Unpopular opinions involving cities

[ChargerCarl]

I'm not saying there wasn't any collusion, but its way, way overblown as an issue. The streetcar companies were mostly dead by this time.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

And as I said earlier it's doubtful they would still be around today. It's an outdated mode of transit.

While I wouldn't suggest cities build new mixed-traffic streetcar networks (grade separated is the obvious way to go), the legacy system here in Toronto or elsewhere in places like Melbourne, Philly, Berlin, etc. work just fine - and you'd be hard pressed finding many in any of these places who'd prefer to ride a bus.

The inability to clear obstructions is probably the sole disadvantage of streetcars in comparison to a bus (again, assuming an existing system with infrastructure already in place). Otherwise, the vehicles have longer lifespans and higher capacities; they're quieter and contribute to creating a more attractive public realm; and unlike buses they're actually pleasant to ride on - so they can attract and retain ridership to a higher degree.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

While I wouldn't suggest cities build new mixed-traffic streetcar networks (grade separated is the obvious way to go), the legacy system here in Toronto or elsewhere in places like Melbourne, Philly, Berlin, etc. work just fine - and you'd be hard pressed finding many in any of these places who'd prefer to ride a bus.

The inability to clear obstructions is probably the sole disadvantage of streetcars in comparison to a bus (again, assuming an existing system with infrastructure already in place). Otherwise, the vehicles have longer lifespans and higher capacities; they're quieter and contribute to creating a more attractive public realm; and unlike buses they're actually pleasant to ride on - so they can attract and retain ridership to a higher degree.

I don't know much about the Toronto ones, but in Europe they're mostly not mixed traffic, and the sections that are are brief.

[mrnyc]

^ do your parents work for gm or something?

i can tell you about toronto streetcars because cleveland handed the baton to them by selling off their streetcars to toronto during the transit holocaust. the cleveland streetcars were used in toronto for decades until 1982.

you can read all about the collusion to shut down the once extensive and well used cleveland streetcar system in this wiki blurb:


The Cleveland Railway Company was the public transit operator in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1910 to 1942. The company owned a fleet of PCC streetcars.

Though National City Lines never owned the system in Cleveland, General Motors did negotiate the sale of buses to the city, resulting in the shutdown of the streetcar system.

In Cleveland, complaints were made to the FBI after the mayor and city councilors were seen driving around in new General Motors cars. Mayor Raymond T. Miller did receive a new car within a month of General Motors' winning the contract for new buses. The FBI refused to investigate based on high-profile nature of the people targeted.

The city of Cleveland bought out Cleveland Railway in 1942 and used it as the nucleus for the Cleveland Transit System, the precursor to the current Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (rta).

The Cleveland streetcars were sold to the Toronto Transit Commission, where they remained in service for thirty years until 1982. Others were sold to the Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway Company.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ do your parents work for gm or something?

i can tell you about toronto streetcars because cleveland handed the baton to them by selling off their streetcars to toronto during the transit holocaust. the cleveland streetcars were used in toronto for decades until 1982.

you can read all about the collusion to shut down the once extensive and well used cleveland streetcar system in this wiki blurb:


The Cleveland Railway Company was the public transit operator in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1910 to 1942. The company owned a fleet of PCC streetcars.

Though National City Lines never owned the system in Cleveland, General Motors did negotiate the sale of buses to the city, resulting in the shutdown of the streetcar system.

In Cleveland, complaints were made to the FBI after the mayor and city councilors were seen driving around in new General Motors cars. Mayor Raymond T. Miller did receive a new car within a month of General Motors' winning the contract for new buses. The FBI refused to investigate based on high-profile nature of the people targeted.

The city of Cleveland bought out Cleveland Railway in 1942 and used it as the nucleus for the Cleveland Transit System, the precursor to the current Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.

The Cleveland streetcars were sold to the Toronto Transit Commission, where they remained in service for thirty years until 1982. Others were sold to the Berlin and Waterloo Street Railway Company.

Please read the article.

[GlassCity]

I'll go further.

Light rail, and other non-grade separated urban rail transit, might be one of the worst things to happen to modern urban planning.

It's not any faster than express buses, provides increased capacity but this encourages reduced frequency, and costs a hell of a lot more. The right thing to do would be to run express buses until full grade-separation is warranted, rather then spending a few billion dollars on a line that isn't an improvement from a functional transportation standpoint. "Comfort" is not worth going with a half-assed solution for an extra few billion. Spending that money on improved bus service would bring much, much more benefit to the city's public transit system.

[montréaliste]

Toronto was right in keeping their streetcars going. There is a definite quality to the streetscape in spite of the overhead wires that some find ungainly. They provide more comfort to riders and are a charming feature of Toronto.

[jayden]

Originally Posted by toddguy

Well I think they could get by with an 1800 footer with a well done 500 foot spire or something like that.

Now that would just look ridiculous...

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I'll go further.

Light rail, and other non-grade separated urban rail transit, might be one of the worst things to happen to modern urban planning.

It's not any faster than express buses, provides increased capacity but this encourages reduced frequency, and costs a hell of a lot more. The right thing to do would be to run express buses until full grade-separation is warranted, rather then spending a few billion dollars on a line that isn't an improvement from a functional transportation standpoint. "Comfort" is not worth going with a half-assed solution for an extra few billion. Spending that money on improved bus service would bring much, much more benefit to the city's public transit system.

yeah, the loss of america's massive streetcar legacy aside, i agree with that regarding new build. i really dislike light rail in the cbd of cities. they are ok for the periphery of downtown though. for example, the minneapolis lines in downtown minneapolis. its arguably just slightly aside from right smack downtown. that's ok at the moment, but there is a heck of a lot of development on those adjacent blocks these days, so they are going to have to think about burying the rail from the new football stadium all the way to the baseball stadium terminal someday.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Please read the article.

I can't believe you're using that article as your sole source on this... it's poorly researched (the references...) and pushes a single narrative. Yes, the "GM conspiracy" is VERY overblown in this discussion, and had little to with the removal of streetcars in many cities. In some places of course, it famously did.

The reality, as usual, varies from case to case. In the U.S. many places streetcars were often used as loss leaders for development and never recouped the cost from operating because American suburbs were not built to a density to support them in a time of increasing car ownership. Coupled with material shortages in the lead-up, during and following WWII it was inevitable they would be dismantled. Even in larger cities with public transit agencies the combined costs of maintaining and repairing neglected systems that ran well over capacity during the war could be too much.

Of course this is an American narrative and (even as the article supports) has more to do with how the system was set up than the actual performance of streetcars. In Canada most systems ran at a break-even or loss state. Even when the private streetcar system in Toronto was folded into the TTC it maintained this policy essentially until the creation of the metro government post-war. In large part this led to the existing urban fabric of tightly packed houses in streetcar suburbs and viable high streets.

As for the current day, the failure of most new American systems is due to design. They are often simply "downtown circulator" type systems that have irregular routing and don't extend that far outside the city centre. If you look at the surviving historic systems this is not the case - linear routes that extend from the centre outwards on a linear routing. Here's the TTC streetcar map: https://i.imgur.com/7EyUoqx.png

The 504 line for instance carries about 60,000 passengers a day, which is more than many newer light rail systems!

As for speed, in Toronto at least the traffic running streetcars run about the same speed at buses. Sometimes a bit slower, and sometimes a bit faster. Buses generally accelerate faster but take far longer to load and unload. Streetcars get caught up by left-turning vehicles but buses get just as caught up by parked cars and right-turning ones. When a route is down for repair the replacement buses tend to be overcrowded and less efficient since each streetcar carries far more people

Official speed comparisons of downtown bus and streetcar routes using TTC data:



http://www.metronews.ca/views/toront...treetcars.html

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by niwell

I can't believe you're using that article as your sole source on this... it's poorly researched (the references...) and pushes a single narrative. Yes, the "GM conspiracy" is VERY overblown in this discussion, and had little to with the removal of streetcars in many cities. In some places of course, it famously did.

The reality, as usual, varies from case to case. In the U.S. many places streetcars were often used as loss leaders for development and never recouped the cost from operating because American suburbs were not built to a density to support them in a time of increasing car ownership. Coupled with material shortages in the lead-up, during and following WWII it was inevitable they would be dismantled. Even in larger cities with public transit agencies the combined costs of maintaining and repairing neglected systems that ran well over capacity during the war could be too much.

Source for them being a loss leader?

Obviously every case is unique, but in general what brought down streetcars was that they had to share the road they paid to maintain with cars, which drove up costs (which they couldn't recover with higher fares) and slowed down operations.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I'll go further.

Light rail, and other non-grade separated urban rail transit, might be one of the worst things to happen to modern urban planning.

It's not any faster than express buses, provides increased capacity but this encourages reduced frequency, and costs a hell of a lot more. The right thing to do would be to run express buses until full grade-separation is warranted, rather then spending a few billion dollars on a line that isn't an improvement from a functional transportation standpoint. "Comfort" is not worth going with a half-assed solution for an extra few billion. Spending that money on improved bus service would bring much, much more benefit to the city's public transit system.

ill agree with most of this. grade separated rail TO the city is fine. but at grade in the city is worthless. I can ride a bike across downtown faster than riding on the train. also in a city with other ageing infrastructure (like portlands many old bridges), you have an additional liability in case of seismic activity. the collective boner for rail transit is high, but id get more hot and bothered if brt was discussed with the same enthusiasm.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Source for them being a loss leader?

Obviously every case is unique, but in general what brought down streetcars was that they had to share the road they paid to maintain with cars, which drove up costs (which they couldn't recover with higher fares) and slowed down operations.

I don't have an online source but this is discussed briefly in "Toronto Sprawls" by Lawrence Solomon and "Unplanned Suburbs" by Richard Harris. I have also seen in in several journal articles while I was doing my Master's. That was over a decade ago now so I couldn't reference them accurately.

[Doady]

Toronto has the largest light rail system in North America, so Toronto is what modern urban planning should avoid? Toronto is a mistake? I don't understand that.

I think the difference between bus or light rail is simply capacity. When Mississauga and Brampton were deciding between BRT and LRT for Hurontario, BRT was quickly removed as an option. Why? Because the projected ridership was too high for BRT. The amount of buses required would interfere with other traffic too much.

The LRVs on the Hurontario LRT will be coupled into 2-car 60m trains to start, and possibly 3-car 90m trains in the future, wth headways of 4-5 minutes. Buses cannot be combined into trains, so for 18m articulated buses to provide the same capacity 60m LRV trains, headways of 80 seconds in each direction would be required. Not only would that be more expensive to operate (requiring 3 times more operators), but such high frequencies would require grade separation of all intersections. So BRT was not acceptable.

Keep in mind also, this is Canada. It snows here sometimes. And I can tell you that the articulated buses in Mississauga all stay in the garage when it snows. Articulated buses perform very poorly in the snow, so that limits capacity further.

As for this idea that at-grade rail transit is worthless and not acceptable, but at-grade bus transit is okay? Seems like double standard to me. But fine, let's get rid of all at-grade rail. Get rid of the TTC streetcars which carry 280k riders per weekday. Get rid of all the GO Trains. They are worthless! They are destroying Toronto's urban fabric!

Whatever.

Don't be mislead by the hysteria over at-grade rail, but don't be mislead by that TTC route speed graph either. They compare streetcar routes on major roads to bus routes on minor roads. Only TTC bus route on a major arterial road is 29 Dufferin, and it is the fastest there.

But considering the high ridership and extremely high frequencies of many of Toronto's streetcar routes, replacing them with bus would not be good. 30m long vehicles like the new LRVs are much more suitable for such high ridership. Many of Toronto's bus routes should be converted to light rail as well. They are operating at 3 minute frequencies now. The ridership of these routes have reached their limit with buses.

Weekday boardings, 2011/12

TTC 25 Don Mills - 39,066
TTC 29 Dufferin - 39,721
TTC 32 Eglinton West - 48,684
TTC 34 Eglinton East - 29,501
TTC 35 Jane - 45,699
TTC 36 Finch West - 43,967
TTC 39 Finch East - 41,434 (2007)
TTC 52 Lawrence West - 23,036
TTC 53 Steeles East - 29,050
TTC 54 Lawrence East - 36,277
TTC 60 Steeles West - 29,819 (2010)
TTC 199 Finch Rocket - 13,111
TTC 506 Carlton - 39,601

Mississauga 19 Hurontario - 20,554
Mississauga 103 Hurontario Express - 7,248
Brampton 2 Main - 2,720
Brampton 502 Zum Main - 9,244

LYNX Blue Line - 15,590

Metro Red/Purple Line 155,940
Metro Blue Line - 92,120
Metro Green Line - 46,393
Metro Gold Line - 41,987
Metro Orange Line - 31,787

MBTA Red Line - 265,435
MBTA Orange Line - 202,942
MBTA Blue Line - 61,210
MBTA Green Line - 238,828

BSDA Metrolink - 52,723

NJT Hudson-Bergen Light Rail 43,950

Baltimore Metro Subway - 51,018
Baltimore Light Rail - 27,253

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by Doady

Toronto has the largest light rail system in North America, so Toronto is what modern urban planning should avoid? Toronto is a mistake? I don't understand that.

While Toronto is better than most NA cities, it's transit mode share is much lower than comparable cities in Europe and Asia.

If I was building a city from scratch I wouldn't model it after Toronto.

As for this idea that at-grade rail transit is worthless and not acceptable, but at-grade bus transit is okay? Seems like double standard to me. But fine, let's get rid of all at-grade rail. Get rid of the TTC streetcars which carry 280k riders per weekday. Get rid of all the GO Trains. They are worthless! They are destroying Toronto's urban fabric!

Busses can go around obstacles, streetcars can't.

Streetcars have benefits over busses, but it has nothing to do with mobility.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Busses can go around obstacles, streetcars can't.

In a suburban setting for sure, but in that case you generally have an ROW wide enough to accommodate dedicated lanes if you want to go that route. In practice on dense city streets buses end up pretty constrained. They have a bit more flexibility when accidents occur but the idea they are weaving in and out of traffic while streetcars are held up usually falls flat. Refer above to the speed stats in Toronto for streetcars vs. buses. Generally speaking, service will be slow in mixed traffic regardless.

Also you keep talking about Europe like they only have LRT on dedicated lanes. There are MANY western (and more eastern) European cities that have street running trams. The difference is that the new systems they are building are almost always in dedicated lanes / ROWs. Similarly, any potential new streetcar project in Toronto would use a dedicated ROW if at all possible. Recently this was done when St. Clair was converted, the Cherry st extension was constructed, and will likely plan for the Waterfront LRT(s).

[ChargerCarl]

If you're at the point where you can't increase bus frequency to satisfy demand then its time to start thinking about grade separated rail.

I'm not saying Toronto's streetcars are a failure, but they are an outdated technology in the sense that I wouldn't recommend any city to build something similar. But they're fine as legacies since they're already there.

[pdxtex]

here's perhaps an unpopular opinion....cities should not provide comprehensive housing for its homeless citizens....homelessness is clearly a hotbutton issue but not all people without a home are created equal. some are victim of bad circumstance, some travel and seek work (hobos), some travel and avoid work (tramps) and some just live on the streets and drink (bums). i think a city should act more like a utility, overseeing basic city services like roads, fire and police protection and schooling. transients are well, transient, who knows where they come from. they estimate 2/3 of portland homeless are in fact oregonians or locals but in state full of transplants, who knows.

i dont think a city has an obligation to provide housing and rehabilitative services to every person who crosses over the city line. their focus and efforts should prioritize taxpayers first, transients second. some kind of transitional housing for families and new immigrants seems ok, but not some kind of over reaching urban housing network. perhaps rental vouchers or something like that. who knows, maybe even bring back county work farms. we will house you and feed your for your labor. even thru the worst of the recession, portlands street remained pretty constant. our last mayor, with his limited foresight decided to hop on board the west coast "housing emergency" which has tried to recognize and deal with rising housing costs. at the same time, they have mistaken their street populations for victims of their "emergency" and for some time lifted the street camping ban in the city of portland. well, that basically was the equivalent of throwing a gas can on the fire. porltand doesn't have a "homeless" problem, we have a street junkie problem.

allowing them to camp, didnt provide people with a safe place to live, it provided junkies a covert place to shoot up. our current mayor recognizes this was a mistake and is doing his best to reinstate the ban. but over reaching charity from out of state, suburban church groups is misguided and definitely abused on the receiving end. I have lived in downtown and central pdx for 20 years and this is worst ive ever seen it. i dont have a viable solution except for my even more unpopular opinion, more police to enforce laws we already had on the books. but the situation is analgous to the stray cat. feed too many of them and they ALL show up at your door....

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

While Toronto is better than most NA cities, it's transit mode share is much lower than comparable cities in Europe and Asia.

If I was building a city from scratch I wouldn't model it after Toronto.

Toronto has very high ridership for North American standards, but I think few would say it's because the transit system is so robust. It's more because the metro has specific conditions that encourage high ridership.

It's a very expensive metro, with extreme housing costs, encouraging less auto ownership and greater commuting distances, it's an immigrant metro, and immigrants are much more likely to take transit, and there's really no metropolitan freeway network, so commuter mobility is heavily reliant on transit.

And Canadian cities, all things equal, will have higher transit than U.S. cities. They have regional planning, focus on multifamily housing, rural development restrictions and the like. And no real cultural issues around who takes transit.

[Doady]

Canadian cities are mostly post-war like US cities, but with higher transit ridership, despite being much smaller, having less dedicated transit infrastructure, and less subsidies for transit operations than US cities. If US cities can't learn anything of Canadian cities, they won't learn anything from European cities either. Cities of the US are not in position to look down upon Canada, especially not Toronto.