The Modern Tramway – What TransLink and Metro Mayors Do Not Want You To Know.
Several recent posts in local transit oriented blogs have denounced the modern tram as some sort of throwback in planning.
Really?
Public Transport is about a user friendly service that provides a quality product for the customer. In over 450 cities around the world (not including strictly Light Rail Operations), the modern tram is the workhorse transit mode, that provides both a user-friendly and non-user friendly transit service that can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
User friendly means easy for the transit customer to use and a service that satisfies ones travel demands.
Non-user friendly means that the service is affordable to the taxpayer and integrates well in urban, suburban and even in rural areas. In urban and suburban operation the modern tram operates on grassed or lawned track, making the tram route a linear park, environmental friendly in congested neighborhoods.
It is well worth remembering, that since Vancouver’s proprietary “SkyTrain” light-metro has been on the market since the late 1970’s, only seven such systems have been sold, with only six remaining in operation. No new SkyTrain system has been sold, in the past 20 years.
During the same period over 150 new tramways have been built around the world and many of the existing tramways have been rebuilt to modern standards, with many more extensions either under construction or being planned.
The 3.9 tramway expansion in Bratislava, replacing costs much, much less than SkyTrain’s elevated guideway, yet provides the same quality of service.
The value of the Petržalka contract is €83.043.464 (CAD $133 million(no VAT). This works out to $34.1 million/km; based on the current cost of the Expo Line extension to Langley, 3.9 km of elevated guideway costs $1.365 billion or put another way, for the same cost of 3.9 km of elevated guideway for SkyTrain light-metro, we could build 40km of modern Tramway!
That is what TransLink and the Mayors Council on Transit do not want the taxpayer or transit customer to know!
Bratislava: The new tramway extension to Petržalka starts service
by Erik Buch
Jungmannova | © Urban Transport Magazine/b
The metre-gauge tram network in the Slovak capital Bratislava has been completely renovated in many places in recent years, and various new low-floor railcars from Skoda now form the basis of the fleet.
Since the 1960s, extensive new housing developments have been built on the south bank of the Danube using standardised prefabricated construction methods. These areas were (and still are) served by various bus lines, which attempt to cope with the rush of passengers, especially during rush hour, by running at short intervals. For a long time, there was talk of building a metro to the districts south of the Danube, but these plans ultimately could not be implemented in Bratislava, which is a fairly compact city. An attempt to connect the area to the tram network was finally made in 2016 with the commissioning of a new 2 km long line with three stops between Safárikovo nám. and Jungmannova, which now also crosses the Danube on a large bridge. However, this only connected a small part of the residential areas.
The extension from the previously temporary Jungmannova terminus with six new stops over 3.9 km to the Južné mesto terminus had been planned for a long time in order to provide better and more direct access to the Petržalka residential area and to significantly reduce bus traffic. Construction began in 2021/22 on the route, which is largely laid on grass tracks on its own right-of-way, partly away from the roads, and was largely completed in autumn 2024. But not quite: on 19 December 2024, an initial test run took place, but various defects in the construction were discovered. Discussions about responsibilities and accountability ensued – and delayed the opening several times.
But today, 27 July 2025, the time has come: trams on line 3 run through to the new terminus at Južné mesto – every 5 minutes on weekdays during the day, with even more frequent service in the morning rush hour, running every 2.5 minutes. Tram line 7 and bus lines 59 and 95 have been discontinued, line 192 has changed its route – and the residents of Petržalka finally have an attractive, fast public transport connection to the city centre!
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A network scheme can be found here:
https://www.urbanrail.net/eu/sk/bratislava/bratislava.htm
