Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) Trams

[Barry169]

Will be there in a couple of weeks.

Anybody used them?

Have read that they are in a bad state now and are very crowded as they only run every 20 minutes or so.

Armed police at all entrances that pat you down before you enter. Not sure if that is reassuring or the other way round.

 

[stadler]

Will be there in a couple of weeks.

Anybody used them?

Have read that they are in a bad state now and are very crowded as they only run every 20 minutes or so.

Armed police at all entrances that pat you down before you enter. Not sure if that is reassuring or the other way round.

I visited almost eight or nine years ago when it was still very new. So i do not have any more recent experience of what is like nowadays. But when i was there i can remember the Addis Ababa trams being so overcrowded and unreliable and often i had to wait thirty minutes to get on a tram as the first and second ones would be too full to board.

The main problem i found was far too little capacity. They built a tram line on what needs a metro service. The trams are very short low capacity two section trams that are scheduled to run every fifteen minutes (or every seven to eight minutes on the central section where the two routes link together) which results in constant overcrowding.

I have read similar things online that suggest it seems to have gotten much worse since i last visited. Lots of issues with tram reliability meaning the service is running even less frequently and sometimes as little as once every thirty minutes now. I have heard that the tram route often has lots of power supply issues too.

 

[Backroom_boy]

Unless you are a seasoned traveller, I strongly recommend you getting a local guide for all your time in Ethiopia; went there in 2019 and taxi's were very good. But public transport a bit hardwork

 

[sh24]

Was there last week. The service is chaotically bad and not worth bothering with. Get a local SIM, cash and use RIDE for cabs.

There are police checks all over the place so be prepared for that!

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

IIRC one problem is that suspension and other parts keep breaking under the weight of the passengers. The line also didn't have a wheel lathe, and wheelsets were being shipped all the way to China to be turned, leaving units sitting in the depot for months while they waited for their wheels to come back. The metro was designed and built by a Chinese consortium as a turnkey project, and operations are or were in the hands of Chinese advisers, so anything needing repair was sent all the way back to China.

Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa opened the first African light rail south of the Sahara in 2015. While it launched to much fanfare, nine years later it's plagued with problems. But beneath all that, does it still offer hope of a transit-oriented future to the city?