Can a Streetcar cost less than a Faux Trolley?

[thelakelander]

They should be done in conjunction with neither being a priority over the other.  If you do this, you'll kill two birds with one stone and save your community a ton of money in the process.

[Ocklawaha]

The fake trolleys can and have changed route so a developer would be crazy to use them as a reason to invest and then have them change routes again. Development attracts people who would then use the fixed rail system.  

On that ground why pay for tracks and wires when buses and fake trolleys can move more or less the same number of people and are more flexible in terms of routing options?

Hardly the more or less the same number, a fake trolley typically carries 30-50 passengers, and a heritage streetcar 101 passengers. And remember that with any bus, we are talking passenger per driver, but streetcars of any era can be made to entrain.

Not only as a development tool, which Jacksonville dearly needs, but try taking a bus down an otherwise abandoned railroad. For example we have a perfect opportunity to seize the day and snatch the right of way from a Newnan Street Line-East on Beaver (and yes, right off the end over the creek and through the woods) then duck north under the Arlington Expressway at the Union Street Warehouses - straight north between Springfield and Eastside to 1st to 8th to 21st - then veer off northwest on the former railroad across Liberty-Main-Pearl-44th and roll to a stop at Gateway Mall. The only part of that route you could travel with a bus is Newnan and a couple of blocks of Beaver. To get the same downtown/stadiums to Gateway speed you'd need a flying bus or the assistance of a Zeppelin with a lot of rope.

Bottom line, with streetcar you can have all of the benefits of a Skyway, a railroad, or a road in a single system. In Dallas you can cruise along a downtown street to the east near Deep Ellum, duck into a tunnel to City Place station, then Mockingbird, then fly down a former railroad mainline at 65 mph to your destination. Bus rapid transit does this in Miami but Bus Rapid Transit capital costs averaged about $13.5 million per mile for
busways, $9.0 million per mile for buses on HOV lanes, and $680,000 per mile on city streets, when escalated to 2000 dollars. Portland's modern streetcar loop cost $12.3 million per mile, and Kenosha and Memphis managed the same for under $5 million per mile. Modern railroad track "off road" can be built state of the art on former grades for under $5 million per mile affording almost unlimited freedom for time savings and later parkway improvements. 

For me the best reasons are that electricity is potentially more sustainable than oil, electrically powered vehicles are cleaner and quieter, and up to a point, they accelerate more quickly.  Besides the additional fixed costs, the disadvantages of streetcars are that vintage streetcars are less comfortable, all streetcars are a bigger obstacle in mixed traffic, and you cannot adjust streetcar routes without sacrificing fixed costs.

It is particularly interesting to note that, even with its heavy capital costs, when operational costs are considered, St. Louis Metro's LRT exhibits total costs slightly less than the agency's bus operations. However, higher total passenger-mileage was carried on the bus system, so a more complete analysis would require taking into consideration the differing life-cycle costs for each mode (e.g., railcars last considerably longer than motor buses) by annualizing capital costs.

To obtain a total annualized cost figure for each mode, capital costs were annualized using common economic analysis. Annual operating costs were averaged for the 10-year period, as was annual passenger-mileage for each mode â€" reflecting the advantages of the longer lives of both LRT infrastructure and rolling stock.

For bus, average annual O&M costs were $104.6 million, and average passenger-mileage was 139.0 million. For LRT, average annual O&M costs were $26.2 million, and average passenger-mileage was 104.8 million.

Via this "averaging" method, with annualized capita costs, the total cost per passenger-mile for each mode was calculated as follows:

    · Bus â€" $0.88
    · LRT â€" $0.74

This suggests that, with total capital and operational costs considered, St. Louis's "capital-intensive" LRT ends up costing approximately 16% less per passenger mile than the agency's supposedly "cheap" bus system. 
SOURCE: NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION DATABASE

"the disadvantages of streetcars are that vintage streetcars are less comfortable"

Sounds like you've been the victim of wooden seats in either the heritage streetcar reproductions or perhaps New Orleans? Even settle into the wicker seats in a REAL streetcar? Try the velvet seats of the O'Port Portugal car in Dallas, or the floating sensation of one of the old Turtleback Cars (a Jacksonville type car). Add the velvet seats to the Turtleback and there isn't a bus in the world that would ride as nice. Perhaps a point we should strive to educate JTA about, as based on the PCT buses, they too think streetcars need wooden seats.

Personally I enjoy riding trains and trolleys more than I enjoy riding in buses or cars, but I don't expect the public to subsidize my enjoyment of trains anymore than I would expect to help someone buy a Porsche.

On this we agree, so why build an expensive bus system that will bring us all of the associated higher O&M costs and NONE of the higher ridership or development benefits. There is a DOE webpage on future fuel costs that ought to scare the BRT out of anyone: 
http://www.fta.dot.gov/documents/WVU_FTA_LCC_Second_Report_11-03-2008.pdf

OCKLAWAHA

[Dashing Dan]

They should be done in conjunction with neither being a priority over the other.  If you do this, you'll kill two birds with one stone and save your community a ton of money in the process.

We agree that land use impacts should drive investments in transportation facilities, but why can't we also agree that transportation should be the primary benefit of a transportation facility?

[Dashing Dan]

The primary benefit of transportation facilities should be to provide transportation.  Promoting favorable development patterns is also very important, but a secondary benefit.  How could anyone dispute that?   

http://www.livemint.com/2011/03/26004352/Quick-Edit--Flip-side-of-the.html

[thelakelander]

They should be done in conjunction with neither being a priority over the other.  If you do this, you'll kill two birds with one stone and save your community a ton of money in the process.

We agree that land use impacts should drive investments in transportation facilities, but why can't we also agree that transportation should be the primary benefit of a transportation facility?

Because I believe they are linked and that we do ourselves a disservice by making it an either/or discussion.  When you isolate transportation by itself, you end up forever subsidizing a system that will always struggle to serve choice riders while also failing to spur indirect economic income.  In addition, by setting it up in this manner, you also make it more difficult to expand, since the common resident and city leader can't see the true benefits of good well planned transit investment.  When you mix transportation with land use, you do the exact opposite, not only making your community money through indirect and transit supportive TOD, but also improving the quality of life for your transit users as well.

[Dashing Dan]

We agree that land use impacts should drive investments in transportation facilities, but why can't we also agree that transportation should be the primary benefit of a transportation facility?

Because I believe they are linked and that we do ourselves a disservice by making it an either/or discussion.

Of course they should be linked.  Who said anything about an either or discussion?  

[thelakelander]

So, why keep trying to separate the two as made in this previous statement:

Call me crazy but my view is that transportation facilities should be designed primarily to provide transportation, rather than to promote development.

After all, many people are absolutely dependent on transit services, whereas (with certain notable exceptions) developers are able to look out for themselves.  

On that ground why pay for tracks and wires when buses and fake trolleys can move more or less the same number of people and are more flexible in terms of routing options?  

For me the best reasons are that electricity is potentially more sustainable than oil, electrically powered vehicles are cleaner and quieter, and up to a point, they accelerate more quickly.  Besides the additional fixed costs, the disadvantages of streetcars are that vintage streetcars are less comfortable, all streetcars are a bigger obstacle in mixed traffic, and you cannot adjust streetcar routes without sacrificing fixed costs.  

Personally I enjoy riding trains and trolleys more than I enjoy riding in buses or cars, but I don't expect the public to subsidize my enjoyment of trains anymore than I would expect to help someone buy a Porsche.

I've never made a statement that said transportation facilities should not be designed primarily to provide transportation and not promote development.  I've made the statement that they should be linked, if trying to get the most out of our public investments, especially in the urban core, which was originally developed with this link and has fallen apart since that mass transit link and end user friendly connectivity was taken away.

[Dashing Dan]

So, why keep trying to separate the two as made in this previous statement:

Call me crazy but my view is that transportation facilities should be designed primarily to provide transportation, rather than to promote development.

I've never made a statement that said transportation facilities should not be designed primarily to provide transportation and not promote development.  I've made the statement that they should be linked,

So do you agree or disagree with my initial statement, i.e. should transportation be the primary purpose for transportation facilities?  

We do seem to agree that a secondary purpose for transportation facilities should be to promote development, and that these two purposes should be closely linked.

[Dashing Dan]

Dan, did you check out the link that I provided for you?

I'm not sure what you'd meant for me to find there.

[thelakelander]

So do you agree or disagree with my initial statement, i.e. should transportation be the primary purpose for transportation facilities?  

We do seem to agree that a secondary purpose for transportation facilities should be to promote development, and that these two purposes should be closely linked.

Yes.  I disagree with this initial statement:

Call me crazy but my view is that transportation facilities should be designed primarily to provide transportation, rather than to promote development.

There should be no primary and secondary goal if you want a successful, well used reliable mass transit system that gets the most bang out of your buck.  These two items come joined at the hip.

[Dashing Dan]

Yes.  I disagree with this initial statement:

Call me crazy but my view is that transportation facilities should be designed primarily to provide transportation, rather than to promote development.

There should be no primary and secondary goal if you want a successful, well used reliable mass transit system that gets the most bang out of your buck.  These two items come joined at the hip.

By definition there can be only one #1 goal.  

The primary goal of transportation facilities should be to provide transportation.  There are a number of closely linked secondary goals and/or constraints, including development, environmental quality, and safety, all of which should be addressed at the same time that a transportation facility is being designed.  

Personally, I favor the development pattern that allows the most people to circulate most freely, whether on foot, by bicycle, by transit, or if all else fails, by car.  For transit to work, it must meet the needs of those who it is intended to serve.

[Dashing Dan]

On that ground why pay for tracks and wires when buses and fake trolleys can move more or less the same number of people and are more flexible in terms of routing options?

Hardly the more or less the same number, a fake trolley typically carries 30-50 passengers, and a heritage streetcar 101 passengers. And remember that with any bus, we are talking passenger per driver, but streetcars of any era can be made to entrain.

I should have said "order of magnitude" not "more or less the same" number.  I was thinking about trolleys and buses in relation to cars and trains.

"the disadvantages of streetcars are that vintage streetcars are less comfortable"

Sounds like you've been the victim of wooden seats in either the heritage streetcar reproductions or perhaps New Orleans? Even settle into the wicker seats in a REAL streetcar? Try the velvet seats of the O'Port Portugal car in Dallas, or the floating sensation of one of the old Turtleback Cars (a Jacksonville type car). Add the velvet seats to the Turtleback and there isn't a bus in the world that would ride as nice. Perhaps a point we should strive to educate JTA about, as based on the PCT buses, they too think streetcars need wooden seats.

I've ridden heritage streetcars in Memphis and New Orleans.  I've also ridden a lot in PCC streetcars, which were designed in the Thirties to overcome the many perceived shortcomings of what we are now calling "heritage" streetcars.  San Francisco operates a substantial number of PCC streetcars, and Philadelphia has brought a few back.  So I guess my preference would be for PCC streetcars over "heritage" streetcars.  I do enjoy riding PCC streetcars, and the capacity of a PCC streetcar is somewhat higher than the capacity of a typical 40' bus.

[Dashing Dan]

I dunno dan.

I would have to disagree with you just simply on the grounds that it seems to be that you seem to be considering 'transportation' as a separate thing unto itself.  But transportation is really a relationship between two or more things.

The last straw came for the streetcar suburbs when governments began to subsidize highways into more distant areas.  But even before that happened, rising levels of auto traffic had made life in streetcar suburbs less pleasant.   

For transit to be the preferred choice, it has to offer decent frequencies, days and hours of service, and network coverage areas.  If you sacrifice any of these, then transit riders who can drive will start driving, and they will likely move away from areas where they might have access to transit. 

What do we gain from that?

[buckethead]

What is the #1 goal of blood?

A) To carry oxygen and nutrients to individual cells.

3) To carry CO2 and other waste from cells.

d) to circulate.

7) to exist and multiply.

B) To provide immune defenses.

f) I'm sure I have missed others. (hence, I get an "F" in hematology)

Transportation is the life blood of commerce. (bringing goods and services together with consumers as well as employees and employers) To ignore the commerce aspect is to make transportation irrelevant/obsolete. (read: JTA)

[Ocklawaha]

MASS TRANSIT


service (serv·ice)

2. a system supplying a public need such as transport, communications, or utilities such as electricity and water.

Phrases:

be at someone's service
   
be ready to assist someone whenever possible.

Origin:

Old English (denoting religious devotion or a form of liturgy), from Old French servise or Latin servitium 'slavery', from servus 'slave'. The early sense of the verb (mid 19th century) was 'be of service to, provide with a service'


JTA

accommodation (ac·com·mo·da·tion)

1. the available space for occupants in a building, vehicle, or vessel

Phrases:

there was lifeboat accommodation for 1,178 people.

Origin:

early 17th century: from Latin accommodatio(n-), from accommodare 'fit one thing to another' (see accommodate)

SOURCE: Oxford University Press

OCKLAWAHA