I agree with much of your sentiment, and hope that the Coventry council is being challenged in these sorts of ways, but at the same time I recognise that each city is going to have quite different requirements for trams driving down the roads in its centre.
Perhaps a better push back is: why isn’t this just a better bus network?
There are different modes of operation that differentiate them but fundamentaly they are all trains and face the same issues
Again I sorta see what you mean, but feel you’re massively over simplifying this.
Ceci n'est pas une tram: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kMUANU9H6aw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_bus also exist.
(For me, the big thing about trams and trains and subways, etc is that the track is a kind of social construct - the track tells me that eventually a vehicle will come for me - no need to really worry about timetables, etc. A bus, a bus may come, maybe it won't. It's all psychoillogical but it's there the same.)
A tram is a golf cart or ATV A train is a highway bus
They have different applications and contexts in which they operate, even if they have core similarities
The second sentence is partially true: they do have different modes of operation.
But no, they don’t face entirely the same issues. Trains should hopefully never routinely encounter cars sharing their track and they don’t have to make tight turns to follow existing roadways.