Bloody hell, when I first saw the title I thought it was Newcastle Upon Tyne in the North East of England but knew straight away from the video that it wasn't cos it's never that sunny up there!
Nice futuristic tram and tramlanes. Also the artistic futuristic stations. Wow! It seems also very clean and beautiful in Newcatle, and without lines above the rails it making the sight tomthe sky so beautful.
Great Video, great place. The people that live there mostly take it for granted and always find something to complain about, but it always has a place in my heart.
Agree with that, the continuity and sequencing is excellent, as well as the video and audio. I was there on Sunday and it was naturally running at or beyond capacity, so interesting to see patronage on its first day of revenue service. Thanks for the effort you put in to produce this video.
The bloody thing keeps breaking down. The problem seems to be that there is no continuous power supply, only top-up power charging the batteries at each stop. The stops seem to get longer through the day to allow it more time to charge up. Sometimes the stops are long enough to be considered a delay of service, with passengers having to run to make their connection with trains at Wickham as a result, sometimes delaying the trains as well. The trams seem to be a little too well sealed from the weather, so that the air-conditioning struggles to keep up with the heat build up inside the glass-house incubator of the carriages, because the air can't get out because of poor ventilation to the outside. The air-conditioning only seems to work properly when the doors are open. (Roll your eyes. I did.) The tram doesn't go anywhere. Apart from people arriving by train who have the time to spare, and tourists trying out the novelty, nobody on a schedule is going to get off a bus to catch the tram, when the bus takes you all the way in anyway. The tram is slow. It seems to take a very long time to go 2.7 km. When you do get into town, you'd better want to go to the beach, because the project has damaged a lot of the businesses in the mall which looks as deserted and unloved as it ever has. There are a lot of empty retail spaces. Even established well-run businesses like Frontline Hobbies gave up and moved elsewhere. The traffic congestion where the track crosses the Hannel St is possibly even worse that it was with the heavy rail crossing, as the trams are more frequent than the trains ever were, and the traffic has to stop just the same. The bottom line is this. The project was never about transport. It was about the state government cashing in on the sale to developers of the land in the former rail corridor for a quick injection of funds to the state. Developers wanted the prime harbour-side real estate. There was money to be made. People who regularly use public transport don't get factored into such plans. I give the tram a predicted life of less than ten years. When it starts to cost money in maintenance, or replacement rolling stock is needed, the whole thing will be abandoned and replaced by buses. They probably won't pull up the track, but the stops will be removed to allow traffic to flow into the city again.
I hadn't noticed no power wires until I saw your comment. One would think that having to top up at each stop would add to the trip time. Was that a cost saving thing?
According to the timetable of the day, the heavy rail train journey from Broadmeadow to Newcastle took from between 4 and 8 minutes, depending on which day's timetable was operating. What is the journey time today if you get off a train at Wickham and transfer to the light rail?
I went on sunday, and its quite a good ride despite the crowds. I feel they should have extended all the way to newcastle beach proper (and call that station pacfic park), and also to broadmedow station and cut the newcastle train line from there (and that will encourge the government to make direct electric services from sydney to matland)
yeah it's a bit of a stretch for that last stop to be called Newcastle Beach: it's only about 150m further east than the old Newcastle Railway Station. About a 250m walk to the actual Newcastle Beach.
I believe the original plan was to do just that and run it from broadmeadow to the beach using the existing heavy rail as a cost saver as much as possible. That would have either terminated the Sydney electric at broadmedow or send it on towards mainland. This was the talk back in the 90’s when I was last in Newcastle.
This is the best video coverage of the Newcastle Light Rail, congratulations. I used the service on Tuesday and was most impressed , it is not just a tram service but a vital part of Newcastle's revitalisation
Here's a story: One day, Newcastle Council found itself doing a lot of thinking. It thought, and thought, and thought again. It had many, many thoughts to think about. It thought: - how can we make our CBD less accessible to public transport users? - how can we make public transport less user-friendly by terminating trains at Hamilton East and forcing people to transfer to a slower vehicle that doesn't even cover any more distance than the train used to? - how can we give a whole pile of prime real-estate land to all those nice developers, who gave us a ton of money and took us to fancy restaurants and afternoon golf games? - how can we demonstrate to Novocastrians everywhere that private development profit is higher on our priorities than sound public transport planning? Then, Newcastle Council had an idea. An idea that answered all its troubling questions in one fell swoop. That idea was...
Never can understand why cities still build tram systems with tight corners. Perhaps the worst is Angers in France - all screaming wheels and snail-like speeds. Yes, there is the odd place where you can't avoid it because of the street configuration, but Angers was built on the sentimental idea of connecting communities, so the route is slow and tortuous. Tram bogeys and tram tracks wear out quicker when they are subjected to the stresses of tight cornering . . .
@@thegreatdivide825 They don't do it for free. They do it for profit. This money comes from the people (who essentially own the resource). Some call it capitalism. Some call it theft. Basic economics.
@@seankaiser2505 Yes, but the light rail replaced a perfectly working train. The government got its hand on prime waterfront real estate. Then they sold it to developers.
@@washingtonirving1780 Keolis Downer are contracted by the government to operate Newcastle Transport and is actually costing less than if the government still ran it ,the government still own all the infrastructure . @Sean Kaiser, The railway line had declining patronage over many years ,it cut the CBD in half, caused traffic congestion with crossing gates down 5½ hours and wasn't working perfectly, on days of peak demand there was a two hour wait for a train service. Also, what prime waterfront land on the old rail corridor was sold to developers? Any of the old rail corridor adjacent to the harbour is now public open space (parkland) what was sold was located between existing buildings with no harbour views and with low building height restrictions due being undermined
I have absolutely no idea why this was built. You have to get off the train at Wickham to get to Newcastle by light rail. They still have the Newcastle railway station there minus the trains. Bloody unbelievable. What a total waste of money. Wickham station was totally revamped to be the new interchange which was really good but they could have used the money to better advantage elsewhere. Imagine the uproar that it would have caused to business and traffic while it was being built.
we have Bombardier Flexity2 trams in Blackpool, these are CAF Urbos 3 trams in Sydney (same as the trams in Birmingham and Wolverhampton operating the Midland Metro)
Now the council just needs to clear out the corrupt deadwood and let the city rejuvenate and inject some money and investment- Newcastle could easily be a truly world city if it wanted to
@@wrx38qpk Within 4 years, I reckon. There are parts of Newcastle screaming for this that didn't get a look in. The old diesel busses are on the out so parts south of Newcastle might get some love next time.
No, they're new from an established Spanish company, so I don't understand your comment about them being second hand or their spares being hard to get. I would have preferred them to be made in Australia, as are the current contracts by the State of Victoria for trams (E-class), but most likely it is considerably cheaper to import them.
@@davidbennetts616 That's correct, the Spanish CAF company is building trams for cities all around the world. One of their best points is the technology of ultra-fast charge of the batteries at stops, that take less than half a minute (see minute 6:12), so they are catenary-free. www.caf.net/en/productos-servicios/proyectos/proyecto-tranvia.php
Bloody hell, when I first saw the title I thought it was Newcastle Upon Tyne in the North East of England but knew straight away from the video that it wasn't cos it's never that sunny up there!
tsu 800 and there isn’t a place called HONEYSUCKLE 😂😂
Nice futuristic tram and tramlanes. Also the artistic futuristic stations. Wow! It seems also very clean and beautiful in Newcatle, and without lines above the rails it making the sight tomthe sky so beautful.
Remember how much faster the train was!
Great Video, great place. The people that live there mostly take it for granted and always find something to complain about, but it always has a place in my heart.
It’s painfully slow.
It costs around $220 million per kilometre to build/run (ABC) so you have to savour it. Personally I think it will be a white elephant.
@@justaghoulintheworld Didn't cost that much, was $368 million for the light rail
Actually, I ran from Newcastle Beach to Interchange one day and by coincidence a tram started with me at the beach. Guess who won the race ;-)
Excellent video, best one I've seen. I love how you have edited it from cab view, passenger view and outside view. Very well done, congratulations.
Agree with that, the continuity and sequencing is excellent, as well as the video and audio. I was there on Sunday and it was naturally running at or beyond capacity, so interesting to see patronage on its first day of revenue service. Thanks for the effort you put in to produce this video.
This train tram reminds me of trams in Birmingham,England. It’s the exact same tram but it has a pink or blue (mostly blue) livery.
The bloody thing keeps breaking down. The problem seems to be that there is no continuous power supply, only top-up power charging the batteries at each stop. The stops seem to get longer through the day to allow it more time to charge up. Sometimes the stops are long enough to be considered a delay of service, with passengers having to run to make their connection with trains at Wickham as a result, sometimes delaying the trains as well.
The trams seem to be a little too well sealed from the weather, so that the air-conditioning struggles to keep up with the heat build up inside the glass-house incubator of the carriages, because the air can't get out because of poor ventilation to the outside. The air-conditioning only seems to work properly when the doors are open. (Roll your eyes. I did.)
The tram doesn't go anywhere. Apart from people arriving by train who have the time to spare, and tourists trying out the novelty, nobody on a schedule is going to get off a bus to catch the tram, when the bus takes you all the way in anyway.
The tram is slow. It seems to take a very long time to go 2.7 km. When you do get into town, you'd better want to go to the beach, because the project has damaged a lot of the businesses in the mall which looks as deserted and unloved as it ever has. There are a lot of empty retail spaces. Even established well-run businesses like Frontline Hobbies gave up and moved elsewhere.
The traffic congestion where the track crosses the Hannel St is possibly even worse that it was with the heavy rail crossing, as the trams are more frequent than the trains ever were, and the traffic has to stop just the same.
The bottom line is this. The project was never about transport. It was about the state government cashing in on the sale to developers of the land in the former rail corridor for a quick injection of funds to the state. Developers wanted the prime harbour-side real estate. There was money to be made. People who regularly use public transport don't get factored into such plans.
I give the tram a predicted life of less than ten years. When it starts to cost money in maintenance, or replacement rolling stock is needed, the whole thing will be abandoned and replaced by buses. They probably won't pull up the track, but the stops will be removed to allow traffic to flow into the city again.
I hadn't noticed no power wires until I saw your comment. One would think that having to top up at each stop would add to the trip time. Was that a cost saving thing?
@@brianmcdonald6519 it only takes 30 seconds to top up which is the dwell time for each stop anyway
Over one million passengers and rising per year says differently. Which prime real estate did the developers get?
Ding ding! I'm a tram and I approve this video! Great footage!
it’s such a short route. i imagine the drivers getting bored going back and forth everyday
According to the timetable of the day, the heavy rail train journey from Broadmeadow to Newcastle took from between 4 and 8 minutes, depending on which day's timetable was operating. What is the journey time today if you get off a train at Wickham and transfer to the light rail?
9 minutes, according to Google Maps.
But that doesn't include time taken to transfer from train to tram.
I went on sunday, and its quite a good ride despite the crowds.
I feel they should have extended all the way to newcastle beach proper (and call that station pacfic park), and also to broadmedow station and cut the newcastle train line from there (and that will encourge the government to make direct electric services from sydney to matland)
yeah it's a bit of a stretch for that last stop to be called Newcastle Beach: it's only about 150m further east than the old Newcastle Railway Station. About a 250m walk to the actual Newcastle Beach.
I believe the original plan was to do just that and run it from broadmeadow to the beach using the existing heavy rail as a cost saver as much as possible. That would have either terminated the Sydney electric at broadmedow or send it on towards mainland. This was the talk back in the 90’s when I was last in Newcastle.
@@TheCeleron450 That would have been the best option
@@Jerram89 Newcastle Beach is 150m south of the Newcastle Beach tramstop
This is the best video coverage of the Newcastle Light Rail, congratulations. I used the service on Tuesday and was most impressed , it is not just a tram service but a vital part of Newcastle's revitalisation
@Peter Breis The one million plus passengers per year who use it
Here's a story:
One day, Newcastle Council found itself doing a lot of thinking. It thought, and thought, and thought again. It had many, many thoughts to think about.
It thought:
- how can we make our CBD less accessible to public transport users?
- how can we make public transport less user-friendly by terminating trains at Hamilton East and forcing people to transfer to a slower vehicle that doesn't even cover any more distance than the train used to?
- how can we give a whole pile of prime real-estate land to all those nice developers, who gave us a ton of money and took us to fancy restaurants and afternoon golf games?
- how can we demonstrate to Novocastrians everywhere that private development profit is higher on our priorities than sound public transport planning?
Then, Newcastle Council had an idea. An idea that answered all its troubling questions in one fell swoop. That idea was...
Yep. Basically this.
Disagree. A considerable improvement. I never saw anyone take a train from Newcastle to any stop before Hamilton. City looks much better.
thanks for the great video! very much appreciated cause i am in Melbourne!
this is garbage tram nobody wants it!!!!!
@@andreimeltser4126 what do you mean?
The tram bell sounds like someone has hit there head on a bell them muted it with there hand. LOL. I half expected somone to yell out ow!
Never can understand why cities still build tram systems with tight corners. Perhaps the worst is Angers in France - all screaming wheels and snail-like speeds. Yes, there is the odd place where you can't avoid it because of the street configuration, but Angers was built on the sentimental idea of connecting communities, so the route is slow and tortuous. Tram bogeys and tram tracks wear out quicker when they are subjected to the stresses of tight cornering . . .
This video was really well done, thank you.
An excellent way to transfer public money to a private corporation. Well played, Keolis Downer.
Keolis Downer don't own it, they are the contracted operators
@@thegreatdivide825
They don't do it for free. They do it for profit. This money comes from the people (who essentially own the resource). Some call it capitalism. Some call it theft.
Basic economics.
At least your government is willing to spend money on public transportation
-someone who lives in the US
@@seankaiser2505
Yes, but the light rail replaced a perfectly working train. The government got its hand on prime waterfront real estate. Then they sold it to developers.
@@washingtonirving1780 Keolis Downer are contracted by the government to operate Newcastle Transport and is actually costing less than if the government still ran it ,the government still own all the infrastructure . @Sean Kaiser, The railway line had declining patronage over many years ,it cut the CBD in half, caused traffic congestion with crossing gates down 5½ hours and wasn't working perfectly, on days of peak demand there was a two hour wait for a train service. Also, what prime waterfront land on the old rail corridor was sold to developers? Any of the old rail corridor adjacent to the harbour is now public open space (parkland) what was sold was located between existing buildings with no harbour views and with low building height restrictions due being undermined
Anyone know who constructed the lines and infrastructure? looks exactly the same as the tramlines on the Gold Coast
very well edited and comprehensive
Agree. Definitive Newcastle video. Good job.
Where the heck is Newcastle and why are they all driving on the wrong side of the street?😁
Where electric cable..
Romeo 123 It’s battery operated.
Nice video
I have absolutely no idea why this was built. You have to get off the train at Wickham to get to Newcastle by light rail. They still have the Newcastle railway station there minus the trains. Bloody unbelievable. What a total waste of money. Wickham station was totally revamped to be the new interchange which was really good but they could have used the money to better advantage elsewhere. Imagine the uproar that it would have caused to business and traffic while it was being built.
el de medellin es bonito
Nice editing. A credit to you.
great.they look like the ones in blackpool england.we called them trams
we have Bombardier Flexity2 trams in Blackpool, these are CAF Urbos 3 trams in Sydney (same as the trams in Birmingham and Wolverhampton operating the Midland Metro)
Also Manchester and Birmingham but they are called Metro
So beautiful
good video!!!!!!
they need one for geelong
What is it with NSW and making there Light Rail Terminus Stops 1 Platform seems really stupid IMO
nice train
Where is this located at
Cameron Roberts man do you live in Sydney or not
Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.
Newcastle New South Wales Australia
@@1toshi32 thank you Liz Beth
Great Video! Just subbed! :)
Now the council just needs to clear out the corrupt deadwood and let the city rejuvenate and inject some money and investment- Newcastle could easily be a truly world city if it wanted to
Is this Newcastle England
No, it's in New South Wales, Australia.
Since when has it ever been that sunny in the North East of England?
Its so slow
@A Taxpayer cars and buses that it replaced
This is a game changer for Newcastle and there is no way they won't expand it in the near future.
lol. The world's shortest tramline. There's no plan to extend the thing.
Peter Gabriel give it time.
@@wrx38qpk Within 4 years, I reckon. There are parts of Newcastle screaming for this that didn't get a look in. The old diesel busses are on the out so parts south of Newcastle might get some love next time.
Not bad for second hand refurbished units hey... Spare Parts already hard to get....! Ahhhhh, only the best for Newcastle..!
No, they're new from an established Spanish company, so I don't understand your comment about them being second hand or their spares being hard to get. I would have preferred them to be made in Australia, as are the current contracts by the State of Victoria for trams (E-class), but most likely it is considerably cheaper to import them.
@@davidbennetts616 Urbos were probably around 5 million each in this order. The latest flexity trams for Melbourne cost at least 50% more each.
@@davidbennetts616 That's correct, the Spanish CAF company is building trams for cities all around the world. One of their best points is the technology of ultra-fast charge of the batteries at stops, that take less than half a minute (see minute 6:12), so they are catenary-free. www.caf.net/en/productos-servicios/proyectos/proyecto-tranvia.php
she has a leaking nuclear power plant
Agree. Definitive Newcastle video. Good job.