vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #161 / Opinion / Reading article...

You’re sitting in a movie theater on Svetlanskaya, and just when “Men in Black” reaches a tender moment — the birth of a slime-covered alien baby — you hear a faint rumbling out on the street. Or you’re buzzing down Aleutskaya in your car when suddenly a tram halts you by disgorging a mob of fur-and-leather-covered passengers into the roadway.

Are trams intolerable nuisances, or simply fact of life in a metropolis? The answer depends on whom you talk to — and the future direction of urban transportation may be decided by the fact that the man doing most of the talking is Vladivostok Mayor Victor Cherepkov.

The mayor wishes to remove the trams from Svetlanskaya first, and eventually throughout Vladivostok. Cherepkov charges that trams crowd the roadways, creating traffic and wearing out asphalt roads. When a single tram stops, a whole line of them can back up for miles. And during summer downpours, cars can get stuck along tram lines when they slip into potholes hidden under pools of muddy water.

Cherepkov proposes running buses along routes where the trams now run. He calls for the construction of roadside bays at each bus stop, where buses could slip in and out of traffic while picking up passengers.

To buy the 150 buses needed to replace all the city’s trams, the city would spend $12 million — far beyond what the budget is likely to bear. Cherepkov says, however, that commercial buses could cover immediate needs. And he adds that the federal government won’t be paying the $15 million per year that it budgeted in the past to run Vladivostok’s trams.

We’re skeptical. It is true that trams annoy drivers, but drivers create an even greater nuisance for the city at large. It is drivers, after all, who comprise the majority of the traffic, and cars that belch forth most of the smog. After decades of choking traffic and air pollution, some American cities (Sacramento, Calif., and Portland, Ore., for example) are turning to a solution that looks suspiciously like Vladivostok’s current tram system: a network of “light rail” electric trains that run on city streets.

Before Vladivostok throws out its battered but functional tram system, we would like to see a serious study by an independent panel of urban planners, politicians, and private citizens. Scrapping trams may be the worst way to deal with the traffic.