Quote:
Originally Posted by Hatman
The technical reasons why the S-line does not continue into downtown are all right and I agree with them - but I think the biggest reason is political.
There's still a lot of talk about building lots of streetcar routes in SLC, ones that are actually in the street. As long as people continue to associate streetcars with the negatives of TRAX - high speed, loud noise, long multi-unit trains, large crowds, lane exclusion, etc - as long as people confuse that with a street car (single car, slow speeds, shared lanes), there will always be massive local oposition.
UTA wants to draw the boldest lines possible between the two types of operation so that there is less confusion. That way when a new route is proposed there will be far fewer people with signs reading 'Streetcars kill children'.
If they were to run the streetcar into downtown via TRAX, there would definitely be more people who would ride it, but it would also remove any difference between Trax style service and true streetcar service, and local oposition to expansions would be that much harder to quiet.
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Putting a street car or a light rail car into a street with small businesses always generate opposition. Often, small business run on about a 90 day cushion with accounts receivable and accounts payable based upon option to borrow money for 90 days on accounts receivable. Consequently, businesses- unless they are hemorrhaging money can generally stand a 90 day reduction in accounts receivable and walk in customer income rather well.
The problem occurs when sewers have to be realigned, fresh water pipes moved, buried electrical lines reconfigured, etc. Combine this with the requirement to do such work in stages over the length of the line to be opened, and, the small business person (hotels and entertainment venues too) suffers.
Before current government standards and before local and regional governments were involved in public transit infrastructural building, street cars and interurban trains right of way was built under the mantra "the cheapest possible, built over the shortest time, to get revenue ASAP.
Tracks were laid down as quickly and cheaply as possible: sewer, water, and power lines upgrades were never bundled into construction costs, and, cheap self supporting wire were catenaries used to supply electricity.
The speed of construction meant that merchants did not have to have very long periods of reduced cash flow (imagine how fast a street car line could be built based on no utility and sewer adjustments. During the street car days tracks were laid down on dirt roads and over head wire strung at the rate of a couple of miles or more PER MONTH.)
This very slow rate of construction IMO is the cause of much of the frustration. The noise, speed, etc., is more secondary, and, at least in my experience, is not too much of an issue for a business (if the right-of-way does not block access to his business.)
A side note: building street cars and interurban trains as was done from 1880 to about 1920 was CHEAP. So, cheap that until tax supported road systems were built for cars, the mode was dominant.
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