Posted Feb 17, 2013, 10:38 AM
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Crunchin' the numbers.
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: T2R, YYC, 403, CA-AB.
Posts: 791
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I've been to the Pearl District in Portland as well. It's nice. The streetcars are slightly faster than walking, assuming you don't get stuck for five minutes behind a double-parked UPS guy like one I was on. I appreciate that streetcars can play a role in spurring urban redevelopment -- although a much bigger improvement would be if, for instance, the permitting process were easier and cheaper to redevelop two lots in an inner city neighbourhood than to redevelop two square miles of grassland.
Streetcars seem to me to be best if they can be built with at least partially protected right-of-way, so they run as a mini-LRT (with a mini budget). The route that always caught my eye was 17th Avenue east, not west. With a transit lane in the plans east of Deerfoot, a streetcar that stops a few times in Inglewood and the East Village would be a good link to that part of the city.
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