You are correct. An articulated streetcar will carry more than an articulated bus, and a normal double-truck streetcar more than a regular bus.
I'm sorry, let me clarify. What I mean is that one streetcar vehicle has the capacity to carry more than a bus can.
I think it's still free. It is a very, very slow 2.2-mile trip. About a dozen buses pass us by along the way.
I don't understand why it carries more than the bus. The bus is part of a sysem, with transfer to the Metro and other bus lines included in the fare. If the streetcar is slower, and stil lets more fares, why those of us who say rail will draw riders where buses won't must be even more correct than we thought otherwise!
Or is the streetcar free?
The Washington DC Streetcar is a boondoggle. It has wasted over $110 million and only has 2.2 miles of revenue track that takes 25 minutes to travel. It scrapes against parked cars and gets blocked by double-parked vehicles. It should have been kept in the center of the road like the old days. Maybe they decided not to because they would have the additional expense on many streets of having to demolish and remove the old track and plough power system that was not removed when the old system shut down in the 1960s. Today the old streetcar lanes have bike lanes over them on most DC streets.
The cars running the new DC Streetcar were 6 and 10 years old before they ever entered service. It really took that long. They had to be repaired before they were even used because they were rusting, leaking, and suffered dry-rot from being stored for almost a decade.
I've ridden the current system many times. It's a ponderous failure. WMATA, who runs most buses and Metrorail, refuses to have ANYTHING to do with DC Streetcar, which is solely a "DDOT" project. Metro's own "SmarTrip" card does not now and never will work on DDOT's DC Streetcars.
To make matters worse, the road intersections with traffic lights regularly exceed 7 minutes of waiting as cars and trucks pull in front of the streetcars. They do have streetcar signalling and preemption on the intersections but whoever implemented it doesn't know how traffic works in real life. I sat through up to 5 red/green traffic light cycles. It never occured to anyone to signal all four streets to RED and allow the streetcar to proceed. Instead the service is even slower than the bus on the same line. On the bright side, it carries far more than the bus does, even if it's several minutes slower.
My Senior High school class trip to Washington DC in 1954 was via the B&O. While the other members of the class took in a play or a club, I chose to ride the PCC's out to Cabin John. We got out to Georgetown and went over the pit where the pole was raised, the shoe was removed, and away we went out the P RoW. to the Glen Echo park. It was a fast running trip. The only thing I regretted was it was dark and I could not see much except what the headlight showed until we got to the brightly lit amusement park. The next time I was in DC, the busses were in charge and the streetcars were gone. I had been on Cincinnati's PCC cars but loved the Peter Witts & the curved side Cincinnati cars. Beautiful deep brown paneling. Warm in the winter. And except for the Lockland cars operating with one pole North of Mitchell Ave, everything was double pole.
On the B&O going back to Cincinnati, the National Limited was diesel powered and I spent most of the trip in the vestibule. The train crew activated the retainers and after taking the bypass around Cumberland WV. Going down some of the mountain grades, the train had an almost continous string of fire from the brakes. Wish I had had a video camera. Do railroads still use retainers any more? I haven't seen them used on Amtrak or Via Rail. Looks like Dynamic Braking made them obsolete.
I should also point out that the first-generation Washington streetcar system in the post-WWII period was a fast, well-maintained, almost all-PCC system, and was faster, in general, than the bus replacement system. Why? Curb-loading. Buses in DC often have to wait for a break in traffic to pull out from the curb. The streetcars would discharge and board their passengers, doors closed, operator puts acceleration to the floor, and off we go. The bus substitution was good for the motorists but not for transit rider. Of course the Metro was in the future.
There were stretches of PRofW. Downtown Pennsylvania Avenue had a version of Boston's outer Beacon Street, Benning Road east of the plowpit, subways under Capitol Hill, Dupot Circle, and the foot of 14th Street at Printing and Engraving, and the truly scenic in-the-forest line past Glen Echo Amusemnt Park to Cabin John. But even street-running was fast. There is the story of a Capitol Transit PCC motorman being issued a speeding ticket by a policman on the 30 Frendship Heights Line.
Jack May reported to me that the new Cincinnati and Kansas City streetcars, which do share lanes with regular traffic, are quite fast, well-used, and a definite improvement over the buses that they replaced.
Certainly private right-of-way is preferred. But there are cases where insisting on it would destroy neighborhoods and take useful property off tax-roles. Calgary as a transit mall where buses share the right-of-way with light rail vehicles. Buses and LRVs share the Mt. Washington Tunnel and a right-of-way in Pittsburgh. Buses and LRVs share the Seattle bus tunnel.
Let us hope that Washington gets its act together, and the performqance starts approaching that where streetcars are successful. Possibly no faster than a bus, but certainly more comfortable to ride and more economical to operate IF the patronage is sufficcient to justify its construction..
I am a firm believer in the value of rail transit but it should not me mixed with rubber tired traffic. The two are just not compatable. We see enough trouble just allowing roads to CROSS tracks.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Benning Road was part conduit, part wire, with a plow-pit located about 1/4-mile west of the electric company powerhouse. If I remember correctly, the WB&A interurbans used New York Avenue, not H Street, downtown. Conduit on NYAve, of course. They used the plow pit on Benning Road.
Conduit conducters are placed higher in the slot than cables, so the conduits can be shallower (they also don't need pulleys or sheaves). The cast iron yoke that was almost universal in cable contruction is also not required, as the force on the conduit is much less. Both D.C. cable operations were converted to conduit operation, one under traffic and one in a hurry after its powerhouse burned down. At least one conduit line was built new before the cable lines were converted. The portion of today's streetcar route on H street is part of the route taken by the Columbia Railway, later part of Washington Railway and Electric (and where WB&A interurbans entered Washington, with plows on their hangers).
I can understand the desire for conduit (mostly aesthetic) but it is an awfully expensive form of current collection.
DC had a fast, modern, almost 100% PCC-operated, streetcar system, but Congress insisted it be scrapped for buses. Roy Chalk owned and would have prefered to keep streetcars. Downtown all lines used conduit. Wire was used in the suburbs. Although all PCCs had poles, two lines, one, 14th Street, quite heavy, were conduit only.
It's a shame. These slow, go-nowhere, expensive political amusement ride excuses for streetcars hurt any progress for real public transit.
Unfortunately, the rabid promoters fail to see that. Or don't want to see that.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
I haven’t ridden most of the “new” streetcar lines that have popped up in the last few years, mainly because I’m a fossil and I like “old” equipment. But I rode the new Washington DC streetcar a few days ago when I was in town for a meeting.
What a disaster. It should be studied carefully by new streetcar proponents for an example of how not to design a streetcar line. Aside from the fact that the line goes from nowhere to nowhere (the back of the Union Station parking garage to a Metro overpass (not a station - an overpass) about 2+ miles away), the design of the line assures that the service is hugely inferior to buses.
Here’s the problem. The line runs along H street and Benning road. On H street (roughly half of the route), the line was constructed with the tracks in the far right traffic lane, right next to parked cars (a streetcar line of yore would have been constructed with the tracks in the middle traffic lanes). This means that one improperly parked car or truck brings the line to a stop, and one open car door causes an accident. On the round trip I took, the car was delayed 3 times for blockages from parked vehicles. Two of these lasted 10 minutes or more, until a tow truck and police officer could come on scene (Metro appears to have a dedicated tow truck constantly patrolling the line). The third delay was less only because a police officer happened to be riding the streetcar, found the vehicle driver in a nearby store, and persuaded him to immediately move his vehicle rather than finish his shopping. This kind of thing makes the service completely unreliable. But, even when not blocked, the streetcars had to operate painfully slow along the line of parked cars, while cars and buses whizzed past in the left hand lanes. My return trip (where two of the blockages occurred) took over 45 minutes - slower than an 1870's horse drawn streetcar. I could have walked faster. I understand the reason for this design – it was to permit curbside boarding/exiting (like a bus) without eliminating parking places for local businesses. But, if that was the reason, then the line should never have been built, since the design assures that the service can't be as fast or reliable as a bus.
The Benning Road segment is better, because the cars run next to a center median, where the boarding areas are also located. If the whole line had been designed this way, it might have made some sense (i.e., it may have been able to give service equivalent to a bus).
There’s one other problem with H Street design. Washington DC is a bicycle city much of the year. The tracks are in the lane bicycles would naturally use. This limits the speed of the streetcars to the slowest bicycle that happens to be in the lane (maybe not such a big deal, since the streetcars have to be moving slowly anyway because of the danger from parked cars). And, if a bike tries to leave the track area to let a streetcar by, there’s a good chance the bike’s wheels will get caught in the flangeway, causing the rider to fall right in front of the streetcar.
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