buses
and trams
in Rome
buses in rome
Our picture shows the inside of a Rome city bus,
and as you can see
it's pretty overcrowded, with everybody having to stand.
Worse so when you consider that this photo was not taken during rush-hour,
but actually around midday. A London bus cruising the West-End streets
at about this time of day would be comparatively empty, with plenty of
seating-space. Not so the buses in Rome...
There simply aren't enough of them, which is a bit silly considering the
enormous amount tourist-traffic the city's public transport system should
be catering for. Being the mild-mannered type that I am, I have rarely
been able to find a seat on either train or bus in Rome, no matter what
time of day I travel.
There are plenty of bus routes, and the city is well covered, but what
a shame that when your bus arrives, it will be so cramped that you will
be forced to stand sandwiched among forty others, and thus quite unable
to see any of Rome's fabulous landmarks out of the window.
The other curious thing about Rome's buses is that they hardly have any
seats in them anyway - There is only a single row of hard seats running
down each side of a ridiculously wide central aisle. So it seems we are
supposed to stand! Don't ask me why.
trams
in rome
Apart from these few niggles though, public transportation in Rome is actually pretty good and what's also nice is that in common with most of the best European cities, central Rome is served by a tram system. In recent years this service has been wound down and somewhat neglected, but for the year 2000 celebrations, city councillors realised the green and trendy aspect of trams and thus built new ones and added new lines, none of which are being used much at present as not even seasoned Romans can figure out where and when the new lines run. Sorry we can't say more about them really. The fact is, they have a funny movement to them which is slightly conducive to motion sickness and don't run much in the central area, so as a casual visitor to the city you're probably not going to get much use out of them.
