"I'm puzzled when people say the Swiss have good transportation because they're rich. It has nothing to do with that. They're still using trams from 1970. They restore them every 7 years. Making do is part of the culture. If you're using trams for 50 years, that's a hell of a savings."
—Norman Garrick
🇨🇭 🧵
Garrick, who lives in #Zürich, is right. Here's what you see inside the #10 tram I rode to Central: this tram was introduced in 2009, then refitted in 2015 and 2022.
The point is, in #Switzerland, novelty for its own sake isn't a virtue...
They invest in quality, and make it last. That's something the rest of the world could learn from.
I take a look at how #Switzerland revolutionized its transport system, and how that benefits all citizens, in this HIGH SPEED dispatch:
@straphanger And the other notable part: much of the rail infrastructure was created before the country became prosperous (small private Bahnen that were later consolidated into what we have today). The whole it’s-because-they-are-rich, small, and homogenous myth needs to die.
(I live here for 13 years.)
@straphanger Sustainability isn’t such good news here for people with strollers or wheelchairs — you still have to climb three steps. #Basel solved this decades ago by adding low-floor segments to their old trams. In #Zurich, that’s still often not the case, as with line 17 #tram in the photo.
📷 Kurt Rasmussen
@oa: I beg to differ: Except for the very short and only auxilliary line 15, all currently used trams in Zurich have a least one low floor entrance/section, also the line 7 (not 17) in that photo: Actually these trams were AFAIK the first ones in Zurich to offer a lower floor for wheelchairs and strollers: That's why they were called "Sänfte": Because they added a low floor middle part the non-low-floor "Tram 2000".
You can actually see the lowered window line in that picture.
Cc @straphanger
@straphanger: And even afterwards they gave them to IIRC a Ukrainian cities of Vinnitsa and Lviv, where they continue to run yet another bunch of decades:
* https://vbzonline.ch/wie-zuercher-trams-in-der-ukraine-weiterfahren/
* https://www.beobachter.ch/mobilitat/vbz-schenkt-der-ukraine-trams-die-ersten-acht-zurcher-strassenbahnen-sind-nun-angekommen-592738
* https://hoengger.ch/zuercher-trams-drehen-bald-in-der-ukraine-ihre-runden/
* https://www.bahnonline.ch/27017/der-erste-transport-von-ausrangierten-vbz-tram-2000-in-die-ukraine-kann-erfolgen/
(Haven't found any english-written article about, so all these links point to German written articles.)
In der grossen Halle der Zentralwerkstätte ist der Lärm allgegenwärtig: das metallische Kreischen einer Säge, das dumpfe Klopfen eines Hammers, das Summen der Maschinen. Doch Dmytro Tiutiunyk, Systemingenieur für Strassenbahnen, und Maksim Shalamay, Spezialist für Elektromechanik, sind davon nicht abzulenken. Mit konzentriertem Blick stehen sie neben Peter Regli, folgen aufmerksam seinen Erklärungen und notieren sich…
@straphanger In Melbourne too we still have trams on regular routes which were built in the 1970s. :)
Indeed. Their mechanical and electrical systems are probably fairly straightforward to maintain with basic tools.
No need to update the firmware on the Engine Management System to fix a bug introduced by Russian or Chinese hackers, as a totally random example 🙄
@straphanger For what it's worth, San Francisco has a line of "heritage" cars which were originally deployed by then-mayor Dianne Feinstein as a tourist attraction (while the even older cable-car system was being renovated), but now used at least as much by locals. Most of these are American PCC variants from the 1930s and '40s, but some are even older.
(There are a few PCCs in service elsewhere -- Philadelphia and a spur line in Boston -- but those are rebuilds with more modern innards.)
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