Twice time per day we have a mass migration in and out and that’s it.
At this state and for the foreseeable future I do not think we will have enough potential passengers to justify the City loop as a standalone project or as an extension of one new outer tram line. Again, we would need to have three of four tram lines to/from suburbs, significant increase in the city population and greater activity/events across the city to attract daily movement in all parts of the city.
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[Nort]

Ok I agree with the logic if cars were just sitting on main roads/thoroughfares all day & adding no benefit. However I am thinking more about the businesses (in this example around Kent Town) and the outcome of removing all of there on street parking coupled with limited off street parking. Most of these on street parks are limited to say 15 mins ~1 hr to keep customers (and businesses) ticking over ie. the life blood of the business; so a removal of these car parks could severley effect their business/income/jobs,

No-one is talking about immediately ripping away all the parking spots from the city, but in situations where the city is getting busy enough that on-street parking is blocking vastly larger numbers of people from using that space it's inevitably going to go over time.

[Llessur2002]

It may mean the entertainment centre line could then be reduced to before & after 9 -5 M-F and weekends only.

A huge number of medical staff at the nRAH will be working shifts so cutting tram services through the day wouldn't go down too well with them.

[timtam20292]

There are a lot of old houses without garages and car ports in the southern half of the city. Until the city magically creates a wonderful public transport system, on street car parks will need be provided to the people living in those homes.

I know, I live in one of them lol

[how good is he]

No I didn’t mean cutting down the tram services to the nRAH, If anything a city loop would increase the services to it. I meant the frequency from the nRAH to the entertainment centre could be reduced for times it was empty/not being used.
To Nort, incorrect ~ all the current new tram extensions (& the future ones announced, judging by the renders/videos) have had all of the on street parking removed ie NOW. And they would need too, as there is no room left anyway.

[Llessur2002]

No I didn’t mean cutting down the tram services to NRAH, If anything a city loop would increase the services to it. I meant the frequency from the NRAH to the entertainment centre could be reduced for times it was empty/not being used.
To Nort, incorrect ~ all the current new tram extensions (and future ones announced judging by the renders/videos) have all the off street parking removed NOW. And they would need too, as there is no room left anyway.

No but cutting services on the Entertainment Centre line at all would reduce services to the nRAH from the west, as well as from/to a popular park and ride. I presume one of the target markets for Bowden apartments is/will be nurses etc, as well as any potential high rise developments along Port Road e.g. the Coca Cola site, the Uni's Thebarton campus.

[how good is he]

Yes reducing the frequency of a service at times it is not being used (while ideally increasing the frequency at times that it is being used), isn’t that logical?

[ml69]

With all due respect for some of you who might be able to see some reasons for the city loop now… but I cannot see them until Adelaide magically has tram lines coming from the suburbs as it is proposed with four tram links. I am afraid that will not happen soon. Labor party has been in government since the 2002 election and that is 16 years. I am afraid that it really does not matter anymore are they good or bad or average, the people will vote for some change and that means… good bye to trams for a long time or maybe, maybe just one line. I dearly hope that I am wrong in my prediction.

At present, I do not see the city loop as a feeder or as a connector or whatever else until then. The trams will be mostly “white elephants” without any real purpose and most of the time empty regardless of the chosen route, especially in the south area. For sure I will travel on them once when they open but that will be it. Trams in the loop will probably be free but even that would not be enough to attract enough passengers and generate mass development along the route, particularly in southern areas. CBD's always had their own dynamics regardless of what we would like. Like it or not, in Adelaide we have practically only two busy areas - Rundle & Hindley Sts and the Central Market area and not major activity in other areas of the CBD. Today we also have free City Bus connectors, they run only until 7 pm, and whenever I have chance to look at them they are more or less empty like a very good portion of the city after 7pm. They are busy only around 9am and 5pm. I would like to know how many people use 99A and 99C daily as that route vaguely resembles the city loop? Yes, you can add 98 but only the CBD portion.

At the moment, City of Adelaide has population close to 24,000. That number include also North Adelaide. If we cut out North Adelaide the number drops close to 12,000. Almost 20% of that number are international students living in small clusters, mainly in the northern part of the CBD. Twice time per day we have a mass migration in and out and that’s it.
At this state and for the foreseeable future I do not think we will have enough potential passengers to justify the City loop as a standalone project or as an extension of one new outer tram line. Again, we would need to have three of four tram lines to/from suburbs, significant increase in the city population and greater activity/events across the city to attract daily movement in all parts of the city.

As for the CityLINK tram loop, I agree with you the southern portion of the loop will be empty most the time. That's why I don't think it should run too deep into the southern CBD because the route is pretty useless unless you live in that area. The City Connector buses should be used to service these more quiet areas of the CBD as they currently do.

As you mentioned, the busiest parts of the CBD is the Rundle/Hindley corridor, along with the Central Market/Gouger St area. So if we have the new tram line serve these busy zones, we can have strong patronage beyond just the morning and afternoon peak.

This is the main reason why the current tramline down KW Street and North Tce is well patronised throughout the day and weekends ... it actually takes people to destinations they want to go to.

[Goodsy]

With all due respect for some of you who might be able to see some reasons for the city loop now… but I cannot see them until Adelaide magically has tram lines coming from the suburbs as it is proposed with four tram links. I am afraid that will not happen soon. Labor party has been in government since the 2002 election and that is 16 years. I am afraid that it really does not matter anymore are they good or bad or average, the people will vote for some change and that means… good bye to trams for a long time or maybe, maybe just one line. I dearly hope that I am wrong in my prediction.

At present, I do not see the city loop as a feeder or as a connector or whatever else until then. The trams will be mostly “white elephants” without any real purpose and most of the time empty regardless of the chosen route, especially in the south area. For sure I will travel on them once when they open but that will be it. Trams in the loop will probably be free but even that would not be enough to attract enough passengers and generate mass development along the route, particularly in southern areas. CBD's always had their own dynamics regardless of what we would like. Like it or not, in Adelaide we have practically only two busy areas - Rundle & Hindley Sts and the Central Market area and not major activity in other areas of the CBD. Today we also have free City Bus connectors, they run only until 7 pm, and whenever I have chance to look at them they are more or less empty like a very good portion of the city after 7pm. They are busy only around 9am and 5pm. I would like to know how many people use 99A and 99C daily as that route vaguely resembles the city loop? Yes, you can add 98 but only the CBD portion.

At the moment, City of Adelaide has population close to 24,000. That number include also North Adelaide. If we cut out North Adelaide the number drops close to 12,000. Almost 20% of that number are international students living in small clusters, mainly in the northern part of the CBD. Twice time per day we have a mass migration in and out and that’s it.
At this state and for the foreseeable future I do not think we will have enough potential passengers to justify the City loop as a standalone project or as an extension of one new outer tram line. Again, we would need to have three of four tram lines to/from suburbs, significant increase in the city population and greater activity/events across the city to attract daily movement in all parts of the city.

As for the CityLINK tram loop, I agree with you the southern portion of the loop will be empty most the time. That's why I don't think it should run too deep into the southern CBD because the route is pretty useless unless you live in that area. The City Connector buses should be used to service these more quiet areas of the CBD as they currently do.

As you mentioned, the busiest parts of the CBD is the Rundle/Hindley corridor, along with the Central Market/Gouger St area. So if we have the new tram line serve these busy zones, we can have strong patronage beyond just the morning and afternoon peak.

This is the main reason why the current tramline down KW Street and North Tce is well patronised throughout the day and weekends ... it actually takes people to destinations they want to go to.

It will raise property values in that part of the CBD and allow future development

[Llessur2002]

Yes reducing the frequency of a service at times it is not being used (while ideally increasing the frequency at times that it is being used), isn’t that logical?

The original quote seemed to suggest stopping services outside of peak, not reducing them:

It may mean the entertainment centre line could then be reduced to before & after 9 -5 M-F and weekends only.

Reducing services to peak and weekends only is different to reducing services outside of peak and weekends. I'd support the latter providing a good and regular (i.e. every 15 minutes) service remained. Less frequent than every 15 minutes will make the service much less attractive to casual users.

[adelaide transport]

Personally I think the proposed City Loop is a waste of time and money. We have the 98/99 services-with a bit of tweeking this could do the job a lot cheaper and would be far more flexible. Cut out the North Adelaide section as the loadings are poor.--If the Adelaide City Council want to take "Tindo" and the North Adelaide route back-let them!
One major road that hasn't been considered or mentioned, yet is a very busy Public Transport thoroughfare is Payneham Road-It could run to Paradise Interchange and would feed many services, it would cut out all those buses travelling along this road. Feeder points could be at Glynde Corner, North-Eastern District Hospital and of course the Interchange.
This would be better value than a City Loop and far more patronage.

[PeFe]

I meant the frequency from the nRAH to the entertainment centre could be reduced for times it was empty/not being used.

When is that? Not when I have been on the tram late at night ....there are always passengers to that part of town.

Personally I think the proposed City Loop is a waste of time and money. We have the 98/99 services-with a bit of tweeking this could do the job a lot cheaper and would be far more flexible.

The whole idea is to generate future development......which came first ....the chicken or the egg......well in Adelaide it looks like public transport has to go first, followed by development...(west) North Terrace, Bowden.....etc

[Torrens_5022]

The City Loop tram will encourage more development in the southern half of the city, it's a city loop so needs to service the entire city, it's pointless having it loop go past the central markets it's only a half city loop if it goes that way, maybe one day a tram will be built down Grote Street but the current plan is designed to bring the city together. Hutt Street is a beautiful yet forgotten corner of the city. There's so many industrial / warehouse type business's in the southern part of the city that would do better as housing, most likely 4 to 8 stories, unless it faces a square or the parklands then who knows 40 or more stories, increased density on the "ugly" sites will leave the cottages intact while dramatically increasing density which will bring cafes, bars, food retail etc, Adelaide's city southern half is a hidden gem, but is a long walk from the CBD it's more like an inner suburb then part of the city (Adelaide 5000) a tram will make it accessible.

[rubberman]

Copper going up near Riverside stop

20180301_142524_resized.jpg (1.92 MiB) Viewed 2743 times

This is just above the scissors crossover.