Quote:
Originally Posted by planarchy
The are visible along much of Barrington and quite the hazard when on a bike!
As far as a line on SGR, you'd need a really good excuse not to use it - and removal of a handful of on-street parking spots isn't one.
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The elimination of on street parking would depending on how the stations are built and the size of the car. If you look at the Vancouver 2010 streetcar for example, the platform for the station would have to be much longer than the Portland Streetcar. The bombardier streetcar used in Vancouver would require a station length of about 90% of the total car length (to ensure all doors would reach the platform, 10% of the car is typically the cab for the driver). This is due in part to the placement of the doors, more and wider doors.
The Portland streetcar is a little different because the placement of the doors is centred in the cab, unlike Bombardier which is all over the length of the car. So you could get away with building a shorter platform if the Portland style car was used (I'm guessing roughly 75% of the car length) and then the back end past to last set of doors would just stick out past the platform and block a car using the on street parking from pulling out.
In the suggest route update I gave (Morris to Queen, to SGR and then back to University via Summer street), you could take advantage of a Portland Style car and remove only a few on street spots along Queen, SGR and Summer Streets for the platforms, so the impact would be minimal. Add to that the fact that SGR access would become far easier for so many all over the peninsula because of the streetcar, you'd generate more foot traffic from the service itself. People wouldn't have to worry about finding a parking spot, they could just jump on the streetcar instead.