Trams and Buses – Transit Priority
The first thing one notices about Zürich is that trams (the European word for streetcar) and buses are everywhere. The city considered changing its tram network several times (either placing the trams underground – Tiefbahn Plan 1962 – or replacing the trams with a metro system – 1973), but voters rejected spending money on these ideas. However, in 1977, Zürich voters did approve an initiative to make the existing surface transit system work better by providing transit priority for trams and buses.
Transit priority means that public transit vehicles are given priority over other forms of transportation through such measures as traffic signal control, transit-only lanes, and traffic regulations. Watch carefully as a traffic signal changes from red to green just when a tram arrives at the intersection. Transit priority was not a new idea, but Zürich has succeeded in implementing it to a greater degree than almost any other city in the world. Zürich’s public transit priority program is described in Implementing Zurich’s Transit Priority Program a research report I co-authored for San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute.