People keep saying that the street car will be worthless, but I simply don't buy it. It connects all of the fastest growing neighborhoods in the city, where there have been increasing large amounts of effort around economic development within the areas that these places connect, where it will massively increase the value and in turn ability to build real estate along the waterfront, as one of the key determiners of land value in NYC is access to transit.
Trams run on metal rails because steel has a much lower rolling resistance than rubber, and suffers less wear and tear. So you can carry more people more frequently with less maintenance.
