A photo from Vienna, taken last June. Uploading this yesterday reminded me of when I moved to Toronto in March 2006, and referred to this as a tram. My friend, Toronto born-and-raised, laughed at me.
“That’s not a TRAM,” he snorted. “It’s a STREETCAR.”
Hello? Am I missing something here? Don’t those words all mean more-or-less the same thing?
What are they, those modes of public transport in the photo up there? Everyone here calls them streetcars, but I see no real difference between a Toronto streetcar, the trams in Europe, and a trolley like the ones in San Francisco (granted, those are more open-air).
Video for today: locally-shot “Spadina Bus” by the Shuffle Demons. Within about five seconds you’ll know this video was from the ’80s, and if you’ve been to Toronto since then you’ll figure out this video could only have been from the ’80s because Spadina Avenue has no buses, it is now served entirely by streetcar (or tram, trolley, whatever you want to call it). In fact, Spadina Avenue has a dedicated streetcar middle lane now. I only discovered this song after moving to Toronto, I think it was linked to from a blog (Accordion Guy‘s?).