Every ten minutes a shiny, bright red carriage glides to a silent stop and local people look and admire.

A father enthuses to a son, the dad maybe more thrilled than the lad.

Inside the shops, they wait in hope that the new vehicle will deliver loads of cash. They dream that the bell of the tram will be echoed by the tinkle of the tills.

For more than a year of construction, they have complained that the work has cramped the entrance to their shops.

Now, they are hopeful that it will deliver customers and a pay-off.

The work started in 2017 says Craig Honeybrook, who is involved in two businesses: Your Podiatry Canberra and Sport and Spinal Physiotherapy.

"We had blockades up and screens in front of the practice so we never got the visual benefits from being on street level," he says.

He thinks the construction cost him a quarter of his likely passing trade.

But now? "We expect people walking up and down the street, getting off the tram," he says.

"When the light rail starts they will see our clinic and we visualise a 25 per cent increase of clientele coming into the business. That means more staff. We looked at the future with the tram coming in."

He thinks the business is the only one with premises at both ends of the line, so that may mean a double benefit. "Hopefully for both places, we're going to get an increase in clientele," he says.

Will it mean he drives less? Not necessarily because he rides his bike to work - though, if he's tired, he may put his bike on the tram and cycle the last five minutes home.

He reckons his staff who work in the city will drive to an outlying tram stop, perhaps at O'Connor, and park there so they don't have to pay for city-centre parking at city-centre parking prices.

But he reckons the clientele may well park their cars near tram stops and use the tram more. "I think that's what everyone is expecting and hoping for," he says.

On the physiotherapist's table, having his knee pummeled, Josh Tait says he thinks the tram will be beneficial for everyone.

"It's more of an attraction. People will see it as part of this area," he says.

Next door at Cool Barbers there is a similar optimism.

"It's a great project for Canberra," says barber Bassam Nasser, as he snips away at a lunchtime customer.

"This area was dead and now we are getting busy here. The tram is a good thing for us. We will get busier."

Of the passers-by at the terminus, one youngster on a bike, Nick Heedergen, says he will use the light rail. "I'd go to the city on it instead of the bus down Northbourne," he says.

"It's pretty cool. I'm excited because it makes us feel like a proper city.

"We're grown up because we've got a tram."