Sydney's Tram Network

When anyone says that Sydney was built around the car, you know that they are up to no good. Sydney was built around the pedestrian, the horse and cart, the tram....anything but the car.

This image is a slightly reduced view of the tram system in Sydney just before it was dismantled.
Note the extensive coverage of the CBD, lines to the main beaches and areas of the North Shore.

To get an idea of just how world class our old system was, take a look at our occasional paper series Letters of Transit.

The tramways were the key to the remarkably efficient people-moving systems that then existed. They had a loading capacity midway between buses and heavy rail, but with a dense coverage of the then-existing metropolitan area and the ability to run at much greater frequency than heavy rail. When required, they could be operated almost nose-to-tail as a ‘moving footway’.

In view of the current problems transporting the public to special events at the Cricket Ground and Fox Studios (formerly the Showground) there is a special irony in the ease with which 175,000 people could be simultaneously transported to and from these two venues during the interwar years. Today it is considered impressive when buses deliver 8,000 people to a sporting event – equivalent to about 10 minutes of tramway operation.

Impressive, eh?