Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
In Europe (and probably other parts of the world) streetcars and LRT are the same thing (trams) but I disagree that this is the case in NA. Well, any more than you'd say that both subway trains and commuter rail trains are all just trains because some places like Japan use the same rolling stock for both. In NA they are usually different and in NA, LRT and streetcars there are usually differences as well. What it comes down to is whether we're talking about the context of NA, the world, or some other region.
In NA, LRT tends to be what I'd call the "second wave" with fairly notable differences from the first wave. In the first wave streetcars tended to basically be city buses on rails, sometimes operating in dedicated lanes but often in mixed traffic. Compared to the second wave, they tended to have short stop spacing, low top speeds, and small vehicles size. While there were "interurban" routes with higher speeds and wider stop spacing, they still had smaller vehicles (generally single unit) and were a small proportion of the first wave routes. First wave streetcars mostly died out and were replaced with bus services but a few remained, the largest example being Toronto.
The second wave which we refer to as LRT did not trace its lineage directly from the first wave and instead was inspired by German Stadbahn systems as an alternative to much more expensive heavy rail metro construction which was being considered for the routes. While the first wave had its heyday pre-war and basically filled the niche that buses currently occupy, the second wave started decades after the war and filled a role that would otherwise be played by either metros or commuter rail. As a result, they had longer vehicles, generally with the ability to coupled into multiple unit consists, wider stop spacing, and higher top speeds. Some had short street-running sections for cost saving purposes, but most ran in their own ROWs, either on the surface with level crossings/signal priority or underground. The rolling stock also has higher stop speeds, generally from 80-100km/h for LRT (although Dallas is higher) while streetcar top speed typically being no more than 70km/h. Second wave includes Edmonton, Calgary, Portland, San Diego, SLC and several others. Technically these systems could also have been served by buses (such as with Ottawa) but in some of these it would be very difficult for buses to service the same function since the large LRT vehicles offer so much more capacity. You wouldn't be able to run enough buses while maintaining priority for all of them since if you have level crossings, cross traffic would essentially be permanently blocked at peak periods, and if you had full grade separation you would still have bus congestion in the city centre which was the case with Ottawa.
There has been a revival of first wave streetcars with examples in Portland, Seattle, and Atlanta, however, the first wave revival routes aren't quite the same as in the original first wave since they aren't just busy surface routes that happen to use that technology, but rather the technology was specifically chosen for its aesthetic and novelty appeal. There are also some systems that could be described as a type of third wave that have lower top speeds and shorter stop spacing than the second wave but are still less bus-like than the first wave with larger vehicles and greater grade separation. When comparing a third wave route like the u/c Finch or proposed Jane LRTs to the existing Spadina streetcar, the streetcar uses single 30m vehicles, has the short stop spacing of a standard local bus and is affected by the frequent stops at intersections. A second wave LRT in a dense urban environment would either be underground like in Edmonton or have a transit-dedicated corridor like in Calgary, with the most important difference being that it would only operate in such a setting for a short stretch (Portland). This would not be the full route.
Regardless, LRTs are not streetcars. In Europe, trams are all trams, but in NA, we don't have trams, we have streetcars and LRTs which has several differences. Obviously there are hybrid routes that share some features with first wave streetcars but there are also hybrid metros that share features with commuter rail (BART, DC), and LRTs that share features with metro (Seattle, Eglinton). But we don't say that metros, commuter rail, and LRTs are all the same thing and since LRTs are streetcars, therefore they're all streetcars. But you can definitely find systems that bridge the gap between each of these formats to allow it all to be viewed as a single spectrum.
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