JT22CW wrote: All depends on the perspective you're looking at it from. One could regard oneself as benefiting from the highways, so long as you aren't stuck on them when traffic isn't moving. From my perspective, it's not a choice to me; therefore, I've been forced to use the only mode now available (but at the same time, the other modes used to be quite prevalent).As far as cities go, it's not cheaper to use buses. Buses last 20 years if you're lucky (average age is about 15 years, longer for trackless version, longer still for rail vehicles); most buses are internal-combustion; and within the city, it's a canard when one mentions the flexibility in terms of altering routes, since most city routes have remained unaltered for decades upon decades. (AFAICS, most cities didn't convert from trolley to trackless, that not being National City Lines' goal; the two technologies, trackless and tracked, grew up alongside each other, besides.) Pity that the statute of limitations ran out to reopen the NCL case; but seeing the current state of the Big Three, the chickens are already coming home to roost there.Note other countries that also have "highways" (the interstate wasn't invented here) that for a long time have known that it's not enough to have it as the dominant, and often sole, land transportation mode for passengers. They're way ahead of the USA, who has stagnated.
All depends on the perspective you're looking at it from. One could regard oneself as benefiting from the highways, so long as you aren't stuck on them when traffic isn't moving. From my perspective, it's not a choice to me; therefore, I've been forced to use the only mode now available (but at the same time, the other modes used to be quite prevalent).
As far as cities go, it's not cheaper to use buses. Buses last 20 years if you're lucky (average age is about 15 years, longer for trackless version, longer still for rail vehicles); most buses are internal-combustion; and within the city, it's a canard when one mentions the flexibility in terms of altering routes, since most city routes have remained unaltered for decades upon decades. (AFAICS, most cities didn't convert from trolley to trackless, that not being National City Lines' goal; the two technologies, trackless and tracked, grew up alongside each other, besides.) Pity that the statute of limitations ran out to reopen the NCL case; but seeing the current state of the Big Three, the chickens are already coming home to roost there.
Note other countries that also have "highways" (the interstate wasn't invented here) that for a long time have known that it's not enough to have it as the dominant, and often sole, land transportation mode for passengers. They're way ahead of the USA, who has stagnated.
Here in Chicago, most bus lines turn around at the old trolley turn-arounds of 50-plus years ago. Perhaps the "flexible" bus system SHOULD be pioneering new routes -- Elston Avenue, which teems with franchises and new stores like Target and Home Depot, could really use bus service but it never had it and thus doesn't now. So even in the one instance busses have an advantage, it isn't used as such. The CTA's mission is to operate equipment; they pay lip service to "providing transportation services" but really it's all about keeping the machinery moving (which they did fairly well until recently).
And a big part of the reason so many of use use rural interstate highways is that frequently there is no substitute for them. In 1965 you could take a train from Nashville to Atlanta; that option doesn't exist now. There is little and poor bus service. Today you either drive or fly. I would make the point that after 2,000-miles plus of driving Interestates in the southeastern US last winter, the rural parts seemed to flow fairly well and were in good repair (not that fixing them was cheap). The urban ones are totally a mess, mostly because the original beltways were allowed to be swamped by growing suburbia. One factor that not everyone mentions is that in Europen and Japanese cities, there simply aren't enough potato fields and truck gardens that suburbia could spread willy-nilly as it did in the US ca. 1950-1980. Land use and zoning are much, much stricter than in most parts of the USA. So the "ring roads" in Europe that I know of in Germany still serve as traffic conduits around the city, not a way to get from one suburb to another (there is one exception I can think of: Berlin, whose ring autobahn is an urban affair and now that both east and west parts of the city have been united so long, it's really a busy, overcrowded stall on the ring Autobahn).
So, yes we have a fundamentally unbalanced system and I am one of those people who drove the Interstates and suffered hour-long delays getting thru Nashville and Atlanta because it was either drive or fly -- and I don't have to go into how frustrating post-9/11 flying can be. The rural part of driving the Interstates worked well for us, though. I certainly do agree with you that this seeming advantage doesn't make interstate POV travel the best option -- but sometimes it's the only one.
PS: It isn't ALWAYS the case that streetcar and trolleybus grew up together and were made obsolete at about the same time by diesel bus. In Lynchburg, VA in the early days, streetcar was synonymous with the power company: their old "LT&L" tokens stood for "Lynchburg Traction and Light." They were replaced with trolleybuses (along the same routes) after World War II; then in turn the trolleybuses gave way to the GM norm in ca. 1955-56. Some diesel-bus routes have been extended and some eliminated, but the modern bus destination signs: "Peakland", "Fort Hill", "West End" and so on are remarkably unchanged since the Twenties.
The old Public Service trolley system is still alive and kicking in New Jersey in a small way. The Newark Subway is the last remnant of the extensive old PS system. Calling it a subway is a bit of a stretch as the system is primarily above ground in the bed of an old canal. I have not looked at the signs on the new LRVs they are running (I still ride the system occationally) but when they were still running PCCs (I was on the last ride) the cars still carried the sign "7 Newark Subway", the route designation from the old trolley days.
It is kind of sad that the old trolley system was torn apart, especially considering that they are now rebuilding it of sorts. The Hudson-Bergen light Rail, Camden's Light rail service and the expansion of the Newark subway line is an example of what-was-old-is-new-again.
Trolleybuses (trackless trolleys) can last sometimes for 30 yrs. or even more. For eg, in Ruse, Bulgaria (about 50 miles South from Bucharest, Romania) they have some second-hand trolleybuses bought from Switzerland. The oldest (4 in number) are made in 1956! The rest of the Swiss are from 1963-1966. The company who manufactured them was "F.B.W".
Talikng about buses, they sometimes can run even more than 20 yrs. And I'm not talking about Cuba. In Romania, in Municipium of Miercurea Ciuc (administrative center of Harghita county) we have 3 "F.B.W." buses made in 1965 , brought in Romania in 1990. Well, you must admit the city is small and people there are more civilized then in Bucharest. And in some areas we still have some buses made in the '70's (most of them second-hand bought).
But, the basic streetcar (not the modern ones with God knows what equypment) is an simple vehicle, that lasts long and it's quyte easy to built. But the guys from Garbage Motors applied the word of Lenin "Tell them what they want to hear".
And a streetcar or an light rail vehicle can carry more people than a bus or trolleybus (even articulated ones). This is one of the reasons that most Romanian cityes didn't quyt the streetcar in the '50-'80's (there where very few cars and workers couldn't be transported only by bus or trolleybus).
The oldest streetcar that I ride was made in 1955 (that was back in the '90's) - in the '000's it where streetcars from 1964-1965, the oldest trolleybus was from 1975, and the oldest bus around 1979-1981. None of the vehicles was made in Romania.
The one and only one North American city where protests DID work was Toironto. The politicians did listen, a downtown elevated freeway was scrapped, and the basic streetcar system kept, all heavily used routes that were not directly paralleled by or above the new subway lines. Two York University professors spearheaded the drive, one a woman, and they had all their facts straight and did an excellent job. Later, Mayor Marvin Landsman was thoroughly pro-streetcar and during his era the Canadian Light Rail Vehicle and the Articulated Light Rail Vehicle were designed with proven componants and worked reliably, replacing the huge PCC fleet, which were fine cars but had rust problems. The CLRC and ALRV are good looking cars, too, but not low-floor. As far as I know new low-floor cars are being out for bid right now.
This is basically a streetcar system, tracks in the street, stopping at every other corner, etc. There are some new LRV lines and stretches of track, and one older private right-of-way line still in use, but it is basically a streetcar system. And a darned good one!
nokia3310 wrote:Through with all this topic was oroginally opened for the todays situation, in cityes in which streetcars lines where totally disementeled, there was no streetcar lover to protest against this messure?
Of course there were people who protested against the elimination of trolley cars, but almost always they were in the minority. Trolleys were "old-fashioned" and to advocate for them was "against progress." In some cases (perhaps not quite so many as thought), General Motors bought out the (then privately-owned) transit systems and started converting them to their own diesel busses. In some cities GM worked their magic on journalists after WWII, and all of a sudden newspapers were saying trolley cars "ground" or "struggled" uphill, as opposed to busses, with their "smooth" ride that "glided" by. Lies, of course, but what can you do?
Where was most of the money put? Freeways, urban freeways. People didn't consider then that the freeway is itself a transportation mode and that in not too many years it would cost much more to maintain them than to acquire the land and build them originally did. Cheap gas, cheap cars, expanding suburbia all conspired to rout (no pun intended) public transportation. Some cities went from tolley to trackless trolley to bus. And all the time, legislators and corporations like GM were telling us this was what we wanted and they were merely responding to "public demand."
You will notice in the USA that while we decry the elimination of streetcars, most of us use and benefit from the rural Interstate highways, which probably more than any one other factor hastened the demise of the long-distance passenger train. - a.s.
Most cities got rid of their streetcars because of one major problem: they couldn't easily reroute streetcar routes to compensate for demographic changes in the city. Since buses weren't tied to where you could run streetcar lines, that's why by the late 1950's all the city transit companies switched to buses.
Jack_S wrote: nokia2110 wrote:Just curios, why U.S.A. cityes like New Orleans, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia didn't followed the example of other U.S.A. cityes and never quyt streetcars?I don't know WHY Philly kept their trolleys. Perhaps because, starting in the 1950s, Philly was seen as sort of an economic backwater and that perception has only gotten stronger over the years. So maybe the urge to redevelop the transit system wasn't as strong.Jack
nokia2110 wrote:Just curios, why U.S.A. cityes like New Orleans, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia didn't followed the example of other U.S.A. cityes and never quyt streetcars?
I don't know WHY Philly kept their trolleys. Perhaps because, starting in the 1950s, Philly was seen as sort of an economic backwater and that perception has only gotten stronger over the years. So maybe the urge to redevelop the transit system wasn't as strong.
Jack
I can only conclude that sometimes old-fashioned is good. Perhaps we could turn the table and ask why so many large American cities got rid of their streetcars? Kansas City, MO, is one example of a medium-large city that once had an extensive system that was scrapped for buses, whose revenues then declined.
With probably the best of intentions, let's remember that the federal government after World War Two did just about all in its power to get the white middle-class out of the cities and into the ring suburbs. V.A. Loans, FHA loans, Ginnie and Fannie Mae in the 1960s, and of course additions to the original Interstate Highway legislation that sent expressways running into and sometimes thru central cities. (That was not Pres. Eisenhower's original intention. He wanted toll roads running to the edge of the city, not downtown. If you're in Chicago and take the original Chicago Skyway exit that dumps you onto Stony Island Boulevard (1953), that was the original intention. The Dan Ryan came along almost ten years later (1962).)
Now, I guess, the ironic thing is to watch cities scrambling to retain some trolley charm (I am not counting rubber-tired tourist trolleys, which mean nothing to me). Charlotte, North Carolina, undoubtedly had SOME kind of streetcar system in the first half of the 20th Century. Now, if I recall correctly, it has inaugurated a brand new "antique" line on the order of the St. Charles line in New Orelans, but the bulk of new transit consists of modern LRV, like Portland, Salt Lake City, Houston, etc. etc. That is not to say I "blame" Charlotte for not having any better of a crystal ball than anyone else. Heck, back in the 1940s Robert Moses of NYC used to BRAG about how quickly the City was ripping up trolley lines!
If you have about a month free, read Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Mark Caro. Very enlightening about urban planning, and does not neglect mass transit. - a. s.
I do know that the main reason they went away from trolleys more recently was a major car barn fire that destroyed a lot of their rolling stock. Since then they have restored and upgraded some PCC cars and restarted trolley service on a couple of historic lines. Most notably the number 15 on Girard Avenue, which I rode a lot as a kid.
It would be hard to operate the Subway-Surface lines from the 35th and Market area to City Hall as anything but a trolley line. And Philly is one of the very few US cities I know of with commuter rail service right from the airport direct to downtown. When you leave the air terminal building the bridge to baggage claim takes you right over the rail line.
CSSHEGEWISCH wrote:Street operation is relatively uncommon in modern light rail applications because it's quite slow compared to dedicated rights of way. I've observed that even where street operation can't be avoided, usually in downtown areas, dedicated lanes are often used to reduce the disruption of street traffic.
The street-running portions of Philadelphia's subway-surface routes work well, even on some of the rather narrow roads they traverse (e.g. route 10).
Well the Minneapolis - Bloomington LRV service here in MN does a limited amount of street running in DT Minneapolis, otherwise it's on a dedicated right-of-way along Hiawatha Avenue out to Ft. Snelling, the airport and the Mall of America (the "MegaMall"). But ya, one of the problems with the old Twin City Lines was it was literally streetcars - very little dedicated right-of-ways so as traffic boomed after WW2 it was held back just like the cars (and later the busses).
p.s. One proposal was to run the downtown line underground as a subway, apparently the geology was such that it wouldn't have been too hard to build and maintain.
I cannot dissagree with that!
But often it will still beat a bus!
The following cities kept "pure" streetcars that operated almost entirely on street lanes shared with automobiles and general traffic:
Toronto Kept modern PCC's on all heavy lines not replaced with subways and then gradually replaced them with modern LRV's and is gradually moving into light rail and expansion. The very best example.
New Orleans: Kept the St. Charles streetcar line as a tourist attraction,, cannot be called light rail because of low speed of vintage equipment, but 2/3 of the line is on "neutral ground" not shared with automobiles. The neutral ground portion suffered the most severe damage but will be restored. The system expanded with replica cars restoring it old "Main line" on Canal Street with a branch and a new Rverfront line on RofW shared with a frieght track.
Boston did not really keep its pure streetcar lines, only those that could always be called light rail, with train operation and almost all PRW, subway, or el structure typical.
Philadelphia kept lines that could be called light rail because of the donwtown subway. Other cities were also discussed in an earlier posting, similar reasons.
Lots of Euoprean cities kept streetcars or trams. too numberous to mention.
The voters do have a choice.
Do thay want to attract the Tourist trade?
Do thay want to serve a part of a city with unique transportation?
Do thay want to move people to work fast with subsidized transportation?
Do thay want to cut pollution by replacing automobiles in the city?
Do thay want to build 6,8,10 lane highways to move cars into the city?
Can a working person pay $25 to $35 a day to park a car in Boston?
All of the above???
Use what, Trolley, LRV, Trackless Trolley, Bus, Heavy Rail.
All of the above??? In Boston, yes by having a Regional Transpotation plan. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Narrow winding street that date back to the 1630s do not lend themself to surface transportation but the tourists love them. Did you know the streets of Boston were laid out by a drunken cow? That's what we have been told.
I live in Connecticut, a state with two very fine, operating, Trolley Museums. We also have two tourist railroads, one Steam Powered.
Don U. TCA 73-5735
DMUinCT has never visited Toronto or Portland, OR, or Kenosha, or San Francisco, where lines that are all-street prosper and benefit their communities.
after all, even the South Shore for a while longer still shares street lanes in Michigan City with automobiles!
BOSTON
It's Cost!!!
You would never get away with running streetcars on the street with auto traffic. To do it right requires a "privite right away" for trolleys and LRVs. To buy land in majior cities, to lay track would be too costly. Light Rail ("LRV") work well on the center island of a 4 lane highway and on old out of service rail lines. This is the case in Boston. Waits to get into majior east coast cities can be more than an hour at bridges and turnpike exits. This is what drives people to ride public transportation. On the east coast of the USA, Heavy rail will fan out 50 miles or more to haul commuters into and out of the city.
Boston's MBTA, public owned transit system, includes 3 conventional subway lines, 1 LRV subway line, LRV surface trolley lines with 200 LRVs, bus lines, trackless trolley lines,and Commuter Rail with 83 locomotives [F40PH & GP40MCs] and 410 passengers coaches. It carries 1.1 million passengers a DAY.
The "Park Street Subway", now used by LRV trolleys, is the oldest subway in the USA.
In Romania a lot of people are reguarding public transporation as in U.S.A. I wonder, when here, in Bucharest there will no more room for automobiles how in the word they gonna use the automobiles? For me, in cyties automobiles produce nothing more than polution and traffic jams... I understand to use them outside the cityes where the public transportaion isn't good or does not exist, but in cyties...
Uh, oh, untill 1989 (the downfall of the Communism in Romania) and even some years after cars where expensive so streetcars where lucky here.
Steetcars are "producing" mass transporation. Automobiles ("tin cans") are producing polution and traffic jams.
nokia2110 wrote: Which cityes preserved/extended streetcars into suburbs after W.W.2. ?
Which cityes preserved/extended streetcars into suburbs after W.W.2. ?
None.
We have what we call "Light Rail" which are really nothing more than smaller trains run by overhead.
The trolley as we under stand it in the USA are not revenue trains for modern times. They only exist as Muesum Artifacts and Exhibits.
Now .. San Francisco has the Cable Car which is run by Cable underground, it is not a "Trolley" and no I dont think they take the Cable into the Suburbs.
Here a Suburb could be 50 miles in any direction as the bird flies from a major city center.
Everyone relies on Car. They prefer to drive themselves instead of using mass transit, in fact. The sterotype of mass transit is bad in some areas. If you were known to be the one taking the "Bus" you were very close to if not at the bottom of the social scale today.
Little Rock's Trolley system crosses the Arkansas River into North Little Rock which is a seperate city with a very large population and essentially part of Little Rock.
It is only good for tourists and workers too tired to walk around downtown, most of the time everyone flees the city by sundown and leave it to the night folks who have no interest in the trolley or anything else.
In fact the Trolley had suffered thefts of copper groundings and other important wiring metals as these thieves risk elctrocution for a few dollars.
Baltimore never really quit streetcars. They used them down town as well as a sort of a little "Speeder" if you please, to "zip" to and from outlying areas around the city. There are plenty of tracks still remaining in the cobblestone all over the city as well as a working Streetcar Museum.
They continue to use the so called "Light Rail" That actually provides some distance of service.
Buses killed the streetcar. Yes Buses. Especially Buses.
Little Rock used to have a small set of streetcars until the late 40's and went to buses.
A few years ago at enormous expense they re-built the streetcar line again and re-opened for service as a transit line in Little Rock. They finished the loop downtown and the bridge crossing and now apparently are working out towards the Clinton Presidental Library with new track. (I personally dont care for the place but let's not go there...) I would hope that Little Rock continues to expand the Streetcar line but I think it will just be a little part of downtown.
I think East Broad Top still has a streetcar, I dont know if it is working or not.
In Chicago, there were a lot of reasons that the streetcars didn't last, not even on the major routes. For openers, the system was municipalized in 1947 as the Chicago Transit Authority and the prior operators had been in receivership for quite a while, from prior to 1929 in the case of Chicago Surface Lines. Consequently, modern equipment in either surface or rapid transit operation was quite rare. Modernization was a key selling point in the creation of the CTA and something needed to be done and quickly. Chicago Surface Lines had ordered 600 PCC cars just prior to the end of WW2 before ridership patterns began to change and this was a factor in what happened afterward.
CTA needed new equipment everywhere, ridership began its postwar decline and replacing two-man streetcars with one-man buses was justifiably viewed as a way of cutting labor expenses without negotiating changes in the labor contract. CTA had just ordered its first new PCC rapid transit cars and liked what it was getting. They were also taking delivery of 600 PCC streetcars that they no longer wanted and after some false starts in directly converting a PCC streetcar to a rapid transit car, they traded in almost all of the postwar PCC streetcars for new PCC rapid transit cars, re-using many of the streetcar components. Aging streetcars were replaced with new buses and the roster of the Rapid Transit Division was also modernized.
Toronto is the ONE North American City that stated people are more important that automobiles.
Other cities: Boston and Philadelphia: Trolley subways that would be very tough to convert for buses. Ditto Newark for the one line. San Francisco: Twin Peaks and Sunset Tunnels. Shaker Heights: Private right-of-way. New Orleans: like the SF railcars, an historic tourist attraction. Pitrtsburgh: Mt. Washington Tunnel and much PRW.
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