I’ve recently spent a few days in Sheffield, sampling the tram, tram-train and bus network.
I’m not sure I recognise some of the complaints of the Supertram. I think frequencies were good, trams seemed to be punctual, trams seemed clean and in great condition for their age - they don’t feel like they are over 30 years old. Ride quality good. Real time displays all working. The conductors all really friendly and chatty. Only two services I was on didn’t have conductors (which for me isn’t unusual, as it’s the only tram system I’ve used that has conductors, apart from Rotterdam). I get that just a few days might not give a reliable picture, but that’s just my observations.
Don’t quite understand the ‘numbering system’ for routes, I prefer numbers rather than names/colours. It means they appear as YELL or PURP on the realtime displays. And one of the lines (the tram-tram) doesn’t even follow that system either, even though realistically it’s not really any different from other tram lines.
I don’t quite understand the purple route - an hourly frequency for an urban tram? I get they have probably used the resources to keep a high frequency on main parts of the network - but it should surely be half-hourly at a minimum, or not at all. People will just use the much more frequent bus instead.
Trams were fairly busy, but quite dead in the evenings - that might just be a British culture thing though, as we don’t tend to like staying out late as much as on the continent perhaps? I’m just comparing to the trams I’ve used abroad. Saying that though, the Charleroi system stops running about 7.30pm (though replaced by buses after that).
A couple of comments on here saying the system should just be closed down and replaced by buses - I’m not sure why that needs to be done? I thought we stopped being short-sighted with closing down tramways?