Light rail/trams are better especially for avenues etc. But busses are more flexible, and you usually need a combination of both for best results

Buses for longer journeys make sense. We have a bunch of buses in London that run from the city centre out towards the green belt. Buses for those especially long journeys makes sense.

Buses are awful for long journeys. Trams for longer journeys make sense. You need the buses to get you to the tram stop.

Pretty much the point of trams are that they’re in populated areas, are in walking distance, and have many stops. They’re local public transport.

In cities they’re equivalent to buses, and in many countries existing trams where replaced by bus routes starting in the 1960s.

If you need longer and faster transport, metro and light rail are the modes to bring people to and around town.

Have you actually ever seen the tram network in North Rhine and Westphalia, Germany? Also in many places in the world the replacement of trams by buses has been since seen as a mistake and there are plenty of examples of extensive new trams networks introduced and in planning in cities where they got rid of them in 1960s.

Have you actually ever seen the tram network in North Rhine and Westphalia, Germany?

Yes, thank you, I was born there. What is it you’re trying to tell me?

Also in many places in the world the replacement of trams by buses has been since seen as a mistake and there are plenty of examples of extensive new trams networks introduced and in planning in cities where they got rid of them in 1960s.

Yes, thank you, I live in Berlin, the city where one part decided to trash it’s tram network, replaced it with buses, and is now struggling to get it back.

Still not sure what you’re trying to tell me, where did I say it was a good idea? I said the two modes are comparable.

I would argue they’re not equal. Bus makes a bad replacement for a tram and tram can’t really replace the bus if there are no tracks. The reason why I was asking is because Essen and Mühlheim a.d. Ruhr plus some nearby areas have got sections where trams aren’t confined to just the populated areas and do not have many stops and outside the city core they aren’t Stadtbahn, but are that and much more outside the urban areas, act part of the way like the good old Strassenbahn but are marked as Stadtbahn. I guess I don’t really have a point here, just rambling. But really there’s big difference between what you can offer on rails (if you don’t make stupid planning decisions and your system isn’t falling into disrepair) and by buses. Yes, they’re comparable mostly in the way that they’re both moving dozens of people per unit. In everything else, how comparable are they?

Well, like I said, I agree buses aren’t a good replacement, but they’re comparable in the way they’re used in cities: as a short to medium ranged local transport. You wouldn’t want to take the bus from one end of Berlin to the other, you would take the S-Bahn, because that’s what it’s for.

Compare the bus network with the tram network in East Berlin. The buses (usually) run where the trams don’t, but they have a similar amount of stops. Of course there’s overlap between the modes, but the general idea is: tram/bus for short to medium distance, S-Bahn for medium to long distance, and U-Bahn bridging between them.

They’re also comparable in accessibility: with the U- and S-Bahn I have to enter a station. With the tram, I just step out my house, go to the next corner, there it is. Same with buses.