Streetcars belong. Even on the street
Much like any group, passenger rail advocates split into subsections or specialties of interest or belief, such as high speed rail, Amtrak, regional/commuter, rapid transit, LRTai??i??and streetcars.
Railway Age http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/doug-bowen/streetcars-belong-even-on-the-street.html
Add to that the human element of being interested primarily in one’s home turf first (you can get yours later, thank you very much), and the disparate viewpoints multiply.
Still, I was slightly taken aback this week during an ongoing e-debate over the proposed MTA New York City Transit No. 7 line into New Jerseyai??i??New Yorkers largely despise the idea; New Jerseyans like it; who’s paying?ai??i??when the conversation veered into streetcars and their worth, and, apparently, their place: Not on the street.
One advocate, someone I know and trust on many matters, flatly insisted that all passenger rail needs to be grade-separated, all the time, no matter what (including no matter what the cost? He didn’t say). “Careful on streetcars, Doug,” he admonished. “The logical extension of what you’re suggesting is that NYC would be a thriving metropolis it is if the ‘subways’ were all at grade level.”
I’m not aware of that logical extension at all, let alone my advocacy of it. As noted earlier, I ride the subways, mostly in New Yorkai??i??a lot. New York couldn’t function as it does without the subways, no doubt. But it wouldn’t hurt some of the streets of New York, or anywhere else, if some streetcars were added to the mix. (Or, as another advocate asserted, returned to that mix; they did exist once.)
For argument’s sake, let’s buy into the very reasonable assertion, made by rail activists and anti-rail voices alike, that the world isn’t New York, nor should it be. I’m good with that. By extension, it means among other things that most of the world’s municipalities don’t have subways, nor (perhaps) should they automatically have same. I’m still with that.
But most of those places, certainly most in North America, do have streets. Some of these places are wisely restoring “streetcars” on some of those thoroughfares, and the inveterate holdouts (San Francisco, New Orleans) are expanding what they never surrendered. Yes, yes, the latter is blessed with that nice center median along Canal Street, but all in all those streetcars can be found (yea, verily!) on the street. (And, per photo at left, for New Orleans even in the snow!)
As my fellow blogger Lyndon Henry notes, safety becomes a valid issue, and far be it for me to excuse streetcars from that issue. Still, why do streetcars in particular (and all rail, freight and passenger, in general) carry the burden unduly? Don’t automobiles have a safety issue? They sure should, given their better-but-still-lethal daily tally. The presumption today, however, is that streets are for cars first and foremost. No bicycles and, oh my gosh, no streetcars, please.
Buses, backed by 60-plus years of U.S. “give the poor suckers something” philosophy, get a bye, however, and backers of more buses (including Bus Rapid Transit) love pointing out to me that buses can circumvent auto obstacles on the streetai??i??no exceptions. They sure don’t live in my hometown, where double-parked cars on both sides of the main street can do a great job obstructing buses. Cars parked in the bus stops also force those magic buses to load and unload passengers in mid-streetai??i??more obstruction, more delays. But streetcarsai??i??they’re supposedly too inflexible for today’s motor madness, yessir.
I don’t buy it, and, fortunately, neither do some dedicated citizens across the continent, be they in Atlanta, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, or Seattle (photo above right). Like me, they believe streetcars are aptly named, and one of their places is on the avenue. Expect that reality to occur more often in the decade ahead.
