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The original was posted on /r/thenetherlands by /u/123964 on 2023-08-17 13:34:10+00:00.

Why are there no trams?

Why does the Netherlands have so few trams? Only Amsterdam, Den Haag and Rotterdam have a big network, Utrecht has a small one compared to the size of the city. All other cities (Eindhoven, Tilburg, Groningen, Almere, Breda, Nijmegen, Apeldoorn, Arnhem, Haarlem etc.) none of them have any trams. The public transport is only buses. Why is there so much focus on buses instead of trams?

In neighboring countries, many more cities of comparable size have trams (Charleroi, Luxembourg, Liège, Valenciennes, Krefeld, Oberhausen, Caen, Rouen, Le Havre) or even smaller cities like Brandenburg, Frankfurt (Oder), Schwerin, Plauen, Naumburg, Nordhausen, Gotha have trams.

In Belgium they even have a cool tramway that connects the entire coastline. Imagine having a tram from Hoek van Holland to Ijmuiden, that would be cool.

In Denmark they recently started reintroducing trams (Odense) but not in the Netherlands.

What is the reason for this?