> But light rail (trams, or perhaps called streetcars in American English) can have stops as often as buses.
I have a hard time justifying trams/streetcars over buses. They largely seem equivalent except that buses are more flexible since they're not bound to a set of tracks. For example, if a car crash or other obstacle blocks the tram tracks, the trams have to wait for the obstacle to be cleared. A bus can just go around it.
Buses can (and do, in some places) carry transponders to give them signal priority, just like trams. They can even be given dedicated lanes. And trams don't really carry more passengers per square meter than buses do. The one advantage trams have that I can see is that they avoid the weird cultural stigma that buses tend to carry here in the US.
If you have less than 1000-1500 passengers per hour, buses can work fine. You cannot stuff much more than 100 passenger per bus, and you cannot run buses much more frequently than once per 5 minutes, otherwise the buses tend to cluster and not stay on schedule. (The first bus stops at all stops to pick up all passengers, and the next bus gets less passengers and starts to catch up on the first.)
You can stuff 200-300 passengers into a tram, and a single driver can also drive two linked units, so we're up to 500 passengers. So a single line with 5 minutes intervals can serve up to 6000 passengers per hour.
Trams are more comfortable for the passenger, as the ride is smoother. It's on rails, so no bumps, and acceleration/deceleration generally doesn't have abrupt jerks.
On the other hand, buses are far more flexible; a minor glitch like an accident or someone unloading their moving goods stops a tram on the street totally, because it absolutely doesn't go round any obstacle. Buses do.
It's very small still, of course, but seems to progress without major problems. (They make a point about the exceptional arrangement for the risky investment, i.e. the municipal company bought and operates these buses themselves; normally they just organize the procurement of transport services from private companies who own the buses and hire drivers.)
I have a hard time justifying trams/streetcars over buses. They largely seem equivalent except that buses are more flexible since they're not bound to a set of tracks. For example, if a car crash or other obstacle blocks the tram tracks, the trams have to wait for the obstacle to be cleared. A bus can just go around it.
Buses can (and do, in some places) carry transponders to give them signal priority, just like trams. They can even be given dedicated lanes. And trams don't really carry more passengers per square meter than buses do. The one advantage trams have that I can see is that they avoid the weird cultural stigma that buses tend to carry here in the US.