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Trams are experiencing a resurgence with worldwide network expansion driven by the need for sustainable and efficient cities. Trams often operate in shared or mixed-traffic environments, which raise safety concerns, particularly in hazardous situations. This paper adopts an international, mixed-methods approach, conducted through two interconnected studies in Melbourne (Australia) and Birmingham (UK). The first study involved qualitative interviews, while the second was an experimental study involving a virtual reality (VR) simulator and haptic master controller (i.e., speed lever). In tram operations, master controllers play a critical role in ensuring a smooth ride, which directly influences passenger safety and comfort. The objective was to understand how a master control system, enhanced with additional haptic feedback, could improve tram driver braking performance and perceptions in safety-critical scenarios. Interview results indicate that the use of the emergency brake is considered the final or ultimate choice by drivers, and their driving experience is a moderating factor in limiting its application. Combined with the experimental results, this paper highlights how implementing haptic feedback within a master controller can reduce the performance disparity between novice and experienced tram drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores seven segregation cases involving African-American women and public transportation that played out in the city courts of St. Louis between 1865 and 1871. Situating the cases within a theoretical framework of mobility, the article explores the spatial characteristics of African-American working-class women's lives and the extent to which streetcars became staging grounds for larger civil rights battles. While previous accounts of streetcar activism have often positioned cases as isolated incidents undertaken by elite African-American women, the cases in St. Louis attest to the rise of civil rights activism among working-class African-American women. The discussion further shows how they contributed to the nature and form of oppositional politics in St. Louis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass streetcars operating record data used in a proper way can reveal the operational characteristics of streetcars to the full extent. This paper aims to design the traffic-signal progression for the modern streetcar by mining and analyzing these data. Each unit in the study consists of two adjacent signalized intersections. The k-means clustering algorithm is used to cluster the streetcar travel time data between two intersections and to determine whether the streetcar has stopped waiting for a red light at an intersection or not. An offset calculation model for streetcars is proposed to lower the impact of the conventional transit signal priority (TSP) for streetcars on motor vehicles. A real-world case study of Line One of the Nanjing, China, Qilin modern streetcar shows that the traffic-signal progression design proposed in this paper can reduce the conventional TSP's negative impacts on motor vehicles by about 20%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Municipal governments are experts in social non-distancing. From swimming pools to libraries, streetcars to public parks, municipalities bring residents together and move them around—services vital to a vibrant community in ordinary times, but potentially disastrous in a pandemic. Municipal decisions to shutter these services and enforce social distancing are thus crucial for a successful COVID-19 response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the language of clothes in Elia Kazan's 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire, focusing on the outfits of the main character, Blanche DuBois, portrayed by Vivien Leigh. Represented in contrast to the garments worn by other characters and especially her nemesis, Stanley Kowalski, Blanche's clothes express complex messages with regard to social class and cultural identity, which feed into broader mid-century controversies around fashion in America, the performativity of clothing and its potential uses as a passing device. Another line of enquiry concerns the differences between Tennessee Williams' descriptions of Blanche's appearance in the play and their realization on screen, the "translation" of the playwright's remarks into cinematic images, and the resulting visual narratives, which give weight to specific readings of the plot. Finally, the article approaches the image of Blanche as a reflexive commentary on the nature of film and a critique of Hollywood glamor. By emphasizing the constructedness of Blanche's appearance: her "dressing for the part," the use of setting, lighting and even music to enhance her social performance, the film questions its own artifice, while Vivien Leigh simultaneously embodies and deconstructs the image of blonde femininity, which dominated the cinema of the era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the difficulties that may arise for some men when their wives become pregnant. The advent of a child may threaten the intense marital dyadic relationship on which a man may depend. The author explores how this particular threat to a husband's sense of security is manifest dramatically in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire. In this reading of the play, Stella's pregnancy and Stanley's feelings about it lie at the heart of the drama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Repeat photography—the practice of rephotographing the same locations at different moments in time—is an under-utilised method for interpreting urban change. Despite this, it has the potential to give new empirical and theoretical meanings to our understanding of the ways in which major forces of change shape cities and their urban landscapes. The purpose of this article is to give a visual dimension to understanding long-term change in Toronto, Canada, since the 1960s. It will use historic images taken by streetcar enthusiasts as a starting point. Rather than studying these trolleys themselves, it is everything around them that is of interest for this study. As streetcar systems were disappearing or contracting after World War II, dedicated and passionate enthusiasts visited Toronto, which retained the largest streetcar network in North America, to ride and photograph them. Their images give us unique insights into the ordinary city in ways that few other genres do. To analyse long-term patterns of change, these historic images have been rephotographed over the past few years and show how trends such as deindustrialisation, financialisation, and gentrification are made visible in the urban landscape. In this article, I also echo assertions by Elvin Wyly and others that photographs are a useful part of critical constructive analysis of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-quality transit service is a vital aspect of any modern city. When unexpected interruptions to the transit service occur, they reduce the quality of service provided to the public. One of the main strategies that is employed to deal with rail service interruptions is “bus bridging,” whereby buses from scheduled services are deployed to offer shuttle services. Very few efforts are found in the literature that have investigated this policy’s effectiveness. Therefore, this study aims at exploring the different aspects and impacts of retracting buses from scheduled services in response to subway and streetcar service interruptions in Toronto. It explores the size of the deployment, as well as the system response and recovery times using detailed subway and streetcar shuttle service reports collected in 2015. The paper shows remarkable fluctuations not only in the utilized number of shuttle service buses over time, but also on the service response and recovery times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tram drivers have a difficult task in controlling one of the heaviest vehicles on the road whilst negotiating a complex road environment with multiple road users. Like all public transport drivers, tram drivers need to ensure passenger safety and to run on time. However, very little research has been conducted evaluating tram driving tasks and even less on evaluating tram drivers opinion on how other road users are affecting tram road safety. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the key tram driving challenges, to identify the key road user factors affecting tram road safety as well as to explore the potential safety improvement initiatives on tram routes from the tram drivers’ viewpoint. The study incorporated five focus groups involving thirty tram drivers in Melbourne. The key themes emerged inductively from focus groups were identified through a data coding process. Outcomes of the focus groups revealed seven major challenges in tram driving: ensuring safety for all people in and around the tram, pressure for running on-time, maintaining constant concentration on roads, predicting other road users’ behavior in advance to avoid any crash incident, preventing passenger falls on board, accepting the operational constraints of trams and managing fatigue workloads. Tram drivers identified that other road users are unaware of safety issues around trams, have a poor understanding of road rules about driving with trams and often violate road rules around trams, and they mentioned this road user behaviors as the key challenges for safe tram driving. Tram drivers proposed rendering greater law enforcement on the tram network to penalize road users who are violating road rules around trams, introducing more safety campaigns and safety education to increase awareness among road users to improve tram road safety. Findings of this research enhance understanding of tram driving challenges, provide an in-depth knowledge of road user factors affecting tram road safety and suggest effective planning strategies for transit agencies to improve road safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on describing the daily operation strategy of a tram powered by a hybrid system based on fuel cell stack and a battery pack. The daily operation strategy focusses on the hydrogen refueling and battery recharging timing in one-day operation of 18 h, combined with serval driving cycles and three operation modes. The battery state of charge balanced (SOC-) strategy and the dynamic programming (DP-) strategy are two proposed power allocation methods. For one-cycle operation, the latter save 6.6% hydrogen consumption than the former. As for one-day operation, a simplified DP-strategy is deduced to replace the DP-strategy and accelerate the calculation. It shares equivalent hydrogen consumption with the SOC-strategy but guarantees the durability of the fuel cell and prolongs the driving mileage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1949, San Diego was one of the first major California cities to switch to a bus-only transit fleet. As time went on, both San Diego and its neighbor Tijuana saw explosive population growth, and in the 1970s a combination of strong leadership and a stroke of luck led to San Diego constructing the first post–World War II light rail system in the United States. The original system went from downtown to the Mexican border and received national and international attention for being delivered on time, under budget, and without federal funds. This article explores the system’s origins, strengths, shortcomings, and legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently dozens of U.S. cities are in the midst of planning and building modern streetcar systems. Though seemingly mobility investments, the intended impacts of these streetcar projects reach beyond transportation and represent a strong turn toward strategic spatial planning through transportation infrastructure. Proponents of modern streetcars argue that they are tools of placemaking as much as if not more than improvements for transit services. Unlike transit investments of a century ago, when privately operated streetcars were a decentralizing force that helped disperse overcrowded central city cores and open new land for real estate development, current streetcar projects in the United States are expected to concentrate activity and economic development in select corridors. The majority of these new systems rely on transit technologies that are significantly improved over the carriages of old, with modern features, smooth rides and quiet operations. Yet for all the improvements to the vehicles and services, new streetcar investments no longer primarily improve transit accessibility. Rather, modern streetcars are part of strategic amenity packages cities use to achieve real estate and economic development goals. This use of transportation infrastructure as an amenity for a particular location is a shift away from traditional transportation planning processes, and the expected benefits, in particular, stand apart as being deliberately spatial. We use planning documents and data from ballot box initiatives to evaluate expected transportation benefits relative to indirect benefits through economic development. We find that approximately three-quarters of all expected benefits from streetcar projects accrue to property development with the remaining expected benefits assigned to transportation. However, we do not find sufficient empirical evidence in the literature to support such certain claims of positive effects on property values and the built environment. We argue that the increasing tendency of cities to leverage streetcar projects for non-transportation purposes represents a turn to the use of infrastructure as a tool of spatial planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electric streetcar was a significant marker of modernity in Latin America, but its symbolic power rested as much in its ability to establish a presence in urban popular culture as it did in its contribution to technological change. By using the concept of the “urban imaginary” we can reveal the multifaceted and shifting role of the streetcar as a symbol of progress and a site of danger, destruction, and death in the public mind. In newspapers, comics, songs, poems, stories, and movies, the masses imagined the streetcar as central to the daily life of the city and used it to make meaning out of the chaos of the rapidly evolving modern city. Themes explored include the ordering of bodies, labor conflict, violence, the spectacle city, and the afterlife of the streetcar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1916, a national planning expert strongly advised Milwaukee city and county planners to integrate electric railway transit into any comprehensive metropolitan plan. In that same year, a great proponent of publicly owned transit, socialist Daniel W. Hoan, became mayor of Milwaukee. Twelve years later—while Hoan was still mayor—a national engineering firm made the same recommendation. During the interim, however, it became apparent to city leaders, including Hoan, that they did not have either the legal or financial tools necessary to effectively implement any plan that involved altering and improving transit routes and service. Although Wisconsin adopted municipal “home rule” in 1924, the provision was in reality “too little too late” in that it did not grant cities authority to take over the privately owned for-profit transit companies holding monopolies over their streets. Nor was an option to establish a regional transit authority available until after World War II. This article explores the intersecting roles of state laws, the Wisconsin Railroad Commission, local elected leaders, and appointed planners in the ultimate—automobile-dependent—result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the motorization of Manila's urban transportation system began in the early twentieth century (1900-1941), it caused a lot of changes in the city. The electric streetcar and the automobile not only increased intraurban mobility but also became instruments in spreading the American colonizers' discourse of modernity. Although this discourse was used to maintain colonial rule, it should also be kept in mind that the colonizers were not the only ones who benefited from it. The workers of the urban transport system–streetcar employees and automobile chauffeurs–also employed the concept of modernity to see and present themselves as modern workers. In socioeconomic terms, they became part of a growing middle class enjoying a comfortable income level. In political terms, they were rooted in a modern labor structure that had just recently emerged in the city; thus, paving the way for them to use modern tactics, such as unionization and strikes, to fight against the ruling elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the limiting parameters of the rising branch of adhesive characteristics. Attention is paid to the actual results of experimental research conducted by the authors. A summary of the obtained knowledge is made. In addition, a test stand of tram wheels driven by the synchronous motor and the carried out experiments are described. A comparison of the achieved results is drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the popularity of private buses modified for passenger service known as jitneys in Atlanta, Georgia as alternatives to streetcars from 1915 to 1925. Jitneys were originated from Los Angeles, California in 1914 and became a success in Atlanta because of their low fares and convenience. Complaints are also listed in response to the venture, citing streetcar companies and city officials urging regulation of jitneys due to their competitive pressure. Commentary is also given noting the social class conflict which was manifested in the transportation policy debate.

Presents a study which described the characteristics of the fluctuation of magnetic noise and a method of prediction of its amplitude at three locations near railroad of electric railcars for biomagnetic measurements. Importance of understanding the characteristics of the fluctuation of low-frequency magnetic noise; Methods of measurement and analysis; Results and discussion.

The gradual development of trams, i.e., streetcars or trolley cars, from 1950 till 1980 was abruptly interrupted in the early eighties by the arrival of the low-floor car. Six factories in FRG and Austria, one in Switzerland and one in Belgium virtually covered the market based on what roughly could be defined as three designs. Today each of these makers has its own design(s) complemented by those of four italian, one swiss and one french builder. This article aims to give a synthesis of the development. Which designs have so far emerged as leading in volume, what are the technological tendencies that can be traced. What are the price consequences of the development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, we can easily get various data of human mobility. Based on these data, there are many studies about human mobility all over the world. In Japan, Person Trip (PT) survey has been carried out once a decade after 1960s. With the use of PT data, we can grasp people's flow, however, it is difficult to get such data in the modern era. In old Tokyo city, some traffic surveys were carried out by municipality. These data are limited, however, it is possible to figure out the people's flow in the modern era by digitizing and making maps from historical documents of these surveys. The purpose of this study is to make and analyse streetcar passenger flow maps in old Tokyo city by using origin-destination (OD) data acquired through the survey conducted in 1930. We used the OD flow data of the streetcar passenger acquired by old Tokyo city on Tuesday, June 10th, 1930. The study area was in the centre of present Tokyo 23 wards. Although the streetcars no longer exist except for one line at present, there were a lot of routes in the city in 1930. The streetcars were the important transportation for people living inside and outside the city. To make OD flow map, we first made digital data of the OD matrix of the passengers from historical documents of the survey. There were about 400 stops, however, some adjacent stops were aggregated to save space of the document. Therefore, the OD matrix were 289 by 289. In addition, we created GIS data of streetcar's network based on old maps and historical documents. The aggregated stops were created in a midpoint of original stops. After that, we made the OD flow map by using the visualizing method described by Wood, Dykes, & Slingsby (2010). Figure 1 shows OD flow map of streetcar passenger in 1930. The results of this study are summarized as follows; 1) There were many people who went to the direction of Tokyo station(E6), Nihonbashi(E7), and Ginza(F6) from the entire area of the city. These areas have been a centre of commerce since pre-modern era, being crowded with shoppers, tourists and workers. Particularly, there were many commuters around Tokyo station because it had many office buildings. 2) There were many people who used the terminal stations located outside the city. These stations such as Shinjuku(D1) and Shibuya(G1) have been nodal points of other railways in the western part of Tokyo. This result showed that the people moved to the suburb of Tokyo after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. 3) The movements from the west of the city to the centre of Tokyo were longer than those from the east of the city, because the western area had the restrictive land uses such as high class residential area and military reservation which covered a vast area of the western part of the city. In contrast, the old urban area extended to the eastern part of the city since that era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]