Can a Streetcar cost less than a Faux Trolley?

[thelakelander]

Come on... why would replacing the existing diesel non-trolley trolley with a streetcar increase ridership?

Because fixed transit has a long history of spurring "transit" oriented development, while rubber wheeled transit doesn't.  In short, it builds its own ridership base, in addition to appealing to potential riders already living, working and playing along a particular corridor.

As somebody has already pointed out, a streetcar system in Savannah or Charleston would probably be successful because, it would attract tourists. Here, replacing one system for another system isn't going to make a difference.

Providing reliable fixed mass transit options that connect your urban core areas isn't about attracting tourist.  If so, new LRT lines in Charlotte, Houston, Salt Lake City and St. Louis would be struggling for ridership right now.

What would make a difference is converting downtown into something people want to come to, AND at the same time, making the existing public transit system efficient enough to make the public want to ride it.

Part of attracting people to take advantage of the existing public transit system involves providing fixed routes where feasible and modifying the existing bus lines to provide higher quality service along their corridors and acting as feeders into the fixed transit spine.  As for downtown, it will only be as successful as its connectivity with the neighborhoods surrounding it are.  If you really want to stimulate downtown, get you a fixed transit line that connects it with existing urban core residential, entertainment and commercial areas.  Not only will downtown benefit, but so will ever other neighborhood.

So, convince me why spending more money for tracks between downtown and Riverside magically makes taking public transit more popular than it is now?

Its really not about convincing you, although I'm sure many here will.  Unless you plan to develop something within that particular mobility zone, you won't be asked to pay for it.

Traffic projections indicate that both Riverside Avenue and Park Street will be heavily congested by the end of the decade.  Thus, we have three options:

1. Do nothing and let the quality of living in the neighborhoods served by these streets decline.  In addition, this option also means those roads will eventually fall into despair from non-maintained wear and tear from over use (ever driven on a local street in Detroit or Flint?).

2. Purchase additional ROW and widen one or both to 4 or 6 lanes.  This would be the most expensive option by far and would destroy Riverside/Avondale.  Don't think so?  Take a drive down the side streets lining MLK Parkway and tell me how that highway benefited those historic neighborhoods.

3. Take the neighborhood's vision, goals and context into account and develop a transportation alternative that will help alleviate congestion issues on those major streets while also encouraging infill development in nearby Brooklyn and LaVilla.  Btw, this option is also a fraction of the cost of road widening and helps improve the quality of the areas impacted.  This option also works into the city's goal of reducing sprawl, encouraging infill development, creating a multimodal transportation network and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For these reasons above, option three was selected and included in the Mobility Plan as a fully funded 10-year CIE project.

[Ocklawaha]

If your bus seats 50 and your streetcar can seat 150 you will need 3 drivers for each motorman on the streetcar. The matter compounds when you couple a "trailer car" behind the lead streetcar and create a 2 car train for a capacity of 300 to 1 motorman. A similar experiment with the most modern high capacity BRT buses and high capacity LRV's still winds up with a highway vehicle being much more costly.

OCKLAWAHA

A single streetcar cab can fit 150 people? Aren't streetcars and buses about the same size? I don't understand the 3-fold difference. Also, you can have 2-cab buses. But agreed, a streetcar could have a bunch of cabs with 1 driver.

I think it's a popular American misconception, perhaps born of our heartfelt nostalgia for things lost... Just as all English sentences end on a down musical note, we tend to downsize all things past. "Cute little trolleys," "loved those little streetcars..." etc.  Fact is with perhaps the exception of the small single truck cars (which still generally measured in at 30 feet+) their never was such a thing as a "little streetcar."

Jacksonville Past, Streetcars were considerable bigger then their replacements.


This chart from United Streetcar demonstrates size differences of base model bus and modern streetcar.


Photo of the new Solaris Streetcar, again a pretty basic model.


No way, shape or form, is anyone going to confuse these streetcars with a bus size vehicle.


How about some cars from the dark days of dead streetcar lines having to beg for any new equipment, this scene in Cleveland.


Dallas Texas Light Rail Trains have blurred the differences in LRT and Streetcar.


Retired in 1961, this Pacific Electric Car might well have been the one I was in on my first "train" ride.


The PE car next to a Jacksonville type streetcar, and the streetcar is bigger then the buses of that era, imagine! Thanks to their size, the PE cars were affectionately known as "BLIMPS." And yes, they both ran on the streets of Los Angeles.

OCKLAWAHA

[PeeJayEss]

I want one!

[hightowerlover]

the guy who wrote "the trolley song" just died.  and mike hogan was ding ding dinging the bell.

[JeffreyS]

Come on... why would replacing the existing diesel non-trolley trolley with a streetcar increase ridership? As somebody has already pointed out, a streetcar system in Savannah or Charleston would probably be successful because, it would attract tourists. Here, replacing one system for another system isn't going to make a difference. What would make a difference is converting downtown into something people want to come to, AND at the same time, making the existing public transit system efficient enough to make the public want to ride it.

So, convince me why spending more money for tracks between downtown and Riverside magically makes taking public transit more popular than it is now?

Fixed rail attracts development because it is fixed.  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.  Fixed rail is a preferred transit method for people they like it better than buses which is what our fake trolleys are.
Believe it or not there is a stigma to buses but you can break that stigma by having a multimodal preferred system for people. They will then gravitate to the buses that compliment the system.

Streetcars have proven themselves for 100 years. Buses only gained prominence here when the companies that produce the buses bought the streetcars they couldn't compete against and trashed them.

[Debbie Thompson]

Fixed development has already been proven in Jacksonville.  Remember the "bridge to nowhere?"  The Dames Point Bridge?  As soon as it was announced, development started in that area of Jacksonville, and it's now a vibrant area of the city where it used to be woods and fish camps only.  Of course, some people would not call that progress, but that's a discussion for another thread. :-)

Ditto with the Buckman Bridge, which had to be doubled in size in a fairly short time. And with I-295, which was supposed to be a "loop around the I-95 traffic" and quickly became logjammed itself due to the development that sprang up around it.

Over and over, fixed transit improvements have already proven themselves.  Even the Skyway could have worked if it actually went somewhere more than from outlying parking lots to downtown.

[Ocklawaha]

Come on... why would replacing the existing diesel non-trolley trolley with a streetcar increase ridership?

Someone has obviously spent very little time on public transit in a city with both streetcar and bus. Unless one was born without neuro-transmitters, deaf, and blind, there is simply no way a bus, ANY BUS, is even close.

http://www.youtube.com/v/6KXabe-ufpc?fs=1&hl=en_US

http://www.youtube.com/v/p39Pj8ka4B0?fs=1&hl=en_US

OCKLAWAHA

[danem]

One of the biggest problems with buses that I've noticed is that they are stuck in the same traffic as everyone else. And with all the stops involved, this often means it taking longer to get anywhere than if one was able to drive and park.

[Timkin]

....and they stink... black diesel smoke blowing out of them after each stop . * cough cough cough

[Dashing Dan]

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.  

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.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

One of the biggest problems with buses that I've noticed is that they are stuck in the same traffic as everyone else. And with all the stops involved, this often means it taking longer to get anywhere than if one was able to drive and park.

Busses aren't meant to get you anywhere faster than an automobile, they're there for those who don't have or as an alternative for those who do.  Taking the bus lengthens my commute by about 45 minutes, but I prefer it to driving (most days) because of the wind-down it affords me at the end of the day.

In other places, San Antonio for instance, it was quicker to take the bus back and forth because parking was at a premium or expensive.  For $12 (about the cost of 4 hours of parking) I had an unlimited pass that allowed me to move around DT, the Quarry and even to the airport when my trip was over, my brother didn't realize how efficient using the bus was.  (I was there visiting) -- unfortunately we don't have that problem here so as I tried to relay above, it's a matter of perspective.

[danem]

One of the biggest problems with buses that I've noticed is that they are stuck in the same traffic as everyone else. And with all the stops involved, this often means it taking longer to get anywhere than if one was able to drive and park.

Busses aren't meant to get you anywhere faster than an automobile, they're there for those who don't have or as an alternative for those who do.  Taking the bus lengthens my commute by about 45 minutes, but I prefer it to driving (most days) because of the wind-down it affords me at the end of the day.

In other places, San Antonio for instance, it was quicker to take the bus back and forth because parking was at a premium or expensive.  For $12 (about the cost of 4 hours of parking) I had an unlimited pass that allowed me to move around DT, the Quarry and even to the airport when my trip was over, my brother didn't realize how efficient using the bus was.  (I was there visiting) -- unfortunately we don't have that problem here so as I tried to relay above, it's a matter of perspective.

I've had good experiences with commuting by bus too and agree waiting for a bus is better than trying to find parking. Of course I was addressing the question asked earlier--why anyone should bother replacing "trolleys" (buses) with something else. I say it's preferable for the transit to be out of the traffic. The bus can be stuck in the same traffic jams, and depending on the route, can contribute to the congestion when it makes stops during busy times.

[thelakelander]

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.  

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

Your assessment would go against the grain of history, especially this city's.  The best and most well used transportation facilities are typically designed to provide transportation and promote infill development that further feeds their use.  Those facilities that don't, typically struggle with ridership long term.  This is why its so critical to integrate transportation with land use planning.

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

There is no reason those absolutely dependent on transit services can't benefit from well designed transportation system that also spurs jobs and economic development in their own communities.  The long term benefit of this is that walkable eventually becomes an option because the transit system spurs retail and services that currently don't exist in the immediate area.  

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?

Because fake trolleys don't spur the development, don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions, cost more in the long run and they typically fail in attracting the choice rider.  

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.

Not adjusting routes is the main advantage of fixed transit.  Its more end user friendly to know that your transit route won't up and leave at the whim of a transit agency or a route's driver.  This is also critical for infill sustainable development, which is the result of integrating land use with mobility.  Streetcars also don't have to operate in mixed traffic.  While they can, service is more reliable when they can have a lane on existing ROW of their own.  In urban Jacksonville's case, we have this opportunity.  Primarily, because most of our original lines had their own ROW, so the ROW of those streets are typically wide enough for two way auto traffic and a separate lane or two for fixed transit.

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.

Why subsidize?  Publicly, you end up making millions in annual property tax revenue by sustainable infill economic development generated by your fixed transit investment, which also saves you millions by not having to do the alternative.  That alternative is spending more money to construct and subsidize additional roadway infrastructure.

[JeffreyS]

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. 

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.

So would you contend roads are only built where people live or are used to spur development? It is all transportation and to get it right you have to use every resource it provides.

[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?