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Pretty much every day someone parks their car on the tram tracks and blocks our city's tram network from operating
(feddit.org)
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?
The fault is not with the tram. It's allowing cars on the tram tracks. Ban that, and the problem is fixed.
Most trams I encountered cannot leave their tracks, except that specific Chinese one. Regardless of circumstances they usually are hope- and helplessly stuck. Switch is stuck? Well, every tram driver gets out to set it manually. Accident (even without cars)? Well it's not like you will drive around the site. Broken catenary? Out of luck, again. The system "tram" can hardly mitigate any faults or emergencies, therefore it is flawed IMHO.
btw: Cars are not allowed to park (vulgo: banned) on the tram tracks. There is also plenty of tracks, where cars are not even allowed to drive on (seceded, underground or elevated).
Those problems are incredibly rare on a well designed tram system. Trams are simple machines, and therefore incredibly reliable when well maintained. Not leaving the tracks is an advantage because it makes it super predictable where the tram is going, which means you can easily mix it with bikes and pedestrians (though not cars, which are too bulky and clumsy to mix with anything).