The Moderator and Kalmbach found a way to restore the Capital Transit thread at the Classic Trains magazine forum, so by all means visit it for my (and hopefully others') memories of this well-run system.
Herewith Benning Carhouse.eat PlwAnr Layover, and at the Kennilworth Wye.
Lacked the time tom post all on this area. Hopefully, more to come
Modern track construction is a far cry from the way street railways were installed up to the late 1930's. IN street track is equivalent to railroad slab track today, and is more stable than regular railroad concrete tie construction. The new track on Canal Street, New Orleans survived the great event wethout any major damage and was put right back into service as soon as electric power and the overhead were available.
Again, I suspect the reason Pittsburgh Railways didn't rebuild its downtown tracks is that they thought some government was going to build a subway for them as Philliy did for PTC.
At the end of streetcar service in Washington, nearly all track then in service was in good condition and the PCC's gave an excellent ride.
CSSHEGEWISCH Well-maintained rail is hardly guaranteed when it's in the pavement. Philadelphia has been notorious for poorly maintained street trackage and parts of the CTA street trackage in the 1950's were badly kinked.
Well-maintained rail is hardly guaranteed when it's in the pavement. Philadelphia has been notorious for poorly maintained street trackage and parts of the CTA street trackage in the 1950's were badly kinked.
Can we be informed when this track was originally laid? Refer to my previous post on early street car lines and how they were built.
Falcon48 should read a newspaper or a book, or try to write a letter while riding a bus. Can be done, I do it regularly, but ain't fun. On a rail vehicle, streetcar, light rail, Metro, Amtrak, etc., it's routine and zero a problem, unless the track and/or equipment is in really bad shape.
I am assuming one gets a seat, of course, in both cases.
NY Railways was not owned by NCL. It was owned by the same subsidiary that owned Chciago Motor Coach (remember their double-deck buses) and Fifth Avenue Coach Company. GM was the sole owner of all these companies. And New York Railways was purchased in 1926 with the eventual conversion to buses in mind. In 1926 the only buses that could compete at all with streetcars were the double-deckers. They required a two-man crew. In 1934 GM's subisidiary, Yellow Coach, finally produced a viable 40-seat and a viable 36-seat set of buses, single-deck, Peter Witt door arrangement except single-width doors, and on that basis, GM's management decided it was time to convert the major NY streetcar lines they owned. GM's managed NY Railways fairly well while it was a streetcar company. They improved service and restored two-man open-bench cars to their Broadway line (Third Avenue also had Broadway LIne, the Broadway-42nd Street line) realizing their was money to be made in vocational riding with open cars. (14-bench open cars could seat 70 people.) Then they annnounced summer 1935 as the last year for Broadway open cars. December 1935 began the streetcar to bus conversion process, and it was completed by the end of summer of 1936, although some trackage was retained for special moves, one odd one trip each a way a day franchise operation (I think this was the 9th & Amsterdam line), and a final grand parade later that year.
They owned one modern sreetcar, homemade in the shops in 1929 or 1930, just to show it could be done. (Mybe this is what inspired Third Avenue's Slalughter Huff to build his own cars to modernize his vast Manhattan-Bronx-Westchester system.) Otherwise, these were mostly very old two-motor double-truck longitudinal-seat deck-roof cars, with the rear doors not used on most, meaning front exit and entrance. A few cars did have treadle rear doors and all were equipped (retrofitted) with the required one-man safety equpiment. There was a great deal of good press about the bus conversion, but they still lost, not gained, ridershop overall.
Most readers of this column, like I believe most Americans, like to ride trains. So, the typical person walking along a town's main street, nice weather, intending to walk to his or her destination some 1/4-1/2 mile away on that street, will probably stop and pay the fare if a streetcar is in sight. And enjoy riding the couple of blocks. He or she will not do the same thing if a bus is in sight but just keep on walking. That is the big difference. People like to ride trains, and a streetcar is for them simply a train made smaller and more accessable and friendly . A bus is like a friend who stops to give you a lift in his car and then wants you to pay your share of the expenses . You would rather drive your own car, thank you!
The railfan hobby has changed remarkably in the last half century. Railfans expressed the hobby then by riding trains. The "Running Extra" section in Trains ran to three or four pages, often, with various inspection and fan trips. Most photographs in the magazine were taken in connection with train rides. Today the railfan hobby is mostly photography and the vehicle of choice is one's private car. The subject is usually freight trains, with passenger trains considered no more important than an interesting freight train. So it is not remarkable that a crossection of railfans brings no really greater percentage of support of subsidized rail passenger service, all the way from streetcars to high-speed rail, than a crossection of Average Americans. But just because they are railfans doesn't mean they are right.
The transit managers today that are opting for light rail do not opt for light rail, including streetcars where appropriate, because they are railfans. They do so for good of their communities and to solve specific problems.
Possibly railroading remains in the Amercian's blood, despite the prevelence of the private car and air travel, because the railways truly did build the country. And the streetcars built the cities, with the help of the elevateds in Chicago and New York.
People do use the F line to commute. Some people even use the cable cars to commute. Peope use Canal and St. Charles and Riverfront in New Orleans to commute. And Garrard in Philadelphia to commute. And the Portland Streetcar to commute. And the Tacoma sreetcar to commute. And the Kenosha dowtown trolley loop as part of their commute. The Seattle waterfront line is not now in operation (It will reopen), but the same transit professional now retired who told be about the success of the Ballard conversion from diesel to trolleybus used that "tourist" line with its one Melborne W-class car shuttling back and forth as part of his daily commute to volunteer work at the Art museum.
After the massive converstion of the Montreal streetcar system to buses, the Mayor announced it had all been one grand mistake. Now they are planning on reintroducing streetcars to supplement the subway system. It will be mostly light rail, PRW, but their will be some streetrunning.
I drove the Cabin John parkway for a short while and always wondered what the deal was with the dead-end turnaround on that road and the curious one-lane bridge. Turns out this road was built on the ROW of an old DC streetcar line and that was the turnaround loop. Also, the circles you see in DC that have tunnels that allow a road like K street to go under the whole circle? Those are the old streetcar lines, too.
There's too much history that is unknown to my generation on how the streetcars worked.
I also found the reason for a curious arrangement of streets in Oakton, VA, was due to the electric trolley line's old wye and terminus. I even found the abandoned ROW between the houses and an unusual skinny street, illogical dead-end streets, and old station, now a house. It was all here, but all forgotten.
So much history lost to everyone. It's a shame.
Falcon48Infrastructure costs can't be ignored - they are the 800 pound gorilla in this debate. A transit operator (or a railroad) would never ignore them unless someone were handing them great gobs of free money on a silver platter.
Infrastructure cost are different today. How many past streetcar lines were old horse car lines laid on raw dirt, no ballast, wooden ties, spiked to ties that rotted after awhile, street paved with no subsurface prepration, 60# rails, jointed rail (if that heavy), questionable rail joint bars not ever tightened, rail bonds that broke? Does it surprize us that they were going to pot? I observed 94th St near LGA airport being rebuilt and they stripped the street to at least 15" below the old rail (which looked very bad in guage and elevation) in the street (lower in places, compacted the subgrade, added proper gravel, compacted same, then laid concrete. I also observed the PDX streetcar line rebuilt near Portland Union Station removing the old tracks and they took all the soil 2 ft below the street level but was not there to them lay the rail.
isn't any (1995 or later) streetcar or light rail now built to have a proper subgrade, ballast or a concrete slab ( either direct fixation or independent dual block fixation ), noise reduction pads, steel fasteners of various designs (pandrol etc), welded 112# or greater rail. impeadace bonds, etc.
Next is power supply. Old paper insulated tar impregnated wire, Asbesdos insulation covering wire that falls apart when it get wet vs new insulation that has 100+ years expected life? Old PCB transformers feeding motor generators instead of modern solid state transformer-rectifiers or maybe AC power direct to vehicles? Old trolley wire vs constant tension CAT? Insulators that now have a much higher dielectric rating today.
Falcon48And there's another problem with your example. The "large" streetcars are advantageous only if the system is running near capacity. If the vehicles aren't running near capacity, then there's no penalty in using smaller vehicles
Do you observe in old pictures of street car lines maybe 2 - 3 streetcars in every block? Is that not a waste of street use as the combination of vehicles (autos, trucks, buses, streetcar) each has to leave a space from the vehicle in front? That is a direct penalty in using smaller vehicles. If we use Baltimore as an example combining the Penn Station line with the other one until the north and south splits has one less vehicle on the street (although longer) from Camden Park to the (?) old B&O station.
I'm not "jaded" by my railroad work. What my railroad work has taught me is that companies - even healthy ones - don't make big investments unless they can reasonably expect to earn a decent return on those investments, and they constantly look for ways to minimize the investment required to do a particular job. It's something that railroads worry about all the time, even when they are doing financially well. It's certainly something that transit operators would have worried about after WWII, as their customers deserted them in droves for private autos and they became less and less financially viable.
And there's another problem with your example. The "large" streetcars are advantageous only if the system is running near capacity. If the vehicles aren't running near capacity, then there's no penalty in using smaller vehicles. The many cities that purchased Birney safety cars in the 1920's understood this very well. And the cities that today use small buses for many of their transit routes rather than full sized models understand it too. This is, in fact, the situation that nearly all U.S. transit operators faced during the mass conversion period. Because of huge post WWII losses of traffic to private autos, the theoretically greater capacity of streetcars wasn't being used and wasn't needed. If the “large” streetcars aren’t needed to handle the available demand, then there is no return on investment from the infrastructure required to operate the "large" streetcars.
Finally, you state that New York Railways was owned by GM though a directly owned subsidiary. Presumably the “subsidiary” you are referring to was National City Lines. The fact is that NCL was never a subsidiary of GM (“directly owned” or otherwise), nor was it controlled by GM. GM and several other bus suppliers provided capital to NCL through purchases of preferred (non voting) stock. That was braodly similar to what Sam Insull did in the 1920’s when he provided capital to various electric railway and transit companies (the difference was that Insull interests controlled these companies while GM never controlled NCL). Apparently, it was somehow OK for Insull to support electric railway companies that bought electricity from his utilities but not OK for GM to support a company that bought its busses.
You actually presented the case for the streetcar. You seem to be an exception. Time and time again, streetcars have proven themselves to attract patronage better than buses. So filing up the transit vehicle, given that the operator is paid no matter how many ride, is done better by the streetcar than by the bus, assuming modern and comfortable equpment in both cases.
When New York Railways (owned by GM though a directly owned subsidiary) but buses on the Leington Avenue line, many riders switched to the Third Avenue Railway (then T. A. Tranist, don't know for sure the date of the name change) Third and Amsterdam Avenue line, which got new home-made lightweights at the same time time. (A modern car rebuilt from parts from old and scrapped streetcars. Even the Brill 77E trucks were actually constructed by welding together pieces of frames from old "maximum traction" trucks, so the cars had four motors and decent springing.) Maybe you are jaded from all your railroad work, but most transit riders first prefer electric vehicles and second prefer rail when available.
But the bus will always the lion's share of the transit business. Look at the economics:
Postal buses and buses 1 - 8000 poeple past a given point an hour each way, 2-20,000/day
Streetcar 8000 - 12,000, 20,000 - 30,000/day
Light Rail 12,000-20,000 30,000 - 50,000/day
Heavy Rail 20,000 - 100,000 50,000 - 260,000/day more than that takes 4 tracks
So the streetcar is pretty limited. But it does have a place.
And lines are designed for expected capacity. Just because a bus runs half empty does not mean a streetcar on the same line will be mostly empty. The streetcar has attracted and will attract new riders.
Of course in Chicago and New York, heavy rail rapid transit and commuter rail present options for many people that would otherwise drive.
I don't know much about transit systems in foreign countries. But I know quite a bit about transit systems and transit history in this country. I also spent my entire career working for a major railroad, so I think I know a little bit about transport economics. And, yes, I use public transit. I'm a native of the Chicago area and, except for a 14 year exile in Omaha/Council bluffs (recently ended) I have used public transit of over 50 years. I'm actually one of a dying breed who prefers public transit to driving an auto.
From that perspective, I don't see any advantage to running a public transit vehicle on railroad tracks embedded in the street (a streetcar) rather than running it on the pavement (a bus). As I understand your point, it is that a streetcar has marginally greater vehicle capacity than a bus. But that hasn't been an issue in the U.S. since WWII. Rather the issue has been finding enough passengers to fill the existing capacity. In fact, the catastrophic decline in public trasit ridership after WWII was a major factor in the streetcar to bus conversions of the 1950's, And, even if capacity were an issue on some lines at certain times of day, you can add a lot of buses for the huge infrastructure costs of a streetcar line.
This was driven home to me just a few days ago. Chicago, of course, is a major transit city. The other day, I rode a CTA bus from the Jefferson Park Blue Line station (a big rail-bus transit point) down Lawrence Avenue during the evening rush hour. Lawrence is a major east-west street, which once had an important streetcar line (and later trolley busses). The neighborhoods through which it runs haven't fallen apart like some neighborhoods further south, and are actually gong through a revival. In spite of this, the bus I was on was never more than 3/4 full, with no standees - and remember this was at the height of the evening rush hour. Clearly, "capacity" was not an issue. I also note that CTA recently announced a new service where you can get bus schedules on a Blackberry. Now, think about this a second. Why is this information of any value? It is only because the headways on most bus routes are long enough that it's useful to know when the next bus is coming. Headways long enough to require a published schedule aren't consistent with a capacity crunch.
I've never denied that there were some isolated cases where streetcar lines made sense. In general, these are historic or tourist lines (like the San Francisco F line or the New Orleans St. Charles line) or lines operating into tunnels or subways (like the Boston Green line). But, in the vast majority of cases in this country, they do not. If there is a "revival" of streetcars, it will only be because there are federal government funds available for these projects, not becaue of any intrinsic advantages of streetcars,
blue streak 1 Falcon48In other words, they decided to build a streetcar line first and are now trying to find a place for it. I think that some of the light rail systems being proposed in various cities (eg., Houston) are similar. Isn't Houston a bad example?. Granted they do not have a long light rail system but was not there an item that they have the 2nd largest light rail passengers / rail mile ? With those figures was that why they got grants for two extensions - one North and One South?
Falcon48In other words, they decided to build a streetcar line first and are now trying to find a place for it. I think that some of the light rail systems being proposed in various cities (eg., Houston) are similar.
Isn't Houston a bad example?. Granted they do not have a long light rail system but was not there an item that they have the 2nd largest light rail passengers / rail mile ? With those figures was that why they got grants for two extensions - one North and One South?
Have you ridden the Houston line? I have. It's very poorly designed. It's painfully slow compared to lines like DART and San Diego, and has some questionable features that increase accident hazards. I haven't seen their ridership stats, but I can't imagine how they could have the "2nd largest passengers / rail mile", if only because they run pretty short trains compared to other systems. Also, one thing you need to watch for in light rail ridership numbers is whether the passengers are actually new to the transit system, or are simply exisiting transit passengers transfering from the bus system. Typically, when a light rail system is placed in oerations, the bus system is restructured to force passengers to transfer to the light rail system..
Again, I agree that in most cases they got it right. But the fact is that rail service of all types has the power to get people out of their cars and use public transit more than any bus technology now available. But there is one diesel bus line in Seattle that was converted to electric bus about six or seven years ago. Falling transit riding or more efficient use of the total electric bus fleet had made available the required number of electric buses and the wire was up for most of the route for other bus lines using some of the same streets. So they completed electrification of the bus line, kept the same bus schedules, the same route, same headways, and ridershp increased 40%! I think the name of the line was Ballard, but I am not sure. I got this information from a Seattle railfan who had been a professional transit engineer and had major responsibility for New Jersey Tranist's Hudson-Bergen light rail project as well as the cars now running on the Norristown - 69th Street line. Most new light rail lines, including streetcars, draw people who did not use buses previously, and sometimes this has been 50% of the total ridership.
Some things you might wish to learn about transit. Going from regular to articulated buses doesn not necessarily increase bus line capacity. Only if a substantial number of riders ride considerable distance. Because dwell time at stops is a limiting factor. In fact, if most riders ride for only a few stops, articulated buses can reduce capacity by preventing two buses boarding at a specific stop at the same time. The reason the extra capacity of a rail car is useful in increasing line capacity is that rail cars board and exit faster than buses do. The need for steering limits the length that can be devoted to the front platform in even the most modern bus design, and this far short in boarding area to what is available in any front-loading railcar that is larger than a single-truck Birney. (Proof-of-payment operation and use of all doors results in even faster loading and unloading, of course.) So the figures of 12,000 past a given point for a single lane of streetcars on street vs 8,000 riders for buses still holds true.
I don't know whether you are a regular transit rider or not. On the average in Jerusalem I use about four or five buses each day. Because of the reroutes supposedly necessary for light rail construction, bus travel for me is not a piece of cake, considerably less enjoyable than it was before the reroutes. In the USA I owned and drove private cars 1953-1970, but would still use public transit and commuter rail when convenient. I think that you are right that most transit operators got it right, but I also think Toronto got it right when it kept and is still keeping some valuable and well-used on-street streetcar lines. To me there is a contiuum. A sparsely settled area should have public transit along the lines of the Swiss Post Bus sytem, now abandoned there because there are no longer any sparsely settled areas in Switzerland. All Switzerland has regular public transit. Next up is the diesel bus. Then putting it in a dedicated lane or PRW and/or putting up trolleybus wire, Next the streetcar on the street. Next the light rail on dedicated right of way. Next remove the grade crossings through grade separation, subways, and viaducts. Next use high platforms and heavy rail technology and commuter rail where applicable and high-speed rail. Each has its place, including the streetcar.
Lest I appear to be myopically anti-rail, I am not. I think that well designed rail transit systems can have important collateral benefits which don't how up in the farebox. In particular, I think rail transit is essential to a vibrant central business district, particularly in larger cities. It can't be done with autos, if for no other reason that the parking facilities would destroy the destination. A healthy CBD, in turn, creates all kinds of economic and social benefits (which, unfortunately, can't be monetized by the transit system).
I also have serious problems with analyses that show transit ridership as a percentage (typically a low one) of travel in a county or multi-county area, and conclude that transit is a non-player. You could do the same thing with any single expressway or road in a county or multi-county area. The proper role of transit is supporting the CBD. That means what you want to look at is how many trips the transit system is providing to/from the CBD and what percentage that is of total trips to/from that area. I haven't seen any figures lately, but I believe that, for Chicago, transit use to/from the CBD is well over half.
That said, I think that too many transit proposals are simply pursued because federal money is available, not because of any intelligent transit strategy, I keep using Omaha-Council Bluffs as an example, because I lived there for 14 years. They keep proposing to build a streetcar line there. Now, this a city with a transit system that runs nearly empty bussses even in rush hour (such as it is) - rail transit makes no sense at all. And the route of the streetcar line keeps changing, In other words, they decided to build a streetcar line first and are now trying to find a place for it. I think that some of the light rail systems being proposed in various cities (eg., Houston) are similar.
But I still don't see a place for traditional streetcars (that is, rail cars operating on city streets)in modern transit systems, except for historic lines or lines that go into subways. Whatever theoretical advantages a streetcar has are dwarfed by the infrastructure costs. For example, you say that a streetcar has greater capacity than a bus. But, in most cities I've seen, the base period headway between busses is about 15 minutes. In fact, in many cites, the base period headway is 30 minutes or more on many lines (eg.,San Diego). In the glory days of streetcars, headways of 15 -30 minutes were unheard of - the standard was usually a "car in sight". Headways of this length don't support any need for higher capacity vehicles. While additional capacity might be needed in rush hours, that capacity is more economically created by adding vehicles for a couple of hours rather than by building an expensive rail infrastructure in the street to support marginally larger vehicles. In short, I think the transit companies that converted their streetcar systems got it right.
Again, we agree that the great majority of transit lines are best served by buses. In Jerusalem, I hope to see trolleybuses, because I see too many main routes on hilly streets where a lot of braking energy is wasted going downhill and a lot of pollution and noise is generated by buses going uphill. But diesel buses with the best low-pllution engines are probably the best and most economical choice for most transit lines.
Light rail, whether true light rail on segregated track, or the conventional streetcar on lanes shared with other traffic will always be a specialty item in transit. Like heavy rapid transit and like commuter rail. But don't distort facts by saying streetcars have no more capacity than buses. This simply is not true. Even in street traffic, a streetcar line can handle more people past a given point in a given time than a bus line. You do point out that there are special cases where light rail will survive. I think at least 95% of the post-WWII light rail lines that have been built will survive. Those very few that are not meeting their projected ridership goals, and there really are only a very small minority. will encourage business and residential development so their goals will be met once the economy recovery is in full swing.
There are still cities where the main purpose of downtown city streets is moving traffic.. Boston, of all places, seems to be one city that persists in that madness, and they are even talking of removing the last vestage of passenger carrying street running rail, instead of restoring it to Arborway as once promised and essentially paid for. (A promise given to approve the "Big Dig." - and note the contiued absence of the much overdue and needed S.Sta-N.Sta rail connection ---only possible in Boston!) (And don't point out Grand Central and Penn in NY as another example, the Hell Gate Bridge and Amtraks revival of the west side line have resolved that problem, just they need to be put to greater use.)
Toronto realized the streets are more that just for autos. They are also centers for urban living. Now we have Market Street in San Francisco, the Portland, OR streetcar and MAX, both on surface alignments in downtown, the restoration of Canal Street in New Orleans, lots of towns and cities around the USA are talking about some kind of restoration of downtown rail service.
Just as a person in Maryland suburb who used ot drive his car to donwtown Washigton or Baltimore, now drives to a light rail, heavy rapid transit, or commuter station and uses rail to access his downtown employment, so, if the future, a person in Manassas or Albermarl who works in Charlottesville, VA may drive to the large parking lot located adjacent to one of the shopping malls on that small city's outskirts and ride an efficient light rail system to his downtown employment. Whether the folks decide it should be on separate right of way, share lanes with traffic, be supermodern in appearance, or look like heritage cars with modern technology, well, there are lots of choices, but the trend is there, and it may still be cheaper, even in the long run, than building more parking garages and adding more lines to existing streets and highways.
I saw my MIT Professor's work in action in Boston, and apparently his ideas still have some weight there. But in other places people are putting in round-abouts (rotaries) where there were massive intersections and talking about getting people out of their cars and into public transit. And light rail has it over buses as drawer card.
I don't want to prolong this debate, because it's gone far afield from the original topic of this thread (which I'm probably responsible for). but a few points:
(1) I ride city busses all the time (in Chicago and elsewhere), and they pull to the curb if they can (sometimes they get blocked by parked cars). That's particularly true today with accessibility considerations. You may not think streetcar loading islands in the street were a problem, but city planners in the 1950's took a different view of the matter. And I haven't seen any speed bumps or roundabouts on main streets. These are measures used to slow traffic on side streets, not main streets where busses usually run.
(2) There were hundreds of transit companies, both public and private, that chose to convert their streetcar systems to busses. These firms were run by people who had often spent most of their careers running streetcar systems, and who were trying to do what they thought was best for their companies and customers. What is striking is that they all came to the same conclusion - the streetcar systems should be converted to busses. No U.S. city made any attempt to save its streetcar system after the early 50's. True, a handful of cities kept a handful of streetcar lines (generally historic lines, or lines that operated into tunnels or subways), but these lines were islands in systems otherwise run by bus. I tend to trust the judgement of the market over arguments that the operators should have done something differently.
(3) I find discussions of capacity a little unrealistic because they typically assume that the streetcar is running at capacity. That, by the 1950's, was definitely not the case in most cities - once people could buy autos again, transit ridership took a nosedive (a development which undoubtedly caused transit operators to take a very critical look at their streetcar operations). Similarly, discussions of "efficency" that focus on only some of the costs of streetcars are unrealistic. Sure, steel wheels have less rolling resistance than tires and a streetcar will thus use less energy per pound. But that's offset, in part, by the greater weight of a streetcar and, more importantly, by the huge infrastructure related costs of a streetcar system. A businessperson choosing between two alternatives looks at the total costs of each alternative. Why, after all, did they universally get rid of streetcars in the first place if streetcars cost less than busses?
(4) The only way we are going to see a revival of streetcars in this country (other than an isolated line here and there) is if there are massive new government subsidies for the construction, maintenance and operating costs of these systems. Since transit systems have a hard time making ends meet right now, that's likely not in the cards. The money is better spent on something that actually improves public transit (like a well designed light rail or rapid transit line) rather than sinking it (literally) into rail infrastructure embedded in city streets so that rail vehicles can fight their way through traffic rather than rubber tire vehicles.
I understand that Seattle, both diesel buses and electric buses, is an exception. There, the theoretical curb loading advantage is actually put into practice. Buses actually do move to the curb and "platform" with low floors just inches away from the sidewalk. And Seattle private car drivers are generally polite and give way when a bus pulls out from the curb to join the traffic lane.
Elsewhere, experience thorughout North America has taught me, aat least, that buses are no better than on-street streetcars as far as blocking traffic. Bus drivers learn quicly that to pull over to the curb means losing time as they wait for a break in traffic to rejoin the traffic lane. Instead they unload and load half in the driving lane and half in the bus stop lane, blocking traffic for everyone except motocycles and possibly some of the smallest of the minicars. And the passengers walk to and from the sidewalk on the road pavement, often during heavy rain wading in puddles.
Better a streetcar line in the middle of the street WITH LOADING ISLANDS. Loading islands a traffic hazard? Sure, just like "round-abouts" and speed bumps and other TRAFFIC CALMING MEASURES. The best deal was the left-hand loading and unloading Type 5 streetcars on some Boston lines, like Blue Hill Avenue, with a continuous center island separating the opposing direcitons of traffic and used as the platfom all streetcar stops.
Ther typical articulated streetcar has about 40% greater capacity than the typical articulated bus. The typical non-articulated bus seats 40 and stands 22. The typical non-articulated streetcar (PCC's and Osgood Bradley lightwieghts are good examples) seats 44 and stands 36-48. A Detroit or Cleveland or Toronto large single-end Peter Witt even more.
Streetcars have always had more capacity than buses and still do.
Steel wheel transportaton is about 40% more energy effiicent on rolling resistance than rubber tire transportation. Meaning that on a passenger mile basis, a streetcar is about 40% more energy efficient than a trolleybus.
I like trolleybuses. Like streetcars, they can use renerative braking and further save enrgy costs. We have one light rail line under construction in Jerusalem. I'd like to see it expanded to the tram-train concept with through running over Israel Railways to the suburban towns of Beit Shemesh (House of the Sun), and Moadin (home of the Maccabees). But I think trolley buses are the proper vehicle for most of the other lines that are now diesel bus.
Buses do have advantages over rail that weigh more than streetcars for most transit lines. But streetcars, even running in the street and not just light rail, also have a useful place.
inarevil Falcon48 Because trolley busses (like streetcars) use electricity. The vast majority of the electricity generated in this country does not come frrm PETROLEUM based fossil fuels. Most of it comes either from coal (a fossil fuel, but not a petroleum based fossil fuel) or from non fossil fuel sources (nuclear, hydro-electric etc). To be sure, a portion of our electricity comes from petroleum based fossil fuels (particularly natural gas), but the majority of it does not. The purpose behind my question was more to point out that electric trolley busses and electric streetcars are one and the same with only one difference - the lack of tracks for the busses to run on. I don't see a benefit in running busses over trolleys since the busses still need dedicated right of ways much in the same way trolleys so. About the only benefit is that busses negate track maintenance. They do, however, present their own unique set of maintenance costs, such as tires (which are petroleum based). While tires are less costly than tracks from a maintenance standpoint, they are replaced much more frequently than tracks and are subject to various hazards found in streets like glass, nails, among other puncture hazards. In the debate over trolleys versus electric busses, it comes more down to a matter of capacity, then cost is figured in. Physical constraints play a major part of the decision, but ultimately it still comes down to what the powers that be decide is better in the interest of the public. I haven't seen a bus system yet that can compete with rail in terms of capacity without causing backups.
Falcon48 Because trolley busses (like streetcars) use electricity. The vast majority of the electricity generated in this country does not come frrm PETROLEUM based fossil fuels. Most of it comes either from coal (a fossil fuel, but not a petroleum based fossil fuel) or from non fossil fuel sources (nuclear, hydro-electric etc). To be sure, a portion of our electricity comes from petroleum based fossil fuels (particularly natural gas), but the majority of it does not.
Because trolley busses (like streetcars) use electricity. The vast majority of the electricity generated in this country does not come frrm PETROLEUM based fossil fuels. Most of it comes either from coal (a fossil fuel, but not a petroleum based fossil fuel) or from non fossil fuel sources (nuclear, hydro-electric etc). To be sure, a portion of our electricity comes from petroleum based fossil fuels (particularly natural gas), but the majority of it does not.
The purpose behind my question was more to point out that electric trolley busses and electric streetcars are one and the same with only one difference - the lack of tracks for the busses to run on. I don't see a benefit in running busses over trolleys since the busses still need dedicated right of ways much in the same way trolleys so. About the only benefit is that busses negate track maintenance. They do, however, present their own unique set of maintenance costs, such as tires (which are petroleum based). While tires are less costly than tracks from a maintenance standpoint, they are replaced much more frequently than tracks and are subject to various hazards found in streets like glass, nails, among other puncture hazards.
In the debate over trolleys versus electric busses, it comes more down to a matter of capacity, then cost is figured in. Physical constraints play a major part of the decision, but ultimately it still comes down to what the powers that be decide is better in the interest of the public. I haven't seen a bus system yet that can compete with rail in terms of capacity without causing backups.
I don't understand some of your comments.
For example, you say that there's no benefit in running busses over trolleys because "busses still need dedicated rights of way much in the same way trolleys do." The fact is that busses rarely have "dedicated rights of way". They mostly run on the street pavement just like other street vehicles. Of course, "streetcars" also shared the street right of way with other vehicles and had to fight their way through trafffic too. The difference is that streetcars didn't use the pavement, and thus didn't share infrastructure costs with other street users. Rather, they used railroad tracks embedded in the streets, for which they had sole responsibility. Worse, since the tracks were in the street, private streetcar operators typically had to bear street paving costs for the portion of the street in the track area, which could be a third to a half of the street surface. And they were also subject to assessments for a major share of the costs of things like bridge replacements on, over or under the streets on which they operated. An upcoming bridge assessment was the immediate cause of many streetcar and suburban electric railroad conversions (such as the PE's Northern District lines). And, they also paid property taxes on the track infrastructure. Negating these infrastructure related costs was a powerful reason to convert streetcar lines to busses. You can buy a whole lot of tires with the infrastructure costs of a streetcar system
You also appear to be stating that "rail lines" have more capacity than electric bus lines. But, if you're talking about streetcars vs busses (both of which operate in the streets), that hasn't been true since the 1950's, and it certainly isn't true today, with modern articulated busses. The only way it could be true is if the streetcar lines were running trains. While trains are typically run on modern light rail lines (which are more rapid transit lines than streetcar lines), most U.S. cities didn't run streetcar trains after the 1920's (and many cities were running primarily single truck "Birney" cars in the 20's, which effectively surrendered whatever "capacity" advantage streetcars may otherwise have had) . Frankly, from the 1930's on, the problem most streetcar operators had wasn't lack of capacity. It was filling up the cars they were running. That may not have been as apparent in major transit cities like New York and Chicago (although it was felt even there, with significant declines in off peak and local ridership), but it was striking in other cities. An example I mentioned previously was Omaha-Council Bluffs, once a major streetcar city, where they removed the standee straps from all of the streetcars in the 1930's.
Your comment that you haven't seen a bus system that can compete with rail in terms of capacity "without causing backups" suggests that you are too young to have witnessed streetcars in operation. I, on the other hand, am old and decrepit and remember them quite well. Because streetcars could not pull out of traffic lanes to pick up or drop off passengers, they could cause horrendous backups on the streets they used. This wouldn't have been a big problem on wide streets (like Western Avenue in Chicago), but streetcars operated on lots of major streets where there was effectively only one lane in each direction due to parked cars (like Clark Street in Chicago), so the ability of traffic to get around the streetcars was severely limited. Conversely, since the streetcars could not get around obstructions on the street, an entire streetcar line could be effectively shut down by a single double parked car, something a bus (even a trolley bus) can shrug off.
I suspect you may be confusing streetcars with modern, light rail systems, which typically have dedicated rights of way or, where they operate in streets, have dedicated traffic lanes with traffic signal preemption. There is little question that a modern, well designed light rail line has more capacity than busses on city streets. But it comes at a huge cost (both in construction cost and ongoing operating cost) which farebox revenues don't even come close to covering. Whether that cost is justified by collateral benefits will vary from city to city, but there are unquestionably cities where it costs aren't justified. Eventually (probably not in my remaining lifetime), there's going to be a day of reckoning on some of these systems, most likely when the existing infrastructure wears out and the system requires significant additional investment to remain in operation.
Falcon48 quote user="inarevil"] Falcon48 ...the objective is to get away from petroleum based fossil fuel vehicles, the trolley bus would be a better choice than a streetcar, since it does not require the railroad infrastructure in the street, and is better able to avoid obstructions... How would a trolley bus get away from petroleum based fossil fuels?
quote user="inarevil"]
Falcon48 ...the objective is to get away from petroleum based fossil fuel vehicles, the trolley bus would be a better choice than a streetcar, since it does not require the railroad infrastructure in the street, and is better able to avoid obstructions...
...the objective is to get away from petroleum based fossil fuel vehicles, the trolley bus would be a better choice than a streetcar, since it does not require the railroad infrastructure in the street, and is better able to avoid obstructions...
How would a trolley bus get away from petroleum based fossil fuels?
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There is no virtue in the idea of operating electric railway equipment or trolley busses on electricity with the idea that most of our electricity isn't generated by petroleum. The other fossil fuels present their own problems.
Natural gas is the most environmentally benign fossil fuel because of its low carbon content, but it is perhaps the most valuable in terms of it's uses for chemical feedstocks essential for modern agriculture and the chemical industry, so burning it for electricity is, in some senses, a huge abuse and waste of a valuable resource. Coal is the worst from an environmental standpoint. It is by far the dirtiest of fossil fuels, contributing more carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour than any other fuel, fossil or otherwise.
Even wood is better because the carbon dioxide discharged from the burning of wood came from absorbing that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when the tree grew. As such it is a closed cycle. Fossil fuels are not closed cycles, but are open and only add carbon to the biosphere and atmosphere, and that carbon dioxide stays around for a very long time.
Until we get serious about getting electricity from renewable resources, or at least from non-carbon sources such as nuclear (virtually all major hydropower sites in this country are already developed, and hydropower has not proved to be environmentally benign), electric traction will not solve our problems. It merely transfers the source of the carbon dioxide pollution from where we see it to where we don't. And let's not forget the devastation coused by mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.
A large scale expansion of nuclear power would provide for the large base load need of electric traction railroads and other forms of transportation. At the present point, the only other rapidly expandable source of electrical generating capacity is probably wind power. It already competes with coal very favorably, and even surpasses it when the costs of coal's pollution and mining damage are considered.
inarevil Falcon48 ...the objective is to get away from petroleum based fossil fuel vehicles, the trolley bus would be a better choice than a streetcar, since it does not require the railroad infrastructure in the street, and is better able to avoid obstructions... How would a trolley bus get away from petroleum based fossil fuels?
St. Louis is in the process of bringing back a streetcar to run from our Metrolink light rail to the Delmar Loop Area. The Loop is home to our own Walk of the Stars and Chuck Berry regularly appears at Blueberry Hill cafe. The streetcar will stop at the old Wabash Delmar Station, which has a Metrolink stop on the lower level and the restored Pageant Theater, which has various music acts appearing on a regular basis.
This will be our first streetcar line in over 40 years. When they get it finished, I'll be checking it out.
I see very little reason for anyone now or in the future to restore classic "streetcar" systems (ie., systems consisting mostly of railroad tracks embedded in city streets) except for historic "tourist" lines. If the objective is to get away from petroleum based fossil fuel vehicles, the trolley bus would be a better choice than a streetcar, since it does not require the railroad infrastructure in the street, and is better able to avoid obstructions,
With respect to "light rail", rather than streetcars, the "light rail" renaissance will last only as long as governments are willing to continue giving massive subsidies to this form of transport. As I mentioned in a prior post, "light rail":covers a wide variety of systems. Some of these provide levels of service which are vastly superior to busses and are heavily utilized. They are likely to be around for a long time, Others do not. My prediction is that, in the coming years, there will be a number of light rail systems built which are poorly conceived and designed, not to meet any real transit need, but because Federal money is available. Systems like this will eventually be abandoned as the economic realities of retaining them become evident and governments have to choose between competing priorites. The most likely point in time this will occur is when the track structure requires substantial renewal. I won't be around by then, but perhaps some of the younger participants in this forum will be.
And it will be interesting to see if there is ever an end to the revival of trolleycar technology now labeled light rail, and if 100 years from now, as we look down hopefully from Heaven, whether the amount of mileage has been restored!
Of course, population densities are greater and congestion greater and fuel costs greater.
Let me point out, again, that I was speaking in general terms when I discussed the reasons transit operators would convert streetcar lines to busses. Could there have been some isloated lines where these dynamics didn't apply? Sure (although one has to wonder whether the lines you mention would have stayed as streetcars much beyond the 1950's even without city opposition). Add to these the handful of lines in some cities that operated in subways or tunnels that couldn't practically be converted (Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco). But the mileage represented by these lines is insignificant compared to the streetcar mileage that used to exist in this country.
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