This whole discussion seems fairly pointless. Given that there used to be tram wires in the exact same place and that they are a normal feature of pretty much any European city, I can't see why we should abandon a solution that has been proven to work reliably over the last hundred years. One could argue that putting tram wires up restores the historic look of the city. I feel pretty sure that if there were hundred year-old tram wires in place now and somebody wanted to take them down the same people would be arguing the exact opposite position.
Without knowing much about it, the idea of using a third rail solution scares me. Yes, it is supposed to switch off once the tram passes, but this strikes me as something that is just waiting to go horribly wrong. Plus, you are condemning one of the cities most reliable cold-weather transport systems to the vagaries of the weather.
We seem to have forgotten that we no longer have infinite money available in this country. To me, it seems that the obvious solution is the cheap proven one and forget about faffing about with batteries and automatic switching third rails.
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