Second-hand renovated trams as a novel decision strategy for public transport investment

Abstract

The public transport system is one of the cities' primary services, classifying the city as modern, livable, accessible, and sustainable. Accordingly, cities are trying to develop sustainable public transport systems even with limited budgets and funds. In this study, a novel decision strategy for public transport investment is investigated for a tramway system that implements several local decision strategies, and it gave the ability to launch the system using second-hand renovated trams as the rolling stock. The operation period's financial sustainability for ten years and the effect of the second-hand trams are assessed. The results show that renovated tram cars decreased the project's initial investment costs by 53.88% and realized 4.5 M €/km total cost, which is one-fifth of the average total cost in Europe. The system became a self-sufficient system after the 3rd year of operation and is profiting with incremental positive cash flow since that year without having any compensation from the national or local government. The study shows that the cities' financial resources could be sufficient to cover sustainable transportation modes with locally adapted strategies. The paper also contributes to decision strategies that renovated trams can be a solution for cities with limited budgets and are planning to construct tramway lines to improve public transport systems and eager to create sustainable cities.