With a separate bicycle car!
I never even knew such a thing existed! Very cool.
This is really cool. Here in Ottawa, Canada some buses have bike racks on the front. The driver waits while the rider loads or unloads their bike from the rack. I didn’t see it used much (haven’t taken public transit for years) but I think it’s a good idea.
Why don’t they just… ride the bikes?
This tram goes up a steep hill. On the ground you can see a third line of “tracks”. Those a for a gear the tram uses to pull itself up the hill. It’s the only one in Stuttgart that has that. Because that hill is so steep, they allow bikers to take their bike with them and because many use that offer, they added the extra bike carriage.
Too many dangerous, busy main roads with no bike lanes and no space for cyclists. It goes the cyclists the ability to ride distances, avoiding the impassible roads, to get to where they can ride.
You can easily empty 100Wh of an E-Bike battery going up that hill. It is indeed very steep
That’s like saying “why don’t you just swim across” instead of using the car ferry.
This looks super cool but I’m confused on how it works; is this the very back or front? Does the tram in Stuttgart just take longer at stops so you can take of your bike, especially if you didn’t manage to get into the cart right next to it because it’s rush hour or something?
This is just one specific line on a particularly steep hillside in Stuttgart therefore it has been built as a rack railway. It’s known as the “Zacke” (German for tooth or prong) though officially it’s just “U10”
There are two cars, going up and down at the same time, theres a station in the middle where they pass each other.
The stops are long enough to take your bike off of the bike cart. It isn’t a particularly fast tram anyways. It also doesn’t run at night because it runs extremely close to houses and it’s comparatively loud.
It’s a bit of an oddity because it’s part of the normal public transport network and included in your ticket. There are only 3 other rack railways in Germany and those have been built purely for tourism and have their own fares.
When the tram goes up hill its at the front, when its going back down its at the back. For this specific line at least.
Video of trams in Stuttgart in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdzCyQyKvfg
The famous “Zacke” no less. It has a gear system in its track and goes up a mountain (the old Weinsteige) to connect a marketplace in Stuttgart West with the neighbourhood Stuttgart Degerloch.
Changing is gonna take a good while.
