Surface Rail on city Streets is so stupid

[red-beard]

What is the point of Light Rail on surface city streets?

Is it cheaper than a bus? No.

Is it flexible? No.

Do accidents occur between trains and surface vehicles? Yes

God this is the stupidest type of local transportation ever!

Dump Truck Driver Vanishes After Crash That Derailed Light Rail Car - Houston News Story - KPRC Houston

[jyl]

I don't know if you ride either one regularly? Streetcars are a lot nicer than buses. They are roomy, have low floors, usually have wide doors, and are very smooth and silent, modern ones are anyway. Buses lurch and bump, not surprising as they're not running on rails, and are noisier. The rider's experience is nicer on a streetcar, and as a result they have higher ridership.

Streetcar routes are permanent, which means that they can attract development. Bus lines don't.

Streetcars tend to have more reliable schedules. I am not sure why. When I go from my office to my doctor's appt, I take the streetcar because I know when it will be at such and such stop. The buses don't hold to their schedule. Again, I don't know why this is. Maybe the streetcar gets traffic signal priority or something.

Streetcars are expensive. $25MM per mile for our system in Portland. But they do last more or less forever. Buses are not all that cheap. A long (60 foot) articulated bus costs like $700,000.

I think that in a dense urban area, with short distances and high ridership, streetcars are great. I like riding the Portland ones. Once you need to cover a longer distance, buses make more sense.

Then there are longer-distance light rail systems that run on surface streets for part of the way. Our MAX does that. I think that is a seriously compromised arrangement. The trains cannot be very long, and fare collection is difficult. I prefer light rail that runs on dedicated track, like the NYC subway, London Underground, Paris Metro, SF Bay BART.

[slodave]

They seem to work well in Europe. James, you should know that.

[Kraftwerk]

Forty years after tearing the street car tracks up in order to use buses, Geneva, Switzerland has now replaced their tram lines at great expense. The main reason is energy: move more mass with less friction. Electricity instead of oil. They are nicer to ride and have less stigma than the bus.
Actually if people respect them ie. stay the heck out of the way, they out perform any mass transit in every respect.

Sorry to hear about the dump truck driver though.

[HardDrive]

Peace off.

We have light rail in Seattle, in 2 formats, and I would love to support more. In high density costal areas, its a good match. In Houston....perhaps not.

[jyl]

I think you need to be able to walk from the streetcar stop to your destination, comfortably and in a reasonable time. In Houston, a sprawling city with a climate that is nigh unlivable, that seems tough. But there were 100 passengers on that light rail car, which rather surprises me.

[red-beard]

So, the cost to install is approximately 10 times as much as adding a bus route. Are you willing to pay 10 times as much in train fare as bus fare?

[VaSteve]

I read that GM paid cities to rip up their streetcar lines by giving them free bussess.....get ya hooked on something. Pendulum swings back.

[red-beard]

If that happened, probably, it was 60 years ago. The issue here is Houston installed an extremely expensive light rail track. It is One street. That is it. We're not a long narrow city where everything is walking distance to a rail stop.

If someone had said to convert the old Katy (KT - Kansas and Topeka) rail line from Katy Texas to downtown, running along the I-10 Freeway, with parking lots nearby, I'd think it was a great idea. Do the same type of development along the major freeways, fantastic.

But this is a converted bus route and all of about 4 miles long. It is taking up 1/2 of a road and it interferes with traffic. Nothing significant has developed along the line, since it goes through a really crummy part of town, once it is outside the end points (downtown Houston and the Medical Center). These accidents happen every few weeks here.

[VaSteve]

Red-beard, I'm in downtown Houston "frequently" and they were telling me about this, it does sound a little odd.

[AFC-911]

Houston has some of the stupidest drivers.

It seems those rail/car accidents happen fairly often in Houston. At least it appeared to when my brother used to live there.

Don't blame the rail, blame the drivers who weren't paying attention. It's not like those surface train cars are unpredictable.

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by VaSteve

Red-beard, I'm in downtown Houston "frequently" and they were telling me about this, it does sound a little odd.

If you're in Houston "Frequently" why hasn't a meet been setup?

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by AFC-911

Houston has some of the stupidest drivers.

It seems those rail/car accidents happen fairly often in Houston. At least it appeared to when my brother used to live there.

Don't blame the rail, blame the drivers who weren't paying attention. It's not like those surface train cars are unpredictable.

It is stupid to have surface rail. If it was elevated, I could understand both the cost and the convenience.

[VaSteve]

Quote de VaSteve

Red-beard, I'm in downtown Houston "frequently" and they were telling me about this, it does sound a little odd.

If you're in Houston "Frequently" why hasn't a meet been setup?

There was about 3 weeks ago. You were out of town, IIRC. I'll be back the begining of december, maybe before.

[Tervuren]

Originally Posted by jyl

I think you need to be able to walk from the streetcar stop to your destination, comfortably and in a reasonable time. In Houston, a sprawling city with a climate that is nigh unlivable, that seems tough. But there were 100 passengers on that light rail car, which rather surprises me.

We have a light rail here in Charlotte, if I am going to any major event down town, I will park at the light rail, and ride it into town. Saves a ton of time compared to finding parking, and dealing with traffic.

[sammyg2]

Los Angeles used to have the most extensive light rail system in the world.
They tore it all out and threw it away because it was so expensive to operate and maintain vs benefit.

Some day we'll have to learn that same lesson again.

At its peak, the Pacific Electric Railway was huge: 1,150 miles of track covering four counties and 900 cars. 1944 marked the highest ridership: over 109 million passengers.

http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/redcars/redcar_map.jpeg

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by VaSteve

I read that GM paid cities to rip up their streetcar lines by giving them free bussess.....get ya hooked on something. Pendulum swings back.

Originally Posted by red-beard

If that happened, probably, it was 60 years ago. The issue here is Houston installed an extremely expensive light rail track. It is One street. That is it. We're not a long narrow city where everything is walking distance to a rail stop.

If someone had said to convert the old Katy (KT - Kansas and Topeka) rail line from Katy Texas to downtown, running along the I-10 Freeway, with parking lots nearby, I'd think it was a great idea. Do the same type of development along the major freeways, fantastic.

But this is a converted bus route and all of about 4 miles long. It is taking up 1/2 of a road and it interferes with traffic. Nothing significant has developed along the line, since it goes through a really crummy part of town, once it is outside the end points (downtown Houston and the Medical Center). These accidents happen every few weeks here.

Grew up riding them in Germany.

Love street cars.

If the drivers in Houston are anything like in Dallas they should never have been issued licenses. Given the choice I'd rather drive around S. FL during the height of snowbird season.

The GM/rail issue was documented. Catch the film "Taken for a Ride", New Day Films: Taken for a Ride

In a nutshell GM, Standard Oil and Firestone got together and formed a separate company to buy up existing commuter rail lines and replace them with bus lines. People hated the buses. They then launched a marketing campaign promoting automobiles as the way of the future. The end game was to sell more cars which used petroleum and required tires.

It's all a matter of public record.

A classic example of what happens when businesses go unregulated and place corporate greed before public interests.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Grew up riding them in Germany.

Love street cars.

If the drivers in Houston are anything like in Dallas they should never have been issued licenses. Given the choice I'd rather drive around S. FL during the height of snowbird season.

The GM/rail issue was documented. Catch the film "Taken for a Ride", New Day Films: Taken for a Ride

In a nutshell GM, Standard Oil and Firestone got together and formed a separate company to buy up existing commuter rail lines and replace them with bus lines. People hated the buses. They then launched a marketing campaign promoting automobiles as the way of the future. The end game was to sell more cars which used petroleum and required tires.

It's all a matter of public record.

A classic example of what happens when businesses go unregulated and place corporate greed before public interests.

Oh hogwash. That is well OPINIONATED, not well documented. Slanted and innacurate.
Jim Klein is about as unbiased as Michael Moore.

Sloan and others recognized that the streecar system was inefficient and a huge waste of public money.
They saw an opportunity to offer the public something better and make money doing it, and they did. We used to call that THE AMERICAN DREAM but it somehow became evil to some "folks" along the way , but that leads to another documentary made by Jim Klein: 'SEEING RED", a sympathetic look at lives of American communists and their struggles to fight against capitalism.

You make is sound like Sloan took away something good and replaced it with something bad and it was not in the public's best interest. that simply is not true.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Oh hogwash. That is well OPINIONATED, not well documented. Slanted and innacurate.
Jim Klein is about as unbiased as Michael Moore.

Sloan and others recognized that the streecar system was inefficient and a huge waste of public money.
They saw an opportunity to offer the public something better and make money doing it, and they did. We used to call that THE AMERICAN DREAM but it somehow became evil to some "folks" along the way , but that leads to another documentary made by Jim Klein: 'SEEING RED", a sympathetic look at lives of American communists and their struggles to fight against capitalism.

You make is sound like Sloan took away something good and replaced it with something bad and it was not in the public's best interest. that simply is not true.

On April 9, 1947, nine corporations and seven individuals (constituting officers and directors of certain of the corporate defendants) were indicted in the Federal District Court of Southern California on counts of 'conspiring to acquire control of a number of transit companies, forming a transportation monopoly" and "Conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines".[n 8]
The initial court case was in the Federal District Court of Southern California. In 1948, the venue was changed to the Federal District Court in Northern Illinois following an appeal to the United States Supreme Court (in United States v. National City Lines Inc.)[7] who felt that there was evidence of conspiracy to monopolize the supply of buses and supplies.[n 9]


In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, General Motors and Mack Trucks were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by National City Lines and other companies; they were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the ownership of these companies. The verdicts were upheld on appeal in 1951.[n 9] The corporations involved were fined only $5000. In addition, the jury convicted H.C. Grossman, who was then treasurer of General Motors. Grossman had played a key role in the motorization campaigns and had served as a director of PCL when that company undertook the dismantlement of the $100 million Pacific Electric system. The court fined Grossman the magnanimous sum of $1.[

[Tobra]

They built the same crap here. Very expensive, has done nothing to reduce traffic congestion because it is very lightly used, even by state workers that it was designed for. Light rail stations are havens for drug dealing and other crimes.

When I lived in SF, if the electric bus went by you never knew it. If the streetcar went by, you thought it was an earthquake.

Rail works well in small, high population density areas, like in European cities. Not so much in American cities. It looks like they may come to their senses and cancel the stupid high speed rail boondoggle here in Cali because the money is not there to build it and the more you consider it, the more you realize it is a horrible idea that will not work.