Assorted Discussion about the Skyway and the PCT Trolleys

[Dashing Dan]

I like the subject line for this thread.  

When I was in college in Philadelphia I rode many PTC trolleys, i.e. before SEPTA took over the PTC.

Dan I think you mean P.C.C. OR PCC cars.

OCKLAWAHA

I rode Presidents Conference Committee (PCC) trolleys that were owned and operated by the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC).

I also know what a PCT is.

[wsansewjs]

I like the subject line for this thread.  

When I was in college in Philadelphia I rode many PTC trolleys, i.e. before SEPTA took over the PTC.

Dan I think you mean P.C.C. OR PCC cars.

OCKLAWAHA

I rode Presidents Conference Committee (PCC) trolleys that were owned and operated by the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC).

I also know what a PCT is.

-gasp- Dashing Dan, are you really Uncle Ockie?!

-Josh

[Dashing Dan]

No, but I think we are both about the same age.

[Dashing Dan]

I like the subject line for this thread.  

When I was in college in Philadelphia I rode many PTC trolleys, i.e. before SEPTA took over the PTC.

Dan I think you mean P.C.C. OR PCC cars.

OCKLAWAHA
Somebody fixed the subject line for this thread (PTC to PCT), so my witty remark about PTC trolleys isn't funny anymore  

[Ocklawaha]

In addition to the starter streetcar line connecting DT with Riverside, the commuter rail north line (DT to Airport eventually) is also a priority project of the recently adopted Mobility Plan. Bigguy, BRT and the commuter rail southeast project will eventually get you from DT to Southpoint.

JTA is doing everything they can to market the trolley, Lake. It goes over the proposed route of the street car, and beyond into Avondale and the Kent Campus. Yet, it's not the success they hoped it would be.

That's the primary reason I'm concerned about our first transit expansion being into an area that currently has been given what I consider a great service, and pretty much rejected it.

Since the street car is just our trolley, but on rails instead of wheels, I'm not sure that novelty effect will be enough to make it into a success. Same with a Skyway.

What on earth are you talking about?

The so called 'great service' you are talking about is just a bus.  Its painted like a trolley, but its not a trolley and is still a bus service.

You do know that they are two different things right?

Like you don't think that if they used one of the painted buses to go to run the regency route that it would be a 'new service' do you?

Actually, Big Guy, a review of your post doesnt back up your last statement.

I posted the above copy for your convenience.

It is a far cry in tone and intent than the following statement:

Well, Stephen. I said several pages back that's important to identify criticisms people have about the Riverside Trolley, so that they can be addressed in future transit projects, including the streetcar.

in fact, they almost seem to be diametrically opposed.  In one you seem to say that future transit is doomed based on an imaginary failure of the bus route, and in the second you seem to be trying to claim that you just wanted to get some input for the future transit line.

Apples and oranges.

And you are still welcome.

In Tuscon

In Tucson, the first full month of operation, three times as many riders paid four times as much to ride half as far in the newly restored rail line than they would have paid to ride m a modern “trolley” bus.

A ride on the historic line costs one dollar while the SunTran shuttle bus fare is twenty-five cents. The trolley line is only one mile in length while the bus route is about two miles and connects more activity centers including downtown Tucson and the convention center. Further discouraging riders, the streetcar only runs three days a week while the bus runs six days.

Although the streetcar duplicates the university end of the bus route, operating hours are such that Saturday daytime is the only period during the week that the two modes directly compete. Current streetcar hours are Friday, 6 P.M. to midnight; Saturday, 10A.M. to midnight; and Sunday, noon to 6 P.M. The dressed-up buses operate Monday through Saturday, daytime only. The people prefer the streetcar.

http://www.heritagetrolley.org/TNERJTucson.htm

In New Orleans

This past January, the Federal Transit Administration signed an agreement with the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority for $45 million in federal economic stimulus funds to build a new, 1.5-mile streetcar line. It would link Canal Street with the Union Passenger Terminal, a 1954 structure that’s now home to the Amtrak and Greyhound stations (under one roof).

Skeptical New Orleanians wondered why. Of course, connecting to a regional transportation center was a sensible thing. But the line passed block after block of bleak, asphalt-savanna surface parking that flanks partially filled office towers. Why not route the new streetcar through communities that already had a denser residential population?

The answer came pretty quickly. Routing the streetcar through an underused part of the city, it turned out, was like adding water to sea monkeys. The blocks came to life almost immediately.

The Domain Companies, a developer specializing in mixed-use developments with projects in New York and Louisiana, announced that four of those empty blocks would soon give rise to some 450 new apartments and 125,000 square feet of retail and restaurants. Other projects also quickly took root in the area: An auto dealership would be converted into a much-needed downtown supermarket, and the 1,193-room Hyatt Regency New Orleans, which sits just north of the new streetcar line and has been empty since Hurricane Katrina, started getting a $243 million overhaul. The area even got a new name: the South Market District.

“What we felt made this site ideal,” Matt Schwartz, principal of Domain Companies, told The Times-Picayune, “was the streetcar expansion.”

If all goes well, the South Market District will be a textbook example of how transit-oriented development (TOD) is supposed to work. Bring in transit, and builders of higher-density residential and retail will follow.

Yet listen carefully, and you can hear an echo in New Orleans. Because bringing TOD to New Orleans is a bit like telling Chicago about these tall buildings called skyscrapers. A popular bumper sticker here gets it right: “New Orleans: So Far Behind We’re Ahead.”


The New Orleans experience also helps answer a common question among transit planners and cash-strapped municipalities: Why streetcars? Why not just expand bus routes? They’re cheaper, more flexible to route, and far quicker to implement.

The short answer: because where streetcars go, people follow. People simply like streetcars better than busesâ€"studies suggest that ridership typically increases by about one-third when streetcars replace a bus route. They’re smooth. There’s less lurching. And there’s less uncertainty about where they end up.

Developers like the permanence of streetcars. Nobody invests in a retail complex or apartment building because it’s near a bus stopâ€"that could move next week. But streetcar systems, which cost on the order of $40 million a mile, are viewed as longer lasting, certain to be around for at least a generation. You can put money on them.

There’s another reason that is perhaps underappreciated in policy circles: Streetcars have charm. The streetcars serving the St. Charles line today are chiefly 900-series Perley A. Thomas cars, built in High Point, N.C., in the early 1920s. Their distinctive look, feel, and sound have created a coterie of fans. The St. Charles streetcar is one of the few mass-transit systems to earn four-and-half stars on Yelpâ€"or get any attention at all, for that matter. The 74 reviewers enthuse about the cars as if they were an undiscovered diner.

“There’s something about the smell of streetcar wood that just takes you to another era, and I love feeling the breeze through the open windows,” wrote a visitor from San Francisco. Another from South Pasadena, Calif., wrote that this was “The first public transportation I didn’t hate.”

And it’s not just starry-eyed Californians. New Orleanians love them, and the cars attract commuters as well as tourists. “It’s impossible to be unhappy when you’re on the St. Charles streetcar,” wrote a local resident. Another suggested qualified love: “Consistent in its inconsistency. Dangerous in a yesteryear fashion. But as distinctive and charming as some seasonal berry sorbet.”

Darrin Nordahl is the city designer for Davenport, Iowa, and the author of My Kind of Transit. In that book, he takes a long look at American citiesâ€"particularly New Orleans, Seattle, San Francisco, and Pittsburghâ€"where visitors and residents alike have fought to keep their streetcars, cable cars, monorails, and funiculars operating. Nordahl writes that he had an epiphany in Hong Kong, while riding the funicular. “Public transportation here was not just a means to a destination, but a destination itself.”

PAY ATTENTION JACKSONVILLE  TRANSIT+ROLLING MUSEUM

Nordahl has read through a great many transit plans for cities large and small. All these plans focus on issues such as headway (timing between cars), geographic coverage, ridership, and “passenger miles traveled.” But not a single city plan has taken up the issue of what makes a trip truly enjoyable for passengers. As Nordahl writes, “The experience offered to the passengerâ€"the ‘fun-factor’â€"did not seem to weigh anywhere within transportation proposals.”

He believes they should. “Once upon a time, traffic engineers told us how we should design a street,” Nordahl told me. So streets ended up being what one writer has referred to as “traffic sewers”â€"concrete sluices designed strictly for cars. That attitude has changed. “Now there’s this movement all across the country where we’re redesigning streetsâ€"they’re narrower, and travel is slower, but they’re very inviting and comfortable for pedestrians,” he said.

Much the same approach could be applied to transit, he suggested. Nordahl singles out the St. Charles streetcar as a good example. Like a narrow street full of intriguing storefronts, the streetcar has an almost baroque complexity of textures and materials: leather, steel, brass, mahogany, dangerously wide-open windows. (Compare this to the bus interiors of plastic with a few steel accents, and sealed windows, at times covered with billboard-sized advertising that permit only dim and blurry views of the outsideâ€"treating the customer like Spam in a highly decorated can.)

The St. Charles streetcar line is an exception in many ways. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is thus exempted from meeting a number of modern standards (such as handicapped accessibility; heat and air-conditioning; windows that open just a few inches). But it and other streetcars suggest that paying attention to the experience is not just an exercise in feel-goodism. It makes practical sense, in part by attracting “premium riders.” These are people who take public transit not because they lack other options, but because they choose to leave their cars behind. That’s a benefit for all, since it spreads the costs more widely, allows popular lines to underwrite routes in less popular or populated areas, and reduces the stigma of public transit. Everyone wins.

http://www.architectmagazine.com/planning/a-desire-named-streetcar.aspx

The most important issues are frequencies, the size of the service area, times of service, and reliability.  Vehicle comfort is a little less important, but not much.

Nearly anything that can be done with a steel wheel on a steel rail can also be done with a rubber tire on asphalt.  

Either vehicle can be powered by electricity, gasoline, or diesel fuel.  

Up to a higher level than one might think, neither vehicle has to be any larger or smaller than the other.

You can lock in a route by laying track for it to run on, but that lack of flexibility can cut both ways.

Here is a good example of it cutting the OTHER way!

I like the subject line for this thread.  

When I was in college in Philadelphia I rode many PTC trolleys, i.e. before SEPTA took over the PTC.

Dan I think you mean P.C.C. OR PCC cars.

OCKLAWAHA

I rode Presidents Conference Committee (PCC) trolleys that were owned and operated by the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC).

I also know what a PCT is.

-gasp- Dashing Dan, are you really Uncle Ockie?!

-Josh

A PCC in a state of RIP

Dan, you threw me off with the, "ride the PCT'S" rather then "ride the PCT", one must always consider when talking about PCC's especially those belonging to PTC that they are more attractive then PCT'S. The PCT is really a pathetic attempt at a PCC, whilst the PCC was an attempt to duplicate what we'd come to call, modern BRT. Those of us familiar with PCC'S know that no BRT will ever get close even if it does belong to the PTC. In the future just let me know in the future when your PCC is on the PTC and we'll discuss the PCT on the BRT?

[ChriswUfGator]

Guys, come on, this is settled science when it comes to the benefits of intra-city rail.

There are definitely benefits, it's clearly worth doing.

[Ocklawaha]

Ode to the BRT

It's midnight at the bus stop
And I drag myself in line.
Travellin' late, I got to go
But the bus won't be on time.
Everybody's looking half alive.
Later on the bus arrives.

They take my fare
I find a seat
And we move out through the lights.
Come on Driver, where's the heat?
It's cold out on this night.
I keep telling to myself that I don't care.
Come tomorrow, I'll be somewhere.

Take the bus downtown.
It's a dog of a way to get around.
Take the bus downtown.
It's a dog gone easy way to get you down.

Tired of watching this night go by
So I look across the aisle.
The window's frosted, I can't sleep
But the girl returns my smile.
I keep telling myself that I don't care
but tomorrow, will she be there?

I'm wrinkled on the bus bench at the transfer stop.
a stripper's getting cozy with JSO cop.
My coffee's tasting tired.
My eyes roll over dead.
Got to go outside and get the white lines out of my head.
Oh senorita, just to be in bed.
You got me driving.
I'm on your down town bus and you're driving.

But there's nothing new about buses downtown.
Nothing new about feeling down.
Nothing new about putting off
Or putting myself on.

Looking to tomorrow is the way the loser hides
I should have realized by now that all my life's a ride.
It's time to find some happy times and make myself some friends
I know there ain't no rainbows waiting when this journey ends.

Chasing the dragon off this dirty bus first time I understood
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good
That's a thought for keeping if I could.
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good

My apologies to the late: Harry Chapin

OCKLAWAHA

[Dog Walker]

"traffic sewers" !!  Absolutely!  I will never look at Blanding, Beach, Atlantic, and Philips the same way again.  The perfect meme.

[thelakelander]

There was a reason no mobility plan money is going into rubber wheeled transit solutions.

So no Mobility Plan money for BRT?  I hope not.  Let JTA fund that debacle all by themselves.

Not a dime. However, mobility plan road widening projects for Philips and Southside should reduce BRT costs along those corridors if JTA chooses to coordinate with them.

[Dashing Dan]

There was a reason no mobility plan money is going into rubber wheeled transit solutions.  

What about people who need buses to get to work? 

Are you saying:

That the mobility plan shouldn't serve them because buses aren't popular with members of the city council or the CPAC committees? 

That they should wait and hope for a streetcar to come into their neighborhood?  Or

That they should move out of their own neighborhoods in order to live closer to where the plan says that there may someday be a streetcar line? 

[Ocklawaha]

None of the above Dan. The mobility plan gives us local funding and financing tool, but the key is LOCAL. The federal new-starts programs are generally stacked against rail. Years of highway lobby contributions to key members of Congress have assured this. Buses can get federal grants much more easily, grants JTA should be after.

Right now IMO we could use 10 inter-city type coaches for express longer-distance commuter runs. We are probably 100 buses short in the regular intra-city type buses. Lastly we could also use 10 or more articulated buses for heavy commute routes. The buses should be low floor, right hand AND LEFT HAND ENTRY'S /EXITS. Along with a commitment to new drivers and fare checkers should come a new pay BEFORE you enter system of ticket/card along with every Gate or similar station in town (and THEY should be able to earn pennies from each sale). Every single thing on my wish list could be gotten through the federal process... but rail? forget it.


OCKLAWAHA

[Dashing Dan]

If I were to answer my own question I would say that cities with rail service also have better bus service. 

But I would also say that the mobility plan should have included funding for buses.

[Dashing Dan]

Wider roads are more dangerous for bus riders to cross.

[tufsu1]

also keep in mind that the mobility plan funds capital projects...lots of bus improvements would be operational in nature

as for the wide roads issue....in the case of roads like Philips Highway, they can be better....the vision is to convert a 4-lane rural-design to a 6 lane road with curbs, bike lanes, sidewalks, and median refuges for pedestrians.

[thelakelander]

Yes, urbanized improvements that will funded to widen corridors like Philips Highway and Southside Blvd will dramtically improve bus user saftey conditions along these highways as well as pave the way for potential TOD clusters around future commuter rail/BRT stations.

Dashing Dan, how familiar are you with the LRTP, Mobility Plan, etc.?  In case you want to read up on it, here is a link: http://www.coj.net/Departments/Planning-and-Development/Community-Planning-Division/Mobility-Plan.aspx

I think that better understanding the purpose of the plan will actually help answer a lot of the comments and questions you've raised to date.