Whose trams are better? Salt Lake City VS Grenoble
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- Salt Lake City's tram system is considered one of the best in the United States, and Grenoble's tram is one of the most developed in France. At the same time, the American system is 12 years newer than the French one. Does this mean that it's better? Let's compare them with each other.
#cityforall #urbanism #publictransport #saltlakecity #grenoble
Timecodes:
00:00 - Intro
00:45 - Cities comparison
01:20 - General numbers
02:30 - Network development
04:32 - Rolling stock
06:20 - Street design
13:58 - Conclusion
Full cab ride at Grenoble Tram E:
• [Tram Cab Ride] Ligne ...
Full cab ride at Salt Lake City Blue Line:
• UTA TRAX BLUE LINE NOR...
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I have never been in Grenoble, but I visited SLC several times in the past 15 years. Besides horrible land use policies common to most US cities (there is no density outside of 10 downtown blocks which are mostly office towers), SLC had a very hot and arid climate, and that explains no grass tracks: no vegetation there would survive there without daily watering and water is precious in that area. But given what they had, and general US taxpayer aversity of spending money on transit and construction bids won by lowest competing bidder, SLC made a system better than in many other US cities.
Out in Phoenix, there's a similar story. The tracks are embedded in concrete. Phoenix is even hotter and drier, so grass wouldn't work either.
in that case they should have left dirt, or planted trees, concrete creates hot domes over cities due to mineralisation of land, it should be especially avoided when possible @@grahamturner2640
Grass would help a lot and chage the microclimate, watering could be done with a drip system from filtered gray water.
@@OliFunWorld In my opinion, there are almost always local plant species that are accustomed to the local climate and do not require too much care.
They could try what some golf courses are using in hot and arid areas, a form of grass that is almost a succulent if I recall correctly.
Anyway, lowering city temperature is more important than watering hundreds of golf courses... So, if there's recycled gray water available for golf courses, there's some for green tracks where it is of the utmost importance.
Hello, I have lived in Grenoble since 1982 and I saw the arrival of the tramway.
The construction of the 5 lines took place from 1987 to 2014. The last three were only built on the condition that housing programs were carried out at the same time (no potential customers = no tramway).
The city of Grenoble and its surrounding area are wedged between three mountain ranges, which limits the sprawl of buildings.
For the same population, the surface area of the Grenoble metropolis is much smaller than the surface area of Salt Lake City, which allows for a more condensed network and a much tighter network.
My brother lived and taught for 18 months in West Jordan, regularly taking the light rail into town.
He told me that the fact that everything is made for the car in the USA prevents the proper development of public transport.
I've visited Grenoble a few years ago really enjoyed it. The city is beautiful on its own, and the tram makes it even more so.
@@cityforall Merci, mon frère a particulièrement la nature qui entoure Salt Lake City, a partagé avec moi ses plus belles photos alors que j'étais en France à m'occuper de notre maman pour qu'il puisse son rêve américain.
Thank you, my brother particularly loves the nature surrounding Salt Lake City, shared with me his most beautiful photos while I was in France taking care of our mother so that he could achieve his American dream.
@@michelroubaud2331 J'espère que vous n'êtes pas offensé par votre frère pour cela
@@cityforall Pas du tout, nous avons parlé ensemble de son départ, je l'ai incité à partir. Nous avons fait en sorte de faire des face cam très fréquemment. Pendant son séjour il est revenu deux fois en France
I think the best the US has to offer in terms of trams is Houston. It's not the most extensive, but service levels are good and stop spacing tends to be fairly close. The red line has 6-minute service on weekdays and the other lines have 12-minute service on weekdays. As far as I'm aware, it also has pretty good ridership, especially by American standards.
Yes, it looks good and has pretty high ridership.
Your video is very complete and well constructed. As I lived around Grenoble my whole life, here are some precisions :
- Parts of the lines that are in common are either on the pedestrian-only center of the city or at the university, two places where it makes sense to have a higher density of public transportation.
- The tram line that goes through university also get to a secondary train station so that you don't have to go to the city centre by tram to go off to Lyon or Valence (which are the main cities around by train) or you can be very quickly in/out of the city if you're from the North-East side, which is one of the three main valleys heading to Grenoble.
- Tram is completed with an extensive bus network which leads you anywhere in the urban area with very little walking necessary and with the same ticket (most people have an monthly or yearly unlimited card anyway). Also, bike network is very developped and you can carry them in trams outside of peak hours. If you live in the urban area of Grenoble or are a student here you definitely don't need a car, even though there is often a lot of traffic around the city unfortunately because there is very little space.
- I don't know how it goes in the USA, but being close to a tram station is a very compelling argument to rent or buy a place. Also newer routes tend to naturally renovate all streets by which they go through. It showed with your last section in Le Fontanil but it is already the very fringe of the urban area with very low density housing. There are also new routes within the urban area that led to a lot of renovations (and higher prices too...). For example they are extending a line in my grandmother's street and all old warehouses and closed factories are torn down and turn into cool new appartments and commodities.
I love this kind of comparison video! It actually puts into perspective just how similar US and European cities can be, despite their differences. Street design and land use are definitely major factors into what makes a successful system, even if you have all the bones in place. I would have loved a look at the S Line for street design compared to the rest of the SLC network as well.
Worth noting that Salt Lake City does stand out even among US cities for its wider streets and blocks, that come from the Mormon settlers who wanted to create wide streets.
I would love more of these comparison videos between North American and European tram networks! It would be nice to see comparisons with US/ North American cities that have done more with land use and street design along their tram networks, like Minneapolis-St Paul, Portland, New Jersey or Seattle.
I'm glad you liked it! I hope that these videos will find their audience, because they take a lot of time to make :)
I moved to Salt Lake City in 2019. I've said to several people that Grenoble is the only city in the world I know of that surpasses it in "mountain grandeur," so it was cool to see a comparison!
Oh, that's cool!
Huge difference can be seen at 12:40, in Grenoble the P+R road sign (Park and Ride) at the end station means that there is a huge parking lot for commuters coming from outside the city by car. They leave their car here and settle to the tram to go downtown to their job because in many french (European) cities cars are forbidden downtown with only restricted parking possibilities for residents.
I’ve lived in SLC and it was fairly easy to go car-lite. It might not be the most beautiful or efficient system but it hits all the major places in the area, including the airport which is huge. And coupled with the Front Runner, it’s got a lot of potential. But this should really be the baseline for American cities, instead it’s one of the best in the middle US, which is sad.
Side note: research the “Rio Grande Plan” for SLC rail. If we could get that implemented it would be huge for transit in Utah
Rio Grande Plan looks really good, thanks for sharing this!
I'm from Utah and have visited Grenoble for a few days, I love this comparison! Depending on where you are in the Salt Lake valley you can actually pretty easily go car free, but it's hard to get to outlying suburban areas that aren't covered by the bus network. Utah's taken a bit of a utilitarian approach to getting public transit off the ground, which leads to a lot of the infrastructure looking bland and the system only serving large destinations and the biggest population corridors. But I think that approach has created a very usable transit system for a suburban US region. Merci beaucoup pour le video !
The street design is a real problem it’ll force people to drive a car instead of walking to take a tram or a local business if their near by a commercial district since in America we don’t do mix zoning like what japan does at some point in after wwii I think
The S-Line tram is actually quite decent, and since it runs on old railway right of way, there’s no car lanes, and only bike and pedestrian paths along the route. The city could do three things to make it a lot better:
1. Eliminate mandatory parking minimums for developments along the line
2. Double track the full line to allow 3-5 minute frequency
3. Encourage developments that face the greenway
The current land use along the path is frustrating to say the least. Most building entrances face the opposite direction of the greenway, and the few that don’t are fenced off from it. The Brixton development is the one exception.
Parking minimums mean that new developments are expensive to build due to the required obnoxiously large parking structures, and create large barriers to people walking.
The single track sections (cost cutting by the city) slow tram speed and the low frequency means it’s way easier just to bike. The city sees the low ridership that results from their cost cutting not as a sign to improve the service, but as a sign that people would prefer to drive.
I take it that the S-line is considered a streetcar because of these single-track sections and the long interval? By the way, how many minutes is the interval there?
@@cityforall The interval is the same as TRAX, every 15 minutes.
The SD-100/160 is based on the Duewag GT6. Many LRV's with this design were modified by adding a third low floor car in the middle with a low floor entrance. The modification is extremely simple and can be done inhouse. A second unpowered bogie and the metal body for the new low floor car. This modification is not verry common with siemens vehicles but verry common with Schindler ones five of the six cities with Schindler Be 4/6 have this low floor modification only Belgrade doesn't have modified ones Zurich, Bern, Basel, Sofia and Gotha all of them have modified ones. Salt Lake City could just do this to their SD-100/160 instead of buying new vehicles.
I agree, adding a low-floor section is also a good option
I had no idea Salt Lake City had a streetcar, quite impressed by the network they have built so far.
Can you do Toronto Canada vs Melbourne Australia next?
Toronto vs Melbourne? Hmm, sounds promising :)
@@cityforall Or Zagreb vs Houston.
@@romanticniustasa9693 Interesting!
SLC is actively upgrading many of the SD-100/160s with S700s thanks to a federal grant. There are also plans to disperse the lines a bit better downtown just like you suggested.
That's a great news!
Tres interessante approche ! Ca fait bien découvrir certains aspects de l'urbanisme. Les batiments du centre ville de Salt Lake City ont toutefois l'air plus attrayants que ceux de Grenoble où apparait de plus le risque d'un urbanisme diffus et mal contrôlé justement à cause de la ligne de tram.
As a Salt Lake City resident, I agree with all the problems mentioned in this video. One of the reasons the individual lines don't have more frequent trams is because in the core where all three lines run together, the trams are very frequent as a result of three lines converging to one. But if they made the individual lines more frequent, it would cause the core of the system to have too many trams and that would cause major problems. This is an additional reason to separate the lines. There is currently a plan to build more tram tracks to the west of downtown which would significantly increase coverage and separate some of the lines. I think one of the best systems of the current tram network is the s-line. It's called a streetcar but runs on its on track completely separate from the street in a small alleyway with a bike lane beside it. The only problem is that it has is terrible frequency. Also, there are actually three connections to the frontrunner, and not just two. This connectivity is good for people coming in from the suburbs or other cities that want to transfer to the trams, but aside from north temple, the transfer stations aren't that good. The frontrunner is great regional rail for the US, it's completely high floor and very fast. They are currently working on expanding the frontrunner to run every 15 minutes by adding new passing tracks, as well as adding new stations and eventual overhead electrification. The problem with frontrunner is it doesn't run at all on Sundays, this is because Utah is a very religious state with the headquarters of the Mormon church. Frequencies on the trams are also significantly reduced on Sunday. Another great thing about salt lake not mentioned in the video is it has a fairly solid bus network. Also they are adding many new bike lanes, most of which are completely separated from the road. Salt Lake is definitely making solid progress, but right now it will be a long time before we even come close to the tram network of Grenoble.
Thank you for this insight from the inside. Regarding the frequency of flights, this is indeed another problem with the current scheme with duplication of routes. Although I wouldn't say that a 5-minute intarval is too short for three routes together. If you look at the tram traffic in European cities like Grenoble or Zurich, you can see that trams can run almost every minute on some of the main streets. In Leipzig, near the main railway station, the tram tracks are divided into 4, but the tram traffic is so intense that even with this configuration, there are sometimes queues of trams.
In Salt Lake City, for example, if the route interval were reduced to 10 minutes, different routes would run every 3 minutes in the center. As for me, it's quite okay.
It's great that there are plans to expand the tram lines in the center, it will really help bring the tram network to a new level of convenience.
When it comes to the frontrunner not running on Sundays, that has actually been due to the amount of single track on the line. Thus, the day which would have lowest ridership instead is used for maintenance works
Have a look at intencity of tram traffic in Leipzig, Germany in this video. That's insane, almost like a trains in Japan!
czcams.com/video/HeMZEUxd-5Q/video.htmlsi=VOrGGjsoOm4UWuRy
Live in downtown SLC, born and raised in the area. I use the TRAX system all the time. Agree with your judgement, but theres a few things to add context to. First about things that dont really matter: SLC owns a lot of undeveloped/undevelopable land, such as areas of the Wasatch Mountains and protected wetlands to the Great Salt Lake. It also has its airport in its city borders, unlike Grenoble. This brings the population density down a ton, as probably half of the land people don't live on. Next, when including the whole Salt Lake Valley, SLC is much bigger than Grenoble, including all the other towns around it. And thats not even including the Provo and Ogden areas, which are extremely interconnected with Salt Lake. both these areas are their own metro areas, but are commonly referred to as suburbs of salt lake city. a bit less than 3 million live in this area, called the wasatch front, a lot more than grenobles under a million. Every time something like this is brought up SLC is complimented for how good a system it has 'for its size', but that's all just an illusion, in reality the salt lake area is about the population of Pittsburg or Vienna. so basically less than 10% of the salt lake area lives in Salt Lake City But like I said, that shit doesn't really matter, and honestly only makes it worse for SLC. Its embarassing that a tiny city like grenoble made a much better transit system. Another thing is that SLC is a lot drier and hotter than grenoble. Thats why the suburbs don't make the trams tracks look nice and green, because water is scarce, and getting more so.
Finally, you bring up a couple reasons why ridership may not be as high, namely long distances between stops and all the lines being in one area. But I still doubt anything would change if both is done. It's really confusing to me the number of people here that say they love TRAX and want a less car-centric city, but never use TRAX. I'm sure the american public like trains just as much as europe and asia, but they're so addicted to their cars. The #1 excuse for this and the reason why transit lags behind in the US is because it is so much easier to drive. Last week a coworker said they don't use TRAX anymore because it is a 7-minute drive if she just takes the freeway. That is also why transit use in places like NYC and DC are at the level of Europe and Asia: because it is so hard to drive (and perhaps more importantly park) in manhattan or DC. Speaking of parking, theres more parking spots than people in american cities, and theres spacious driveways/garages for every residence. When your car can be steps away from everywhere you can go, why use a form of transport where you have to take more steps. The only way this is going to change is if driving becomes inconvenient again, like it was when transit ruled american cities. The solutions to this like knocking down freeways, tearing up half of all the stroads, and mandating parking be tolled will just never happen, at least not anytime soon.
And then there's suburbia. Generally, for a bus line to be effective there needs to be 20 res units per acre (I will not translate to european). most of SLC fits this, but like I said most of the Salt Lake Area lives outside of Salt Lake. and that is just for buses. train lines need a lot more. The only solutions to this is doubling the population density in every neighborhood. Once again, not going to happen.
On the less cynical side, Salt Lake is making a few of those changes that you've recommended. They added a new stop last year in between two other stops south of downtown, and they are in the process of making other stops even further south. They are also launching a study of adding a new line that goes from the airport in the west to University in the east, which would run mostly along existing lines, but will add new stops. This line is especially needed because right now, if one wanted to get from fruntrunner to the University, they would have to transfer from green or blue line at courthouse to the red line, which then goes to the university. Also in this study is a realignment of the red line to diverge from the other lines in south downtown to encompass the rapidly growing Granary District, which I assume will have a large student population. The University is also making a lot of progress. The U of U is widely seen as a commuter school, but it is trying to build enough on campus housing to house all freshmen that want. The city has also brought up in their long term goals a trolley that runs up South Temple from frontrunner/downtown to the university. Right now this is where the city's most successful bus line runs.
And then theres the Rio Grande Plan, which would put the Frontrunner and Amtrak trains underground through salt lake and get rid of the expansive railyards that separate the West side from the East. It would revitalize a historic rail depot that hasn't been used as a train station since the 90s. The depot building was damaged by a recent earthquake, so it'll need extensive renovations/seismic upgrades anyways. It's a really expensive project but not as expensive as the interstate expansion that was approved without afterthought. This was a project that was created by a landscape architect and an engineer, and has been popularized to the point that the city set aside money to study it. Personally doubt it will happen now that theyre taking public input on the previously mentioned TRAX projects.
Yeesh kinda went crazy with all this
Wow, this is officially the biggest comment I've ever received on this channel, thanks for your efforts and interesting information!
In general, I agree, the possibilities for developing public transit in American cities are very much limited by urban planning and the fact that the whole way of life has been oriented towards car travel for decades.
The idea of hiding the railroad tracks in a tunnel under the city is very interesting, but it is really a mega-project that will cost billions of dollars and years of construction. By the way, I have an idea to tell you about a similar project from a German city, which is very instructive in this regard.
@@cityforall Ey np, i see my city mentioned in a urban planning video and i couldnt resist. Every urbanist in slc is adamant about the underground train thing getting done but theres other things more worth the money. Also forgot to mention the UTA, which runs frontrunner and trax is doubling down on the newer location, releasing plans for their new HQ there and massive transit oriented development that would act like a second downtown. So its not gonna happen imo. But what city is something like that happening?
Hi there, great video! You should make a video about Waterloo Ontario. Its a city close to "fake London" but has decided to shed its low density nature for significant unzoning of the city. It is the smallest city in North America with a tram and it has decent ridership (25,000 ppl/day on a 19km tram in a metro area of 500,000 is very good for North American standards).
Wow, that's really interesting! Do you live there?
I get really frustrated living in slc with trax sometimes like between central point and ballpark stations there’s a noticeable gap where there isint service because trax is supposed to be a regional fast service but then in downtown there’s stops every block. They really need to just pick if they want a local service that serves a lot of people or an express service which is very convenient if you live close to a station or along a feeder bus
To be fair, the pattern of more stops in the center to shorten walking distances and fewer stops farther out to improve speed is quite common in Europe aswell. I feel like the 400-800m of Grenoble are a good distance range for a tram, when it’s interacting with traffic.
So I agree with you, having 2000m between stops (like between central point and ballpark) on a street running tram seems very strange. I don’t have a problem with the red line further out having a similar stop spacing because it seems to run on dedicated tracks, so it acts more like a railway then a tram, so the wider stop spacing makes sense. But having a wide stop spacing when running in a street median speed isn’t going to give you nearly as big of a speed advantage and significantly lowers the catchment area.
I agree with you. it is a pity that all is built but there is no access for the people living there. if they had access it wold probably boost a bit the ridership.
making teh streets green is nice, but they before all become people friendly, whether it is green, accessible, safe, all shall be there tio improve the quality of life.
I think Salt Lake City did the most expensive part of teh work, now, they are missing just the little last steps to make it usefull to users
Man never thought I would see my home town being compared to a US city in an urban planning video ! It's amazing from a european point of view to see how engrained the car culture seems to be in the US. Makes you think twice about complaining "car culture" in France ...
I guess I'll mention Grenoble even more cause I really liked it. Trams, street design, awesome view from the Citadel mountain... Omg
About the car culture - luckily France managed to stop in a better moment and didn't spoiled it's cities so much.
And btw kebab at the central avenue was great too 😁
Vive la France ! ;-)
14:34 that's just soooo stupid and hilarious 🤣🤣
Yep, that looks weird. Cars go straight while trams are wagging
@@cityforallthey did that to ensure cars had left turn lanes…it makes the Trax way slower than it should be
Watching this video on the Grenoble tram B line!
Nice! Is there a snow? ;)
@@cityforall Not yet, but it's cold as heck!
@@luismahieu winter is coming ;)
i live in slc and a funny thing is they tried to do grass tram tracks near daybreak (terminus of the red line) and our climate in conjunction with general lack of maintenance meant that all the grass died shortly after
I think the best option is to use local vegetation, something that can withstand this climate in the fields around the city. Perhaps in combination with crushed stone.
Bare with me as I try Grenoble vs Toronto Streetcar light rail (509/510/512). This is slightly selective as I am ignoring the other routes running in largely mixed traffic which aren't really comparable as unlike these lines and Grenoble's system, they were built over a hundred years ago.
Rollingstock: Toronto and Grenoble tie on this. The new Grenoble trams look a tad cuter and are longer than our Toronto Flexity Outlooks, but unlike Grenoble, Toronto has removed all its older CLRVs from regular service. The Toronto Flexity Outlooks are 100% low-floor, 30m long with five sections, but are unidirectional (we use turning loops).
Network: Only the 509 and 510 share tracks for a couple kilometres to connect the north-south Spadina boulevard with Union Station to the east.
Street design: Spadina is wider than it could be and lacks bike lanes, which would be nice. Then transit signal priority at intersections is sorely lacking, especially as stops are farside. Grenoble is nicer but we're closer than you think, at least in the downtown and pre-war suburbs of the streetcars.
Stops: Grenoble wins handsdown as Toronto uses glass shack bus shelters even for its streetcar lines in dedicated right of way. St. Clair has nice canopy design, but no benches. The underground turning loop at Union Station is unsafely cramped, especially for a subway and regional rail interchange.
Stop spacing and placement: We have more stops then Grenoble, way to close together. So Grenoble wins for reasonableness, while Toronto has stops every 200-300m, ensuring a slow ride.
Frequency: Same as Grenoble.
Thank you, very interesting! One of the comments here asked to compare Toronto and Melbourne - you've already done half the work :)
3:00 I know it’s not an exact match, but the shape of this hypothetical layout looks a tad 1940s Germany
All matchups are coincidental!
Interesting comparison but it really highlights the issues that the US has with transit. The Salt Lake City metropolitan area (MSA) is 25,840 km^2 and 1,257,936 inhabitants, the Grenoble metro area is about 2,876 km^2 and 714,799 inhabitants. To even get to remotely the same area, the Grenoble metro area would have to encompass not only the enitre Isère department, but also the neighboring Drôme, Hautes-Alpes and Ain departments, for a total of 25,272 km^2 and 2,120,017 inhabitants.
Exactly, the main issue with the US cities is that they are planned for cars. It's so deep that just launching a tram is not enough.
Most tram cities in France have the Alstom Citadis model I think
You are comparing the US where the tram is just seen as a novelty to one of the most advanced countries in terms of trams, each of their big cities having a network of them pretty much. We already knew who was gonna win this xD
All cities in Europe except England have the best public systems and sustainable
Lyon coule be a better comparaison 😉
14:35 is this real? Like a roller coaster.
Yep, that's a photo.
Why need to put back your tram networks when you never took them out? Melbourne on top and you should do a video on its trams please
Australia has nothing to be proud of ..... start by respecting your first nations .... you are so british and egocentric .
Somebody tell me the difference between tram and streetcars
im not sure (im french and everything would be called tram here), but it seems that in the US, trams have dedicated tracks and streetcars are on the road. Maybe an american can confirm/invalidate what i said?
That's really confusing thing for me too. In general in the USA word "streetcar" means a weak slow tram with short wagons and no dedicated lanes, that share it's lane with a cars. When trams are longer and have dedicated lanes - then they are LRT.
But at the same time SLC's S-line do have dedicated lanes but considered as a streetcar. I don't know why :)
Do you have family in Salt Lake City?
Just to be curious
No, I don't
@@cityforall so sad
I'm from Grenoble. And I tend to forget how hellish the US seems to be
C'est la vision d'un Grenoblois qui veut se rassurer ! Par malchance il habite une ville laide et triste et ca lui fait du bien de penser qu'il y a pire. Mais il ne connait probablement les belles villes vivantes de la cote Est des Etats Unis.
@@arnaudcasalis4072 oui bah reste là bas très bien
Paris tram anyway ( which routes the periphery of the city ) goes at a 🐌 pace. Not even interesting for tourists for it crosses neighborhoods not worth sightseeing with lots of projects and concrete.
roses are red, violets are blue,
trains and trams come in all sorts of hue ;)
my playlist #2 is about transportaion 🚅🚈🚞🚝🚂🚃🚄
Your population comparisons are absurd regarding urban transport because these are from the center city only ! Grenoble built-up area (urban area) is 455 000 inhabitants on 358 Km2, ie 1270 inh/km2 whereas Salt-Lake city built-up (or urban) area is 1 787 000 inhabitants (including Ogden conurbated) on 1328 Km2, ie 1345 Hab./Km2! Moreover, with Provo nearly conurbated it's 2 376 000 inhabitants. So just the urban area is more or less 4 times more populated on 4 times more km2... but with a quasi identical density ! The difference is essentially the suburban nature of american cities compared to more compact ones in Europe with a lot more densier central cities (8700 Hab./Km2 in Grenoble) and only 712 inh/Km2 in Salt-Lake and also a lot more polarized trips to the city centres for all motives (Work, Leisure, Shopping), above all in big cities.
Comparing the density of agglomerations makes no more sense than comparing the average temperature of people in different hospitals.
For example, you propose to take into account the population of Ogden and Provo, but what's the point if the Salt Lake City tram doesn't even come close to them?
Also, if you look at a map of the Grenoble metropolitan area, you can see that it includes the surrounding mountains, which have virtually no development. This reduces the average density. At the same time, the valley where the tram runs is very densely built up. If you compare this with Salt Lake City, you can see that the buildings there are evenly spread over a larger area.
But even if we accept your position, what does it prove if we take into account that the number of trips in Grenoble's trams is 7 times higher?
You can't understand my point if you don't know what an agglomeration or built-up area is. The populations are absolutely not comparable. When talking about transportation systems, we must take into account the area served as a whole with buses feeding and complementing the tram. For Grenoble in 2023, TAG served 454 000 inh. on 50 municipalities which is close to the population of the agglomeration (built-up area) ! In Salt Lake City, the area served is the county 1 185 000 hab, more than twice Grenoble population. But the whole transportation system, with the Front Liner suburban train is closely linked to Weber (Ogden) and Utah (Provo) counties, so in reality 2 107 000 inhabitants so 4 times the Grenoble area served. It's like you were comparing Warsaw (2 830 000 inh. in built-up area) with Poznan (830 000 inh. in built-up area) because both have trams ! Anyway, your work is interesting but as we said "comparison is not reason" ! @@cityforall
@@cityforallwhat you are not understanding is that US cities are very sprawling in nature and tend to be surrounded by other cities which means that functionally SLC is way bigger
You need to use the Metropolitan area of a US city
@@IndustrialParrot2816 I understand that pretty clear)
you have a french name .... et l 'arrogance qui prouve que vous etes francais et condescendant . I am canadian and i can spot on a french culture of rudeness and arrogance. you should get educated on how to hold a conversation with class and intelligence.
Keep in mind SLC's lowest TRAX ridership will be in the summer as schools are not in session. September 2023 ridership numbers were up over 40,000, still much lower than Grenoble but ridership is about 15%-20% higher when school is in session.
Of course, the figures shown in the video are averages. I think in Grenoble they also varies.
A rather strange comparison! France, like many other European countries, has abolished trams in the 1950s until they were extinct. Only fairly recently, their "virtues" were rediscovered, and new tram systems set up. A comparison with a German city would have been much more appropriate.
Lille and Saint-Etienne never got rid of their trams. As for Nantes and Grenoble, they reintroducted trams far earlier than all the other cities'.
I disagree. The system in Salt Lake City is also newly created, so it would be unfair to compare it to a system that has been operating for a hundred years.
The point here is that both systems are relatively new, and this makes their comparison more relevant
I'm french and Grenoble is literally one of the ugliest cities in France, i live there and its tramway system isn't even that great compared to other cities in France
Oh, stop it please xD Saying that Grenoble is ugly you make pain for those who live in really ugly cities :))
Au moins vous êtes proche de la montagne.
14:37 wtf is that track!? That is ridiculous
These turn lanes are certainly crazy.
Europeans cities are all dense and built for humans with elegance ... all american cites are built for cars not for humans with arrogance and egocentricity . 2 cultures , 2 worlds
It's true, but it's a pity, because American cities were quite similar to European cities in the beginning, but almost nothing of that remains, unfortunately
Is that even question?
But Strasbourg is considered as the best system in France !
It don't have mountains :)
and strasbourg is a bigger city so it wouldn't be honest to use it in the comparison.
@@SieurBrabantio
The mountains are at a distance of 30 km from the Cathedral and the city has 290k inhabitants - such a big difference…
@@SieurBrabantio
More dense, not « bigger ».
I know both cities, Salt Lake city is a third world city compared to Grenoble, this comparison is not fair!
Well, I've been only to Grenoble. Why SLC is so weak in your opinion?
Ce propos est idiot quand on sait que Grenoble est une des plus laides villes de France et une des plus criminalisees.
"Best" is an irrelevant concept in this context.
Doesn't make any sense to compare two ancient-style systems. Take a look to modern global super power like China, which moved to electrobuses!
lolz
Elektrobuses with an inferior capacity and operating costs to trams?
China has plenty of trams, and buses (not only electric) and metro, and regional trains and high speed trains - all things that France also has (of course in a smaller scale as China has a bit more people and size).
Each transport mean has it's place and roll and good cities have more than one with the type depending on their size (so, for example, a city like Grenoble's size will not have a metro system and a small town can do with buses and a small train station).
Don't they use electric trolley buses?
@@IndustrialParrot2816sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between trolleybus and electric bus with charging from trolley wires ...