Manoeuvrability

Manoeuvrability obviously favours buses, trucks and cars.

To avoid an accident, LRVs are restricted to the direction of the track and have only 3 options - proceed as is, slow down or speed up.

Vehicles not confined to rails have many more options since they can not only proceed in their current direction but also swerve to the left, to the right and complex movements left and right - while maintaining speed, accelerating or braking.

In emergency situations such as breakdown LRVs are more difficult to move because of their weight and requirement to stay on their track. This prevents other LRVs travelling in the same direction from passing the breakdown and hence quickly brings the whole system to a standstill in both directions.

Sydney 's Daily Telegraph reported that on 14 July 2009 at Haymarket a 'very slow moving' LRV hit a pedestrian crossing the road. He was pictured wedged underneath the LRV pinned against the raised curbing until fire brigade rescue crews with jacks to lift the tram arrived. He was then taken to St Vincent's hospital. All passengers were required to remain on the tram during the rescue.

Similarly with a power failure, all LRVs stop wherever they are, sometimes blocking intersections. Non-electric vehicles don't all fail at the same time and can be pushed off the main road 'around the comer' so traffic can proceed. It is not uncommon for broken down LRVs to obstruct traffic all day until they are able to be repatriated to a service depot during less dense traffic late at night.

LRVs are normally very reliable but when they go wrong they really perpetuate the problem to the detriment of all shared road users.