Yeah I actually think that’s one of the strongest arguments for trams in Brisbane, people might be willing to have ‘tram lanes’ where they wouldn’t go for a bus lane.
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I agree there is no maths or science that explains it but people seem to accept trans differently to buses. Cultural no doubt.
I think a big part to it comes down to trams providing a highly visible mode of transport with a readily identifiable route - the trams are visually distinctive, the route is literally laid in concrete and not open to any deviations beyond route branching, and you can clearly identify where it runs and follow it both in the physical environment and on Google Maps, etc.
The busway, and particularly the Metro routes do share some of these elements - they are also distinctive vehicles in the environment, and run along a largely predefined route) but there are differences in that the route isn’t as visually apparent in some parts of the urban environment.
I think there is also the difficulty in interpreting route numbers if you are either an infrequent PT user or travelling through an unfamiliar area. If you’re used to the 1XX routes of the southside, 2XX & 3XX routes may prove daunting.
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Its probably due to network effects. When you have a tram line, you can have network designs where buses run as feeder services to a station on it and then end. This frees up a lot of route-km to run more bus services. So your catchment area is better served overall.
This is much harder to do (though not impossible) with BRT systems because if you transfer one or two bus loads to a trunk BRT route, it is then full. We have seen this sort of play out with the Brisbane Metro where only low frequency routes have been selected to be feeder services to it as the vehicle does not have the capacity to take on a large volume of transferring passengers.
Newer LRT lines tend to get their own lane, whereas BRT services tend to be run in mixed traffic still (e.g. Brisbane CityGliders).
So indirectly it is probably related to (a) more network design possibilities with LRT (b) trunk capacity and (c) priority ROW.
Remember, many tram networks and train lines in Australia have been shut down, so the permanence argument is not really supported by historical evidence.
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This had nothing to with efficiency or use or anything other than politicians were convinced by lobbyists (still are) that the future was individual cars, trucks and/or buses… and we see how that turned out!
Removing trams and railways will go down as some of the stupidest transport decisions Govt ever made.
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I think it was a few factors. Operating in mixed traffic certainly didn’t help. Is there a graph of patronage over time?
What were the gauge of the trams?
Standard gauge I am pretty certain.
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Correct, standard gauge.
All trams in Australia use standard gauge, with the interesting outcome that in Melbourne and Adelaide they are narrower than heavy rail, while at Helensvale if you change from heavy to light rail you actually change to wider gauge.
For interest, Victoria (Melbourne) had some trams operated by Victorian Railways. One of these tramlines was 5’ 3" gauge (St Kilda Station to Brighton Station). Opened 1906, closed 1959.
I didn’t know that - interesting.
In Switzerland and some other European countries they use a lot of metre gauge trams which seem to be very good at fitting into streets and turning tight corners.
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Yes—Brisbane’s tram patronage in 1969 was significantly greater than bus patronage today.
Here’s a comparison based on historical and current data:
Tram Patronage in 1969
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Although the tram network was in decline by 1969, annual patronage was still around 64 million passenger journeys just before closure
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At its peak in 1944–45, the tram system carried almost 160 million passengers annually
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Bus Patronage Today (2025)
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In the six months following the introduction of 50 cent fares, Brisbane buses carried 59.1 million passengers
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This suggests an annualised figure of around 118–120 million, assuming consistent usage.
Conclusion
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In 1969, tram patronage was comparable to or slightly lower than today’s bus patronage, but still substantial.
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At peak, tram usage far exceeded current bus patronage.
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In a city a fraction of the population. But in 1946 most people didn’t own a car.
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That’s the major point! Even into the 1960s car ownership numbers wouldn’t be a patch on what it is today.
Had the tram system been retained, it is unlikely that passenger numbers would have gotten back to that 1944-1945 peak.
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100%. Just look at Melbourne tram patronage for a comparison.
- 1945 wartime peak at almost 355 million
- 2015 with FTZ still only 182 million or so
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When every single planning decision is made to prioritise car travel (as has been the case for over 50 years) it would be mad to expect anything else. But the decline is an outcome of those decisions not an input imto them.
In this case, simple lobbying seems like an incomplete explanation. This is because if you compare the peak to now, there has been a huge collapse in PT patronage, somewhere in the order of 2.5x reduction.
Light and heavy rail are efficient at moving large volumes of people. But if those volumes fall, the high fixed costs of maintaining poles, wires, electricity generation stations, track etc becomes significant.
Its well known that PT needed much less subsidy in the past, the massive and progressive collapse in patronage would have created enormous financial pressure.
As the car allowed development to escape away from the fixed-rail network, if you wanted to catch up you would have also needed to extend the trams further. At some point this becomes unviable due to cost of extension, and the line becoming too long and too slow with too many stops.
This is less of a problem with express buses which can run an express pattern and extend into new areas without needing investment into Priority B corridors first.
The Paddington tram depot fire was probably the tipping point in all of this.
Is this figure for BCC buses or SEQ as a whole? I reckon the BCC bus figures would be a good like for like comparison as the trams were exclusively in this area.
Apparently the Melbourne trams ran every 10 minutes at worst (including evenings) until 1954.
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Doesn’t Sydney’s L1 use a different gauge from the other lines?