Apr 08

the tram chronicles

Posted by peanut on Tuesday Apr 8, 2008 Under blogin, contest

Tadaaa! Thanks for the idea from Commuter Chronicles to blog about a commuter experience and so here I am.. allow me to present..

The Volgo Trams!

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This is one of the 4 main transportation in Volgograd (bus, the marshrutka, trams, bus no.11 = your own legs = walking). As you can see, they are really old (even thou there is only 1 tram here in the pic but actually all of them look almost the same). I believe that they were built after the World War II. How I wish I could tell you the model and the year they were produce.. Anyway, I saw they use the same thing in Prague when I was there last year!

Each day I spend at least 10 mintues on the tram, sometime making 2 - 6 trips per day on it, travelling from one point to another. 6 years here and I had only experienced not more than 5 break downs! This is really good compared to the Putra LRT back home in Malaysia (you got stranded in a driver-less light rail transit in mid air for very long few times a month!). I know, even it is not as good and as new as the other trams or underground train in other cities (those with electronic board mounted everywhere showing the next station name, recorded voice telling you what is the next stop and etc.) but this tram system here in city is very efficient. It has the ‘human-touch’ too, that is..

  • the driver could shout into the microphone demanding you to move faster.
  • she can shut the door just to make fun of you..
  • she can personally goes to the door and slam it if it doesn’t work..

Notice that I used ’she’? Yea.. most trams here are operated by the female (please listen to the song Sheila’s wheel by amateur transplants.. lol!)

Sometimes, we read or do discussions on the tram. The trip from my home to the hospital (for my classes) is almost an hour!!

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for privacy reason, need to mosaic-ed up my friends’ faces..


Sometimes I do wonder whether hi-tech machines are always better? We have the absolutely new railway transit system in Malaysia but they are high in maintenance, often break down, the people in it doesn’t know how to give way to older passengers, they don’t ask if they want to get out but use pushing instead.. Comparatively, the Russians has this habit of asking “?? ???????? ?? ????” (meaning are you getting down?), less problems with the tram, they are old but they serve well..

So.. maybe getting older doesn’t mean that you are not competent!


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    • 2 Responses to “the tram chronicles”

    1. raymondm Says:
      April 8th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

      Hi, thanks for the mention of Commuter Chronicles.

      But on a serious note, i think NY’s MTA needs to take a page out of Volgograd’s book, when it comes to trains not having issues.

    2. h2m Says:
      April 8th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

      :D
      Don’t know why i felt that Russia’s transportations are good~
      I ‘wow’ for the metro and I just…like their transportation..nice n convenience~

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