An idea of mine - express trams

["Bradley Torr" <truenorth@one.net.au.SPAMTRAP>]

Evening all.

While in the shower today, I was pondering upon the old tram vs. bus
arguments... one pro-bus argument that I came up with was that buses could
overtake each other, and that you could have 'express' or 'limited stops'
buses without having 'all stops' buses in front of you blocking the faster
bus. This is obviously a major advantage of buses, as the patronage on the
Sydney STA's 'L' and peak-hour 'X' and 'E' routes demonstrates.

I got to thinking how the old tramways and the modern tramways in Melbourne
deal with the problem of distributing passenger loads over a route, and
making sure that passengers at the extremities of a particular line don't
have to put up with the overcrowding that would result from having to stop
at all stops way into the city. This problem can be mitigated by the use of
short-workings, which have the effect of distributing passengers going
from/boarding at inner-city stops over a greater number of trams - but
still, the outer suburban trams must still stop at every stop for the
reason that it can't overtake the trams in front of it!

I then came up with a solution - on the busier tram routes, build three
tracks along the route instead of two. The track in the centre can be set
up for bi-directional running for the sole purpose of express running
during the peak hours. It might not work on the lines which travel along
fairly narrow streets (such as many of the south-eastern routes in
Melbourne), but it might work on routes along wide boulevards, such as St.
Kilda Road and Royal Parade and Victoria Parade.

Has any tramway system in the world ever tried this concept of express
running? Has express running or skip-stop running ever been tried in
Australia?

Some food for thought.

BT