1. An excellent Wikipedia article about the old DC streetcars. I wish there were more economics, and I’d also like to know about the state-mandated consolidation that they talk about in the mid-1890s. Also note that streetcar use reached its peak in the mid 1910s – when people talk about interstate highways and the Great American Streetcar Conspiracy, they’re starting the story decades too late.
2. A dissenting (heh) view of Ed Glaeser’s book. My criticism of Glaeser would be that sometimes he starts speaking very generally and starts sounding a little whacky (which I think is what the reviewer here is picking up on). Perhaps his work wouldn’t be so popular if not for this tendency to paint in broad strokes, but I would like to see more specific analysis of land use laws and how Glaeser would like to change them. I haven’t read the book, though – does it get more nuanced than the excerpt in the Atlantic?
3. Human Transit publishes a reader comment and gives some great analysis of transit agency’s staffing and frequency. Apparently labor is the biggest constraint on frequency outside of peak hours, but many systems have labor and safety regulations that force transit agencies to overstaff trains. The efforts of unions to keep the unnecessary second man on transit vehicles are almost a century old, despite massive advances in transportation technology that have long since obviated the need.
4. This is cool.
5. DC’s gas stations are not long for this world as the condo onslaught continues. Urban gas stations rarely seem to me to be efficient uses of space (the gas station on Houston Street in Manhattan is the prime example) – does anybody know how rigid the zoning guidelines they fall under generally are? Are they zoned only for gas stations, necessitating a lobbying effort to develop?
Yes. In fact, the reviewer you listed was only partially quoting Glaeser’s comment on the schools. He actually said that a movement to either the Right (by moving towards voucher schools) or to the Left (by re-distributing education funding so that schools get equal money) would be better than the system we have right now.
Moreover, I think the reviewer has a simplistic view on the role of government and private business. Glaeser goes to pains to point out how sometimes government is a very good idea (he describes how having a privatized water system left New York City in the lurch for decades), and other times it’s a problem.
1. Yes, the streetcar conspiracy narrative often starts too late, but that still doesn’t make it irrelevant. Most American cities could have followed the path of Toronto instead, which added subways to their streetcar network (San Francisco is one of only a few decent American examples of a city that kept substantial streetcar networks intact). Streetcars did indeed begin their decline well before their extinction, but they were still tremendous assets at the time of their dismantling.
5. I don’t believe zoning is different for gas stations in DC, but there are some environmental issues with developing those sites, mostly due to underground storage tanks. Nothing that can’t be overcome, but it is something that must be dealt with. A quick perusal of DC Property Quest shows many gas stations that I’m familiar with as C-2 zones.
I literally just finished reading Glaeser’s book about 10 minutes ago. There isn’t a whole lot there you won’t find in the Atlantic article. He talks about why cities are great, how they become great (using a number of cities as examples), and anti-urban policy bias. He also gets into some side issues such as how cities typically suffer from sub-par education systems and could stand to benefit from vouchers. I don’t disagree with him, but some of what he writes feels like a non-sequitur.
I don’t have a tremendous amount of experience with the Toronto streetcar system, but I have ridden it several times and my girlfriend is from Toronto. I think it’s pretty safe to say that the streetcars constitute minimal (if any) improvement over buses. Getting on and off a streetcar feels just like getting on and off a bus, except that you have to walk into the middle of the street to do it. Streetcars are not more comfortable than buses (although they lurch in different ways). From what she’s told me and people I’ve known who have commuted on them, it sounds like being stuck on a track is a serious inconvenience. For example, when it snows or a car gets in the way of the track, the entire line has to shut down because vehicles can’t drive around each other or be rerouted. This results in very severe bunching of vehicles on a daily basis. The routes are pretty much set in stone, meaning some are excessively long which exacerbates the bunching problem on those routes (although it makes for adorable blog posts like this one about the longest, the 501).
As far as I can tell, they do not contribute anything more than sentimental value to Torontonians’ commutes. I can’t think of a single practical advantage they have over buses. So based on that example, I’m not sure I agree that the original street cars had any value beyond what a fleet of buses would have.
John, where Toronto’s streetcars shine is where they’ve been given priority in the street. Spadina Avenue has a dedicated center transitway. The beauty of Toronto is that they have the option to do this for other streetcar lines as well, since they didn’t foolishly remove all of that infrastructure like so many other American cities.
When you think about it, the only streetcar lines in the US that survived did so because of those kinds of runningway improvements. Philly’s subway-surface lines operate as streetcars in West Philadelphia and then as a subway under Market Street. San Francisco’s Muni lines benefit from the Market Street subway, others (the J Church) remained in place because they used some private right of way that was too narrow for buses.
The larger point is this – American streetcar systems did indeed decline. The solution to that particular problem, however, was not to rip them out. It was to modify them to better fit with the times.
I agree that streetcars running in their own rights of way are an improvement over not running in their own right of way, but the point I was speaking to was why we got rid of the old streetcar infrastructure. From what I can tell from Toronto’s experience, that infrastructure is really not worth much if anything. Buses not running on tracks are, as far as I can tell, strictly better than streetcars running on tracks in a shared right of way. Building the Spadina sharrow involved ripping up the whole street (streetcar rails and all) and replacing it: it’s not like that was legacy infrastructure that was saved from some previous era. I don’t see any difference between that and building BRT from scratch, which a city could do whether or not they ripped up their legacy streetcar tracks.
There’s plenty of physical difference. Streetcars are higher capacity, they run on electricity and are cheaper to operate, plus they last much longer than your average bus. They are, in general, far more efficient than buses. Some of that is just physics, some is capacity, some is operational.
There’s plenty of physical difference. Streetcars are higher capacity, they run on electricity and are cheaper to operate, plus they last much longer than your average bus. They are, in general, far more efficient than buses. Some of that is just physics, some is capacity, some is operational.
This vehicle has very high capacity and runs on electricity: http://www.astronomy-pictures.net/telescopes/telescope-image-large/seattle-electric-trolley-bus-postcard-m-a-n-coach_370473530256.jpg
It is also a bus. As an added bonus, it can navigate around obstacles, increasing its reliability relative to rail streetcars.
As far as your vigorous assertions about how efficient they’re supposed to be, do you have any citations showing how much cheaper streetcars are to operate than electric trolleybuses (or even plain old diesel) in an apples-to-apples comparison? I have seen a lot of attempts to make this assertion, but they usually say some aspect of streetcars is better than buses. I’m not sure that if you added up the total cost to the transit agency of offering the same service using one or the other over a long-ish term that streetcars would be favored; in fact, my strong suspicion is that the opposite is true. Unfortunately the only study I can find on the matter is from the Cato institute (which of course I don’t trust in the least), but it creeps me out that we’re building all these streetcars without any cost-effectiveness studies backing them up (that I can find). In all seriousness, I’d love references.
I think people are enamored with streetcars because they’re romantic, sometimes they’re named desire, yadda yadda. Which is fine. But as far as I can tell, they don’t make an improvement from a practical point of view over buses, and people that have to put up with riding them every day (as far as I’ve seen) do not seem to be so enamored with them.
Ooh actually I found this: https://pollutionfree.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/which-transit-option-is-optimal-streetcars-buses-or-light-rail which backs me up regarding trolleybuses. I have no idea how good the study was but I guess I’ll take what I can get.
Another update, it looks like that used total cost per trip, which doesn’t really make sense. This study though in that case must be ‘in practice’ costs, so it’s really not an apples-to-apples comparison. Anyway, he doesn’t add up the capital and operating numbers but they are:
Diesel buses: $1.92
Streetcar: $1.94
Trolleybus: $2.20
LRT: $2.95
BRT: $3.14
Skytrain: $5 (ouch)
…anyway I guess this means my streetcar resistance is overblown, although there’s also no evidence that they are “better.” It’s a shame though that this study is ‘in practice’ since there’s all sorts of ways in which existing streetcar routes are not comparable to existing bus routes. Also trolleybuses turn out to be losers, which surprises me, but again this measure is very biased since there are only a few trolleybus cities in America and they could be biased (for example, Seattle has them but it also has terrible transit ridersihp in general).
http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/09/16/StreetcarToBeDesired/
John, your numbers come from Patrick Condon, who’s explicitly not a transportation expert. He’s an urban studies person who is not in transportation, and who absolutely hates Skytrain for being faster than what he thinks any urban transportation should be. Whenever the issue is streetcars, he sounds like a Light Rail Now staffer; whenever the issue is Skytrain, he sounds like Wendell Cox, never mind that Skytrain’s construction costs are well below those of nearly any American light rail line.
Re DC gas stations… Sometimes you can get a two-fer: http://www.howderfamily.com/blog/church-gas-station-arlington/