BRT vs. Rail: A Tale of Two Urban Transit Systems

[Jason]

The Skyway is a downtown peoplemover system designed to move people that are already downtown.  It is not the beginnings of of a regional elevated mass transit system itself, only a small piece.  The skyway is the first piece of an unfinished puzzle.  Its intentions were to link up with a future regional commuter rail system and comprehensive bus network all linked together with Amtrak and Greyhound via the proposed transportation hub at the Prime Osborne.

Light Rail would be an asset except for one big problem: Right-of- way. We have waited too long to purchase ROW for the suburbs to travel to the big job centers. Unless we are willing to face the music and tear out a strip of highway, there are no good choices. And then there's the bridges!

The core is revitalizing on its own and its new residents are already popping up within the vicinity of the skyway so why not finish it and expand it per its original plans?.  The JTA also has plans to implement "Neighborhood Loops" using trollys to move people around a particular neighborhood and then connect those neighborhoods together with a more rapid form of transit.  The argument the MetroJacksonville has been voicing against the proposed BRT system is that it is a waste downtown and along the existing rail lines.  BRT would, however, be useful in connecting the "Neighborhood Loops" in areas where rail doesn't exist (such as Southpoint, Beaches, Southside Corridor, Arlington, etc.)  The system as a whole would help to alleviate traffic congestion by giving people an attractive option to get where they need to go and would help to spawn TODs along the rail lines and "Neighborhood Loop" terminuses.

[thelakelander]

In terms of getting to jobs and carrying the max load of passengers, the City needs to divorce its ideas about revitalizing downtown from plans for moving people to work and getting cars off the roads. They need to concentrate on Baymeadows, Butler Blvd, and Southside Blvd. BRT needs to go somewhere else, not into town. Yeah, lots of people work in town, but most work elsewhere in sprawlzania.

http://www.jtaflorida.org/projects/projects_map.html

Example of Southside road construction projects....

1. $80.5 million - JTB/9A interchange
2. $79 million - Beach Blvd widening (at Intracoastal Waterway)
3. $65.3 million - JTB/I-95 interchange
4. $23.5 million - Beach Blvd widening (between FCCJ & Hodges)
5. $19.5 million - AC Skinner Parkway extension (between Southside & Belford)
6. $5 million - Southside Blvd resurfacing (between US 1 & I-95 flyover)

These projects alone, come out to $272.8 million worth of transportation dollars.  If anything thing, most of the transportation focus in Duval County has been recently centered around the sprawling Southside, and not on downtown, as previously suggested.

Anyway, it seems as most have completely missed the main topic at hand.  This coming Thursday,  JTA will be having it's second round of public workshops on their $20 million downtown BRT plan.  This isn't pie in the sky stuff, its as real as it gets and could hit our streets in about three years.  The photos in the thread show two downtown transportation systems and have resulted in economic success and failure.  

Based on what JTA has shown during previous workshops, downtown Jacksonville will be blessed with a Marion Street Transit Parkway Jr, if residents and city officials don't wake up and force JTA to deal with more important issues facing the downtown environment than just moving city buses through it.

[Rich]

Good article. However, you state that the TECO Streetcar system is a primary factor for Tampa's successful redevelopment of the neighborhoods surrounding downtown. I would disagree - it is highly likely that most of these developments would have been built due to current market forces regardless of whether the streetcar was there or not.  I do not deny that the streetcar has helped, but it by no means is the primary factor. I would also be careful how you compare a proposed BRT system to the Marion St Transitway in Tampa. Marion St is a transit Mall, not a BRT system - there is a huge difference. I don't know if BRT is right for downtown Jax or not, but if the proposed project is a true BRT system, it should look quite different than what you are seeing in Tampa.

[thelakelander]

1. The article mentions that transit connecting existing destinations, combined with agressive marketing and decent urban clustering was the reason for that area's growing vibrancy. (See Conclusion Point No. 2)

2. Several of the developments in the images were completed, before the streetcar system.  Links have also been included within the article to give Metro Jacksonville readers a path to read for themselves the struggles many of these places went through prior to the streetcar opening.

3. The Marion Street Transit Parkway is nearly identical to what is being proposed by JTA for the Adams Street Transit Mall alternative.  Please go out to the JTA workshops next week and view personally.  Also feel free to read the previous Metro Jacksonville article on bus oriented transit malls mentioned as a success by JTA at the previous workshops.  This article also provides links to in depth information for all of those busways.

BRT & Transit Malls: Do they create Vibrant Cities?
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/388/92/

Please don't take Metro Jacksonville's word for everything.  Take advantage of the attached links in the articles.  The attached links are meant to be used by readers to find out what's being said in those exact cities and not the opinions of the Metro Jacksonville Group.

Marion St is a transit Mall, not a BRT system - there is a huge difference. I don't know if BRT is right for downtown Jax or not, but if the proposed project is a true BRT system, it should look quite different than what you are seeing in Tampa.

Last but not least, can you explain your reasoning with this statement?  It's very important that this subject be debated out in the open and from all angles.  Only then will we be able to apply the best solutions to the situation at hand.  Also feel free to suggest successful examples of downtown BRT lines and BRT (not those using slow moving mall oriented shuttles) oriented transit malls that have enhanced the pedestrian friendly retail environment along their paths.

[Lunican]

A Streetcar Named Aspire: Lines Aim to Revive Cities
By THADDEUS HERRICK
June 20, 2007; Page B1

TAMPA, Fla. -- As a transportation system, this city's $63 million streetcar line is a dud.

Since the project opened in 2002, its financial losses have exceeded expectations. Last year ridership declined 10% to its lowest level yet. And the vintage system spans only 2.4 miles between the edge of downtown and a historic district called Ybor City.

"It goes from no place to nowhere," says Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair, an opponent of the project.

But proponents say Tampa's Teco Line Streetcar System has delivered on another front: helping to spur development. Some $450 million in residential and retail space is complete along the route, most of it in the Channel District, a once-languishing maritime neighborhood. With another $450 million in development underway and $1.1 billion in the planning stages, local officials expect the district to be home to as many as 10,000 residents within the next decade.

Like stadiums, convention centers and aquariums, streetcars have emerged as a popular tool in the effort to revitalize downtowns in the U.S. About a dozen cities, from Madison, Wis., to Miami, are planning lines. But while research shows that big-ticket projects such as ballparks largely fail to spawn economic development, evidence is mounting that streetcars are indeed a magnet.

Streetcar systems are slower, less expensive and smaller than light rail, with cars that carry a maximum of 125 people and the average line 2-3 miles long. The cars are powered by electricity and run on tracks, which developers tend to favor because they suggest a sense of permanence, unlike bus routes, which can be changed overnight.

In Kenosha, Wis., city officials say a two-mile line helped generate 400 new residential units and the redevelopment of a 69-acre industrial site into a waterfront park. The streetcar line in Little Rock, Ark., has sparked revitalization of the city's River Market and warehouse district. In Seattle, a new $52 million streetcar line is scheduled to open in December that will shuttle riders between downtown and South Lake Union, a formerly industrial area that is being redeveloped by Microsoft Corp. billionaire Paul Allen.

And in Portland, Ore., the poster child for such development, officials say the streetcar system has helped bring $2.7 billion in investment within two blocks of its 3.6 mile line, much of it in the 24-hour hub known as the Pearl District. "It's one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the city," says Richard Brandman, deputy planning director for Metro, the Portland area's regional government.

Still, streetcars face considerable odds because they vie for the same money as transportation projects designed to serve the suburbs. This has been particularly true at the federal level, where funding has long depended on how quickly projects can move people from one point to another. Streetcars, which average under ten miles per hour, are at a distinct disadvantage. By contrast, light rail moves at 20 to 60 miles per hour.

Congress sought to change the odds in 2005 with the creation of Small Starts, a Federal Transit Administration program designed to fund small-scale transportation systems, including streetcars. But streetcar proponents have been largely reluctant to pursue funding under the program, saying the FTA still favors high-speed transit such as buses.

Paul Griffo, a spokesman for the FTA, says that both mobility and development factor into the funding of transportation projects. But so far Small Starts has recommended four projects, all of them bus rapid transit, an emerging transportation alternative in which a bus operates in a designated lane much like subway or light rail with stops about every half mile.

In the meantime, cities have relied on a patchwork of public and private money to help fund their streetcar systems, hoping to tap into a demographic shift in which young professional and empty nesters are moving downtown. Streetcars are especially popular among urban planners because they encourage the sort of density that allows for offices to be developed alongside homes, shops and restaurants.

"Streetcars are not designed to save time," says Mr. Blumenauer. "They're designed to change the way neighborhoods are built."

While streetcars lack speed and mobility, proponents say the role they play in urban development makes them a worthy transportation choice. They argue that by helping to draw development to urban areas such as downtowns, and by providing a transportation link in those areas, streetcars reduce the need for extra lanes of highways to the suburbs and limit the need for cars in and around downtowns.

In several cities, such as San Francisco and New Orleans, streetcars have never gone out of style as transportation systems. But many more were shut down following World War II in favor of buses.

That was the case in Tampa. The city once had one of the largest electric streetcar systems in the Southeast, with well over 100 cars and more than 50 miles of track.

In the mid-1980s, prompted in large part by nostalgia, a group calling itself the Tampa and Ybor City Street Railway Society set about to restore one of Tampa's derelict streetcars. Out of that effort evolved a broader downtown redevelopment campaign in which a new streetcar system was proposed, linking the city's convention center and the former cigar-manufacturing hub of Ybor City.

But county officials saw the focus on downtown as trivial compared with the needs of the larger Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area, where the majority of 2.7 million people rely heavily on their cars to get to and from work. County leaders such as Mr. Blair, formerly a Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority board member, ridiculed the $600,000 replica streetcars as costly toys.

"The concern was the use of public money," says Steven Polzin, a former regional transit authority board member who is a director of public transit research at the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research. "Tampa-area roads are wanting for resources."

But the controversy did little to deter development in the Channel District, a 212-acre stretch of land where the city has agreed to grant tax breaks for developers. Developers say they were also drawn by the streetcar line. Fida Sirdar, president of Key Developers Group LLC, for example, is spending several hundred thousand dollars to build a pedestrian walkway connecting the York Station streetcar stop to his Place at Channelside, a $100 million 244-unit condominium. "It's a big plus," he says.

In May, the Tampa City Council voted to extend the streetcar line by about a third of a mile into downtown, using federal money already in hand. By linking downtown and the burgeoning Channel District, officials hope they can transform the streetcar line into more of a commuter system, expanding the hours of operation and raising revenue.

Still, Tampa's streetcar line is still largely a tourist attraction, drawing 389,770 riders last year, more than half of them out-of-town visitors. A $4.75 million endowment set up to operate the streetcar system for 10 years is losing about $1 million a year. And Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio says she doesn't intend to put more money into the line, which the city owns jointly with Tampa's regional transit authority.

"Somebody is going to have to step up," says Ed Crawford, a spokesman for the regional transit authority. "It's clear we can't go on this way."


Out-of-town visitors make up more than half of all the riders on Tampa's streetcar line.


Tampa's Teco Line Streetcar System links the entertainment district of Ybor City to the city's convention center at the edge of downtown.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118230925180141617.html