The Longest Tram Line in the World | Kusttram - Belgium Coast Tram 

Very interesting point Simon thank you. Seasonal tram migration haha

Not from Antwerp. Antwerp has one-directional trams (with rail loops everywhere) instead of bidirectional ones like Ghent and the coast.

@@FrederikVds The "Kusttram" has several loops and they used to have one-directional trams only. In later years some bi-directional trams came on the line (one or two prototypes from manufacturer BN, now Bombardier, and some borrowed trams from Ghent). The new CAF low-floor trams for this line are also one-directional.

Kinda correct, with a caveat. There used to be plenty of trams for summer services at the coast, but because of the nature of the line, accidents happen and after 30 or so years, there was a shortage of trams during the summer. This is why the trams from Ghent where brought over.

The trams are ALWAYS one-directional. The bi-directional trams are actually trams from Ghent on a 'vacation'. All the HermeLijn trams are also taken from the other cities there the coast already had the BN-trams. However, the loading gauge of the coast tram is different from the ones in Antwerp and Ghent, such that trams can only run to the coast, and not the other way round. The coast tram (BN) also hasn't really got a speed-limiter. Some trams have speeds up to 80km/h. The newer trams (Hermelijn and CAF) go up to 70km/h. Because of this higher speed, the trams are also equipped with a loud horn. Sometimes, when the trams are brought back to Antwerp or Ghent, they forget turning back on the limiter to 50 km/h or turning of the horn. I've also got on a tram in Antwerp filled with stickers and maps for the coast. Though, in recent years, they stopped doing the migration of the trams to both cities. However, some of the trams of Antwerp and Ghent remained so that the drivers can train on using those trams. As a side-note, it is interesting to see that Antwerp has only one-directional trams, and Ghent only has bi-directional trams. Some of the old trams from Ghent are also used in Antwerp to assist during works when turning loops aren't accessible. All the drivers learn how to operate these bi-directional trams in Antwerp. The disadvantage of these trams is that they aren't equipped with the metro-safety-stuff, such that they can only be used on select lines. In recent years they also installed these metro-safety-systems to enforce temporary safety restrictions. Some of the old trams without these safety-systems still took these paths during the works, and could thus just drive further without the speed being adjusted. I've also been on a tram where the driver forgot to turn on the safety-system upon entering the metro.

Sounds like my kind of exchange semester!

Not only that, but they even move trams from a major city like Antwerp to the coastal line in the summer months because a city like Antwerp can run with fewer trams in those months due to many people taking time off and leaving the city.

For sure, a lot of transit infrastructure is seasonal!

@@WhitewalkerII To be honest, I'd prefer to reopen the railway line from De Panne. This would reduce the travel time to Dunkerque more than a tram line.

Peak autism (in a good way)

@@billybob-vu2gc I'd say it's less likely if they are an older person. But if this person is under 30. Oh boy, are they ever one of the gang.

Very sad indeed!

And now it's no longer "0" but "KT" (Kusttram)

Thanks for watching!

Coastal tram doesn't need double ended trams

it used to be more of a railway from the buurtspoorwegen

But why is it a "final" station?

@@leonpaelinck it is not a final station, trains continue via a tunnel below the city

You can, but it's difficult to compete and in some cases lines were excessive

I live in Belgium and I was honestly surprised when I found out only four cities have tram lines. I assumed at least every "student" city like Gent and Leuven had trams.

Yeah, I thought it was absurdly long extending out if the city to end at a station, personally I would like to see a metro but with riding the tram before, it doesn't get too crowded and doesn't get stuck in traffic as much as other trams like here in Sydney

G Link is nice for sure, I remember watching videos about it years ago before the first part even opened!

That sounds super relaxing I'll have EU visit and try it sometime

@@TheEpicAppleEater01 The ride in itself isn't really relaxing. The trams are old and some sand end up in the rails due to the wind so it's pretty bumpy and the seats (benches) are not designed at all for a 2h30 ride

@@trains_worldwide Los Angeles' fare for the longer ride will be even less, $1.75.

@@trains_worldwide really depends on what model of tram you take as there are 3 that have been operating on the line the 6000's are quite old. the HermeLijnen are pretty decent but those are temp borrowed from Gent and the all new CAF Urbos ones currently being delivered should be quite nice.

also, almost nobody takes it to travel the entire coastline

Go for the RHB or Rhein-Haardt-Bahn which was interconnected with another tram line to form a new line that connects the city of Heidelberg with the Haardt mountain range running through vineyards in parts of its way. A really lovely line.

The connected tram network in the Ruhr Area is even bigger despite beeing only the biggest of many remnants of a much bigger network.

The most interesting part is that they also blur the line between tram-trains and interurbans by the fact that the Rhine-Neckar metro, particularly the Mannheim-Heidelberg-Weinheim triangle, feature many old narrow gauge railways (and are legally still treated like them) but are only run by these trams. It doesn't help that many of them are very close to streets or in case of Seckenheim in Mannheim _on_ the street which is untypical for normal railways.

Yep, it's lovely!

Dammit, I've lived along it before, but never minded to chech out how long that would take.

@@1121494 there are videos about it and the video length of a single journey is 2:30u . I suspect the trip itself is a bit shorter (maybe 2:20 ?) Just search for "kusttram" or "coastel tram Belgium".

You're gonna have to get off the tram for the end bits!

While i've never travelled the whole coastline of belgium *by tram* before, i have cycled the entire length from the Netherlands to France before, it's a pretty nifty experience. The tram does stop several km's short of both borders though, it in fact goes between the mainline train station of De Panne (west/near France/line to Lichtervelde and Ghent) and Knokke (east/near NL/line to Bruges), so going border-to-border by transit will require a bit of walking :P

@@Robbedem Thanks, those cab rides are one of those things that I really like about RU-vid. I often use Berlin's "Linie 21", which only needs about 50 minutes to get from one terminus to the other.

Think of it not as a flaw but a feature. Couldn't be a "Kusttram" without the "kustzand".

Sorry but I doubt you get trains every 2 mins to Chicago from Galena (I checked and I can't find any timetables for there?). That being said, Chicago L and MTA NY Subway are really the only outliers in American Public Transit systems that provide frequencies on par with many European systems. In regards to Europe, yes many systems offer every 10-15 mins (or even better like in Paris Metro, London Underground, Oslo T-Bane, Berlin S-Bahn). Then you have systems like Zurich S-Bahn (which everyone keeps raving about having the best integrated public transport system) but interestingly, when you breakdown the individual lines in the Zurich S-Bahn and you'll find most of the lines run every 30 or 60 minutes, which is certainly not the "frequency is freedom" mantra that public transport advocates espouse to! However, even at lower frequencies these services are well used in Europe, compared to American and Australian cities where you'll find practically empty trains (at night at least) even if they run quite frequently. The reason for this is that the culture is car-dominated in Australia/America's sprawling low-density suburban areas, compared to the more public transport dominated culture of most European cities in their smaller, more compact and denser urban areas, where they don't really have an option to drive!

I think the 23 was the longest tram/streetcar/trolley line that ran entirely in the street. The tracks and wires are still there for the most part, and it's still I believe officially a "temporary bus substitution" that has now gone on for about 30 years.

Trams and trolleys are the same thing, depending on whether you are European/British (tram) or American (trolley).

Trolley vs. Tram is really just a terminology thing for the vehicles. Though I think tram is quite a bit more common a term on the whole.

@@andrewweitzman4006 far as I know, there is a difference: trolley refers to a trolley pole equipped vehicle, and thus can also refer to a trolley bus, though in the english speaking world, trolley pole trams and interurbans were so much more common, trolley buses are rarely if ever called trolleys, streetcar seems to have been for self propelled street running rail lines in the age before cars as we know them today, interurbans the term for lines that crossed through the countryside into new towns (urbs in latin), while tram most likely comes from the electric bells installed on electric streetcars (which is why vienna calls their streetcars the bim). In the olden days, there used to be a whole lot of street running railways, like big steam trains, cable cars, steam trams, gas (coal gas powered) trams, single car MUs, EMU with one or more trailer cars, Steam loco and trailers, pantographs and trolley poles, thought I doubt there were any third rail street runners, oh and don’t forget the original horse drawn streetcar, which might also explain the word streetcar since the cars were bound to run on streets unlike your normal horse cart that could go wherever the hell you wanted… But these days, it’s mostly a regional difference as different words stuck, though there’s the new fangled light rail, which probably got invented to make it sound „just as good“ heavy rail (big trains and subways) but lighter on everything (that includes demand they can handle or speeds they can usually handle and other stuff you’d usually want from a good heavy rail backbone, but don’t tell the politicians or you won’t get anything)

@@RMTransit tram in North America is equivalent to cable car in Europe: see the Peak 2 Peak Tram or the Roosevelt Island Tram or the Tramway at several ski resorts. Tram in the United States in particular tends to refer to jig-back reversible ropeways generally with two large cabins that in German would be classified as Pendelbahn.

Would probably be the Skytrain, unironically.

Haha，there are some very long monorails out there

this is not a gadgetbahn

I agree. Cool channel btw 👍.

It's probably not just for emergencies, single end trams often need to reverse in depots, and the rear console makes this safer to do.

I hardly think so. This line is 27 km long, but it's system is very simple. Their is 1 line. Systems with multiple short lines using the same infrastructure are much harder to manage.

As Iamwatchingyou75 mentioned, it's just one line. So trams can easily wait a minute at a stop without hindering other services when they are running early.

It's a good question to ask! I'll make a video on this in the future!

@Iamwatchingyou75 Indeed, the single-line system makes it pretty easy to arrange the intervals when services are normal. But will it be harder to manage when accidents and malfunctions happen in route？I mean, one breakdown segment/vehicle can dismantle the entire line's service in the worst case. Are there sidings or turn-back points in the line to deal with the problems?

@@terryshi5620 I would assume that if there is an interruption at one point that cuts the line in two, you’ll simply get two independent tram lines that operate only on their side of the interruption. Sure, it will mess up the schedule a bit, but with a frequent schedule it shouldn’t take long for it to return to the original timetable.

Of course, then you have the question of what is light rail vs a tram? The Union Station to Azusa section in particular uses the right-of-way of the Santa Fe, the route of the Chief, Super Chief and El Capitan and later Amtrak's Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles. So it operates along what was a busy mainline railroad. While there is street running for a few blocks in Highland Park, it doesn't share lanes with traffic. Meanwhile, the southern section of the line from Los Angeles to Long Beach is along the former Pacific Electric, which was one of the largest Interurbans in the United States and does run in mixed traffic following traffic signals at points.

@@JBS319 The street running section in the Pasadena area does sometimes have to stop for street lights even though it has a dedicated right of way in the middle of a street.

Well, it’s a little tricky because when you get to Benidorm you have to change to L1 but, yes, the railway is the same from Alacant to Dénia even though you have to change 😁😁

Yep Blackpool is very famous!

@@RMTransitReece, for 25 years the line at Blackpool was the only tram route in Britain. Its almost miraculous survival was largely due to the fact that (rather like the Belgian coast) the trams could shift holiday crowds and not get stuck in traffic.

In Belgium almost everybody at the coast is a tourist, so it's perfect. When people go to the coast by car they never need to use it there.

But this lines are not interurbans, they are one of the first prototypes of tramtrains even older than Karlsruhe. Both Railways are still classified as railways they just use DC power and special switches to allow railway and lightrail vehicles.

I second this! (he would probably rip it to shreds though)

Except in Gent, where they run in narrow roads, forcing you to bike between the rails

well...there kinda is. you can go from Vancouver to Tijuana by train: Cascades from Vancouver to Seattle, Coast Starlight from Seattle to Los Angeles, Surfliner from Los Angeles to San Diego, and the Blue Line from San Diego to San Ysidro - Tijuana.

D'oh. I should've remembered that, I've seen maps of Amtrak's network before.

It wouldn't be a tram but a bullet train

To be fair, those names are very misleading

Thanks!

In 1987 when the Melbourne to St Kilda and Melbourne to Port Melbourne suburban railway lines were converted to light rail we called the new articulated vehicles bought to run on them "light rail vehicles" or LRVs. Now, we just call them "trams" like all the other trams that run on the network whether on- or off-street. And classifying is not that simple. Having currently the largest network in the world and one of the oldest outside Europe still extant we have accumulated a whole range of combinations of track and passenger stop positioning; while newer stretches of line in the outer suburbs have separation from vehicles and roads and island platforms at stops this is not as easy for older inner sections. One thing though is that almost any tram is capable of running on any part of the network if the need arises.

All of Los Angeles' light rails have some street running other than the green line. The difference between the term light rail and the term tram is so hard to define.

Sorry to break it to you, but i found out that the L1 route is actually the entire line lenght going from Odder through Aarhus and all the way to Grenaa, being 110 km long.

I would love to see this! I'm from Melbourne and everyone here is proud of ours but there's a strong belief that many cities in Central Europe like Czechia and Poland do trams better than us. Thank God we did not tear up our trams like most other cities in the English speaking world