Vienna, Schottenring

This is another section of Vienna's ring boulevard. This one passes a square on the left, and the building on the corner is large and of nearly monumental character.

This view was probably taken not very long after the boulevard had been built, as the trees have not yet had time to reach any sort of maturity.

Notice the high density of the trams. This was characteristic of tram service in larger cities, as the trams themselves were fairly small and thus of relatively low capacity. This means that service was very frequent, which is extremely convenient for the passenger but rather expensive for the operator. Most of these trams will have carried not only a driver but also a conductor, and they would have been serving on average perhaps 20 passengers, so labor would have represented a large cost in the price of a ticket. At the time, of course, it was not unusual for people to work six days a week and ten or more hours a day, which certainly would have helped to keep the price down. Today we have very high labor costs, which mandates relatively few, large vehicles operating infrequently. Conductors are gone from most services.

 
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