Quote:
Originally Posted by bunt_q
edit: Besides, by the time you make the investment in a BRT corridor and all of the station and streetscape imrovements that go with it, you really are not saving much over a simple streetcar system. We're not talking light rail costs here, it's much cheaper.
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Ok, so u make the station and street improvements (which i'm assuming you'd make under streetcar too). Those cost some money. What does making it a street car give you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunt_q
What would you invest in union station over a colfax streetcar? I think that would be a terrible trade-off for the city. A colfax streetcar would have higher ridership numbers than any rail line in the entire fastracks system except for maybe the southeast line.
And lower taxes?... there's no source of revenue for a streetcar now - if we do it, it's going to be because we vote specifically for it, in which that argument goes out the window.
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I don't have any specific proposals in mind. My point with those is only to show that there's an opportunity cost to spending money on streetcar. And I'm not convinced that the benefits are there.
If we voted for it, it would require a tax increase. My point is that there might be a better way to spend the revenue that would be generated by that increase (either lower tax rates or a different project). I don't see how the fact that there's no money earmarked for it negates the fact that
if there were, there would be an opportunity cost.
You might have a point about developers being willing to invest more around a fixed facility. I'd be interested to see some data. But you said earlier that you'd be making street and station improvements under bus. If that's what matters, bus still achieves the same objective at a lower cost.
As an aside, My guess is the amount of private investment has more to do with ridership numbers. Maybe streetcar could get more riders, maybe not. Its an empirical question you could only answer by comparing more concrete proposals.
Final point, do you think downtown connector and 16th street mall would be better as street cars? Those are buses that get a lot of ridership. If you switched them to streetcar, i'm not sure what the added benefit would be.