I have spent a week riding Vienna's oldest trams for a reporting assignment, and I have come away with an unfashionable conclusion: the city should keep them for as long as they will run.
The case against them is obvious. They are slow to board, impossible for wheelchairs, loud. The case for them is harder to put in a spreadsheet, which is exactly why it keeps losing.
A city is not only a logistics problem. It is also a place people recognize. Vienna has, almost by accident, preserved something that most European capitals threw away, and it should think hard before correcting the accident.
Tomas Beránek is a contributing writer for The Continental Times Opinion section.