Trams often express how a city sees itself.
Try applying this question to the operations you know, and you'll be surprised how often the comparison works. Abandoned to cars, city centre business rapidly chokes as customers seek out of town shopping centres. Yet even so, city traders traditionally oppose new tram projects, a stance which is only slowly beginning to break. The motoring lobby of the 1960s obviously did good work in diffaming public transport and associating it with social outcasts and the poorest classes. Many traders demanded,and got, car parks and traffic right outside their shop windows.