Brussels Trams - High-floor and Low-floor Trams

High-floor and Low-floor Trams

The development of the system is being pulled in two contradictory directions – towards low-floor street-running trams and high-floor underground railway. This has led to some conflicting decisions. The standard trams – still "PCC"s from the 1950s and 60s – have been followed by the specially designed "T2000" low-floor model, and at the end of 2005 was joined by a variant of the off-the-shelf "Flexity Outlook" from Bombardier (3000 series), and end of 2006 by an even longer version of the same family (4000 series). When the current order of 87 vehicles is fulfilled in 2012, Brussels expects to have the world's largest fleet of low-floor trams.

However on some of the busiest routes the convenience of the low floor is lost because of the anomalies caused by the hesitant upgrade of tram to metro. The city now has four heavy metro lines and three stretches of premetro or underground tram. The premetro tunnels have been built to allow for eventual upgrade to heavy metro. Thus most of the platform is high, and is connected to the street (at least in the upward direction) by escalator. At some stations lifts have been installed. But there is a cutout section taking the level down to one foot above ground, to board the trams. The three steps this entails make life difficult for passenger with baby buggies or suitcases, even though the new low-floor trams themselves are accessible to wheel-chair users. To get round this last barrier to mobility, an experimental ramp was installed in 2009 at Parvis de St-Gilles/St-Gillis Voorplein.