Streetcar Revival Is Wavering in Some Cities

[simms3]

You are are so right, I10. Yeah, look at the great things we get with buses.  Flexibility.  That's what buses give you.  You can change the route almost daily if you wanted to.  Yep, as long as you can change the system to your liking year after year by just redrawing the route, buses are the way to go.  So what if you kill three retail shops every time you do it.  So what if you give the guy in Mandarin an extra 40 minutes in commute time every morning and every evening. And did I mention that buses are pretty cheap too?  Why spend money on giving those that don't have a car a way to get around. Heck, why don't they have a car, are they un-American?

I just want to point out that many cities have insanely high bus ridership across all economic spectrums, so when you subtly refer to bus riders as lower-income and thought of as "less-important, why spend money on those people", just consider that I don't think that's necessarily what it's about.

The simple fact of the matter is that in Jacksonville, after accounting for incomes and poverty levels, car ownership is super high and bus ridership is super low.  Perhaps there is more of a "stigma" in southern Jax of riding the bus.  But there's also hardly a population, even of poor people, that NEED the bus.  There are more rich people in San Francisco that literally need the bus to get to work than there are poor people in Jacksonville that have no car and need the bus to get to work or around.  Two similar size cities (population wise).  We can break down those numbers.

Some of Jacksonville's peers actually have developed highly ridden bus routes and some have gone on to replace them with fixed rail.  Jacksonville has no highly ridden bus routes.

Part of that problem is that JTA doesn't spend enough money on its BUS system to make it actually worthwhile to more people.  It's not necessarily that JTA should spend $$$ on fixed rail so that Springfield businesses aren't killed or so that guy in Mandarin (that guy, singular, is key) doesn't have another 40 minute commute.  Part of the problem is that there just isn't much a population that either needs transit or would willingly choose it.  That makes it difficult to justify funding for anything transit-related, and because buses ARE cheaper and can be just as effective for serving the population of transit riders/potential transit riders Jax DOES have, it makes sense to allocate transit funding to that system.

Here's what I know for a personal fact.  We once had a store on Main St.  They moved a bus stop one day and we lost 25% of our business.

This is where facts stop, and after this conjectures begin.  And we're taking you on good faith as an honest and faithful poster here that the day the bus moved, 25% of your business ceased to stop.

I don't want to poke holes in the touchy subject of your business closing, but a single bus line in Jax provided 25% of your business in Springfield?

I think that's more evidence of the lack of business in Springfield in general if a bus line in Jax provides that percentage of business than it is a reflection on a bus line moving.

The other things I have to wonder - what kind of business was it?  The reason I ask is because I AM a daily bus rider, so I know what awaits me at the end of my route and at the beginning.  Those are the businesses I hit up.  I don't get off midway for any particular businesses and then wait for another bus, get back on, and then complete my route.  And in my world, headways are 2-15 minutes tops.  In Jacksonville headways are an hour.  Something isn't adding up in my mind.

Finally, to consider, did the city move the route over a block or two, or did they move the route over like 5 blocks?  Or did they eliminate the route?

If they eliminated the route, even for Jacksonville there wasn't much traffic on that bus, and so if that bus alone was 25% of your business, I again question the bus or if you had 4 customers, 3 of which were 3 of the few or so residents in Springfield and the 4th was the guy who rode that bus.  Follow me?

If they simply moved the bus route a block or two, then you should not have lost your customers.  They would know to get off there and your business was on Main.  It's not like 1-2 blocks over are competing businesses.  People in that area would still need to get to Main St.

BUT, if Jax people couldn't take an extra 1-2 block walk for your store, then I think that's more indicative of how far we've slipped as a car culture.

If we had a store on Main and the stations were fixed rail, we would probably still have that store. In fact, if we had managed to get in on the ground floor of a new fixed rail system, we probably would have had to grow the store. (OK, so the rent probably would have grown too high and we would have moved.) The point is, as has been proven time and time again, buses are not development generators.  They can't be.  Too flexible.  Fixed rail has proven that it can be if done right.

I would probably be as optimistic as you if I were in your position.  But there's really no proof in what you're saying.  To construct a streetcar or LRT through there, they would have torn up the street in front of your business for years at a time, eliminated parking, and possibly made business worse.  Fixed rail construction is far more lengthy/involved than the roadwork that JTA does around town that people complain about immensely and that business owners blame for their demise.

You can find cities that have done it right, you can find cities that have done it wrong and you can find cities that actually have the density that it doesn't matter.  The development will happen or has happened anyway in those high density cities.  But it seems many of the cities have indeed expanded their fixed rail systems - including Street Car.

The urban core of Jacksonville needs a lot of help to get the development it needs to be a viable modern urban city. It needs more that rhetoric, it needs more than NSP, CBGB or whatever the latest Federal help program may be called as we got those and nothing happened, except we got told we can't handle the money...sort of evident when you ride around the urban core.

I am all for Street car and not because I think it is the best way to move people.  I think it is the best way to get the needed development, which will include good places to work, live and have fun, all within the street car's route.  Which will mean lots of people will end up riding it.  Seems like a nice little self-fulfilling circle of transportation oriented development to me.

And it will take a long time for that to happen.  We have spent the majority of the last one hundred years in Jacksonville moving away from fixed rail and good public transportation and urban living to individual transportation and suburban living.  It will take close to that long to get all the way back.  But it would be nice to start that particular journey sooner rather than later.

See, at the end of the day, the reality is that a streetcar is a development tool.  It's not as effective a tool at revamping a former sunbelt city into a vibrant, walkable, urban city as we all say it is.  Though it can have positive effects in that regard, as well.

I just think people have begun to separate "transit effectiveness" from "economic development tool" (they certainly did during the runup to the TSPLOST vote in Atlanta in 2012).  In theory, it's no different from the TARP/stimulus program.  It's a relatively short term fix to incentivize private development, and through that there is a hope and likelihood that there are some noticeable/material long term benefits.

[simms3]

^^^I won't disagree that experience is worth something (though you discount mine when my very own experience is also in the real estate development world, in many cities both in the US and outside of the US, where I must be familiar with the various facets that shape a new development and make it feasible or the various facets of an existing property we acquire that has existing tenants and users that are similarly impacted by external forces such as means of arrival/departure and other connecting points, not to mention my own experience as an actual bus rider, probably one of a select few on this website I might add).

From Metrojacksonville's own article base, the busiest transit routes in the city:

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2013-dec-jacksonvilles-busiest-transit-routes/page/1

How about you go back in recent time to one of your website's own articles.

Notice how I never said "you're wrong", but merely pointed out that there is something odd about the claim that a bus route that was either rerouted or eliminated in Jacksonville led to the demise of a business, 25% of it inferred to derive from users of said bus route.  Look at the numbers, Stephen.  If this claim is true, then I am astounded.  This implies that these users aren't existing in the neighborhood with or without said bus route and can continue to frequent the place, but that these users are riders of this one particular bus route that happens to traverse Springfield, and that they must have gotten off of the bus to be users or customers of said business, but that they live elsewhere wherever the bus route originates.  I was also thinking that IF this were one of these top 5 bus routes where only ~2k riders a day use the bus, that the city wouldn't cut it or reroute to the extent it took a whole new route and went nowhere near the old.  That's pretty sound logic.  So then it likely was a lesser used bus route, perhaps with a couple hundred riders like many of Jacksonville's routes.  Then a large percentage of that route was a customer at this shop.

Not coincidentally, there is little to no foot traffic in Springfield, depending on the business, little to no in-place local customers, and lots of hopes and dreams that fail due to the neighborhood itself.

Look at your own description of an experience with Jacksonville buses where you wrote so eloquently, both for the FTU as linked below, and as a blog in greater detail for this website, where the bus system was about the most perilously ineffective way for moving people in this city:

http://jacksonville.com/forums/community/notes_from_the_city_moderated_by_stephen_dare/181310


And regarding my response to Lake, who I love having these sort of intellectual debates with, because he offers up meaningful points, I said nothing that Lake hasn't said in the past about land use tying in with transit and the movement of goods and people.  The politics goes wayy beyond just whether or not there is a political will to lay track.  Politics and general changes have led to a land use system that is not very conducive to the kind of environment that promotes high ridership, whether or not track is laid and whether or not there is decent density or not.

My own experience is also as a daily bus rider.  I know what it's like to actually depend on and ride the bus.  With the hour long headways you wrote about, who is going to get off of their bus halfway through their trip in order to frequent a business not near their destination?  In my experience, even with minutes long headways, I am not getting off of the bus just to go to some place on the way.  I will look for a similar place that is near my point of origination/destination, not midway.

[simms3]

To be clear, I'm aggressively asking what the nature of Strider's business was that made it so dependent on one particular bus line that cut through the neighborhood along Main, bringing people to and from downtown and the area to other neighborhoods.

I'm curious as to how far away that bus line re-routed and why.  I note that all 5 of Jacksonville's busiest transit routes touch Main Street at some point between DT and Springfield and then cut up N-S a couple blocks from Main (close enough to walk easily in 2-3 minutes), and one (the 2nd busiest, and the busiest bus route) runs right up Main.  Is this a new route that wasn't in place when Strider's business was on Main?  Does this route hit neighborhoods that had riders that simply weren't visitors to this business?  And if so, why would there be a difference amongst neighborhood folk?  What makes the CT1 neighborhoods and its riders different from other bus routes in Jax?  I'm actually intrigued and curious.

Was it the Northside's only H&R Block?  (JK)  I'm curious as to what businesses in Jacksonville are so dependent on captured transit riders coming in from other areas.


And to further my point that a lot of these sunbelt rail systems are simply lip service and economic development generators at best, Jacksonville's busiest bus route, the CT1, carried over 3,400 passengers/day at time of article.  As dismal as Jax bus service is, as inefficient and slow as it is, and as long as the headways are, this daily ridership number still exceeds the following heralded, modern streetcar systems:

Seattle
Salt Lake City
Atlanta
Little Rock
Memphis
Dallas
Tampa

That's all but Portland's system and the systems in SF and Philly.  In fact, the ridership on this bus line exceeds several commuter rail systems, including those of Austin's (which has dismal ridership despite all the new apartments along it) and Nashville's.  It nearly matches Norfolk/Hampton Roads' light rail system and has a large percentage of the riders on Charlotte's and Buffalo's light rail systems.  This on a Jacksonville bus route with hour long headways.

I look at the numbers and I'm baffled as to how a single bus route in Jacksonville can have that much of an impact on a business.  However, I also look at the numbers and I see a basic bus in Jacksonville showing up better ridership than streetcars and some commuter rail lines, and comparable ridership to some light rail lines.

That tells me that there's power in buses and a super cost effective way to get people on transit.  A WAYYYY more cost effective way to get people on transit than investing a fortune on a fixed rail line that will spur new building but won't necessarily have meaningful ridership.

[thelakelander]

I'm getting ready to go back out into the streets of Queens and Brooklyn, so I don't have time to read up on everything posted in this thread. However, I did want to point out that comparing short tourist oriented modern streetcar systems to a bus route stretching the length of a county is about as apples and oranges comparison as one could make for anything transit related. One could make the same argument with the Skyway, which is only 2.5 miles and blows away the CT1 and these streetcar systems in ridership. However, no one would suggest this means invest in significant Skyway expansion. BTW, the CT1 runs on 20 minute headways. That's better than many of the tourist trolleys and ineffective commuter rail lines mentioned above.

[thelakelander]

Btw, LRT and Streetcars are essentially the same technology. The largest difference is LRT is typically designed to operate as rapid transit and while streetcars are typically operated as slow moving circulators (making them no more effective than local buses). There's nothing out there stopping any community from planning and operating a streetcar like LRT.

New Orleans RTA and Cleveland's Blue & Green Lines are two examples of historic streetcar lines that operate differently from the lower performing expensive tourist lines build in recent years. In Cleveland, PCC cars were replaced with small LRV in the 1980s. In New Orleans, they still run historic and heritage streetcars (much cheaper than modern streetcar vehicles). With both systems (excluding a small segment in DT New Orleans) both systems run on their own dedicated ROW instead of sharing lanes with cars.

If we want fixed transit to succeed in the Sunbelt or anywhere else, we have to set it up and operate it in a manner that provides it with the best opportunity to do so.

[simms3]

I'm getting ready to go back out into the streets of Queens and Brooklyn, so I don't have time to read up on everything posted in this thread. However, I did want to point out that comparing short tourist oriented modern streetcar systems to a bus route stretching the length of a county is about as apples and oranges comparison as one could make for anything transit related. One could make the same argument with the Skyway, which is only 2.5 miles and blows away the CT1 and these streetcar systems in ridership. However, no one would suggest this means invest in significant Skyway expansion. BTW, the CT1 runs on 20 minute headways. That's better than many of the tourist trolleys and ineffective commuter rail lines mentioned above.

^^^Yes, and I agree.  However, those commuter rail lines, such as Austin's, and even Charlotte's LYNX light rail line, travel a great distance across many neighborhoods and are adjacent to now countless "Millennial-oriented" apartment complexes and distance wise are very apples to apples.  And yet I'd argue pound for pound Jacksonville's CT1 bus line performs better (Austin's commuter rail is 32 miles on 30 minute headways running til 1 in the morning), especially when you compare capacity of a bus on 20 min headways to capacity of a light rail on 10 min headways or commuter rail on 30.

At the end of the day, I agree with I-10east, a rarity I might add, that people on this site think fixed rail like they've read about or seen in some of Jacksonville's peer cities is some holy grail that Jacksonville hasn't found yet.  In the Sunbelt cities, it seems to be a Holy Grail for development of apartment complexes, not a Holy Grail for increasing transit ridership to any significant.

Just read Strider's post.  Maybe he's right, maybe if there were light rail or a streetcar circulator running up Main between Springfield and Downtown his business would be booming right now, or business in general in Springfield so much so that he'd be "priced out(!)", and in his mind, a single bus route through Springfield was rerouted and killed his business because buses are inherently bad transit because of their flexibility and the ability for the city to move the routes, which took 25% of his business away from him.  I'm just trying to understand THAT.  As a bus rider myself, I'm trying to understand situations in my own mind where I might frequent a place along a bus route, even if I don't live nearby.  What kind of business would it be?  Same with a rail transit - what kind of business would it be such that I am getting off between my point of origin and destination to go to said business?  I see no difference there between rail and bus, but I'm trying to get there in my mind.

[finehoe]

...but the way I see it for the most part, streetcars are an uppity millennial version of a bus; They don't wanna be seen on the 'lowly' buses, so they prefer to ride streetcars. A regular Joe like me and the majority of people would hop on a bus in a second, without worrying about any socio-economical backlash.

From my observations, the millennials are the ones who don't seem to regard buses as 'beneath them'.  It's the Gen-Xers and (especially) Boomers who are more likely to look down on buses as a lesser form of transportation.

[strider]

simms3, I have been busy and have not had time to answer you.

Yes, we lost 25% of the gross sales immediately following a route change.  Basically, we had the stop at which many switched lines going to and from Shands on the same block.  That stop got closed, the route changed and the next closest stop was two plus blocks away and not nearly as used. That means that just as the years of Main Street construction ended, we lost 25% of the base business and Main Street being what it is, a completed main street was not much different that one under construction.  It did not help having a local organization going around telling people falsehoods as to what could and could not be on Main St., often chasing off the very types of business the majority of the area needed and would use.  So there were a lot of factors the caused the demise of the store.  Not just JTA.  And yes, I purposefully did not state what kind of store it was as I see no way that matters.  We had a target clientele.  We were far more successful when that targeted clientele could easily get to us without really trying so that they made purchases at our store more for convenience than we were anything special. Most urban stores are that way. If you remove the convenience factor, it hurts the business.  Moving routes around will most likely hurt business.

Is this little story of fact the defining proof that buses do not promote development but street car (fixed rail) can?  I'd say yes actually.  After reading what the experts have to say, after seeing what seems to happen WHEN IT IS DONE RIGHT, seeing it personally proves it for me.

I think the question for Jacksonville should not be if fixed rail makes sense here but rather if Jacksonville can possibility do it right to start with.  If we can, it will help the urban core.

I am certainly no expert, but I have learned a lot from folks like Lake and Ock and even you. Being educated on issues from both sides of the equation is key to understanding what might be best for Jacksonville.

[thelakelander]

Fixed transit can work in Jax, as long as it isn't done half-assed. This means changes in land use along transit corridors are just as important as the transit routing and infrastructure investment.

[TimmyB]

I think the question for Jacksonville should not be if fixed rail makes sense here but rather if Jacksonville can possibility do it right to start with.  If we can, it will help the urban core.

I couldn't agree more.  We are retiring in two years, and relocating to Jax.  The ONLY thing that is missing from our wish list here is a mass transit (i.e., light-rail) system to easily get us downtown and back, to see concerts, sporting events, dining, etc.  I know that we will never see it in our lifetimes, but I do hope that it is done someday, and done right.

[finehoe]

District of Columbia officials might not realize it, but other major cities around the United States are watching how the local government in the nation's capital deals with its streetcar debacle.

They're waiting to see how the District government resolves the management problems that have plagued the delivery of the long-promised transit line that sits essentially complete but could be killed off inches from the finish line before any of the bold red streetcars transport a single passenger along the route.

http://www.govexec.com/state-local/2015/03/dc-streetcar-bowser-ddot/107799/

[exnewsman]

In Jacksonville headways are an hour.  Something isn't adding up in my mind.
[/quote]

At one time this was totally true. Now 2/3 of bus routes in Jax have 15-30 minute headways.