This does unfortunately happen multiple times per day. Sometimes it’s smaller incidents where the tram driver can get out and collapse the car’s mirror. Other times the owner of the car comes out of a nearby house after the tram used its bell extensively (like today) and moves the car. And then there are times when police needs to get involved to tow the car which often takes upwards of 1 hour.
The truly infuriating part is that if the tram damages a poorly parked car, the transportation company will have to pay the damages. Poorly parked vehicles never get fined and the owners will only need to pay if the car ends up getting towed.
Why do we accept that drivers sabotage a city’s public transport infrastructure like this?
15 minutes is a way too looooong time for this. A good network has a tram every 5-10 minutes, that’s already a big tram Stau and a lot of missed connections for passengers. There just shouldn’t be street side parking options right next to tram tracks.
I’m surprised there wouldn’t be vulture tow truck drivers looking out for these cars and waiting to tow immediately.
There should be no cars allowed on the tram tracks apart from emergency vehicles, buses, and maybe taxis.
Agreed.
While I do think it sometimes just has to be a shared space, a historic or geographic bottleneck for some edge case of a few buildings being completely unreachable otherwise (also for contractors or movers for example). But then cars should be stopped from entering the section with traffic lights, tram passes, cars can pass again. Or on a whitelist basis where only a few residents can get a permit to use it. While for the streetside parking even the edge cases I can’t make up