Re: New Melbourne trams have fewer seats than the old ones but they're longer!

[Andrew Price <aprice@mail.dotcom.fr>]

On 19 Aug 2000 23:44:03 GMT, matthew@mail.usyd.edu.au (Matthew Geier)
wrote:

> Probably simply a matter of EU politics and stuff the Australians. 

So why did the Australians sell their trams off to a foreign operator?

>After the
>last few rounds of rail equipment manufacture mergers, Europe is over stocked
>with manufactureing capacity, but no company wants to close a plant incase the
>local pollies retailiate and order their next batch from their competition
>who DIDN'T close a factory in that country. They would rather spend more on
>the Melbourne order and keep a European factory open in order to keep the
>local Euopean pollies on side for a much larger order than Melbourne could
>ever want.

I find that somewhat hard to believe.  Melbourne has one of the
biggest tram networks in the world, far larger than most European
systems with the exception of St Petersburg and Vienna.