Thanks to Portland’s reputation as a streetcar pioneer and a Congressional earmark made by a Eugene politician, a Lake Oswego company looks set to get federal funds to start manufacturing streetcars.
Boondoggle coming soon to a city near you.
Flickr photo by functoruser.
To get those funds, the company only had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying. This doesn’t count thousands of dollars in campaign contributions made by company officials to said Eugene congressman and other members of Congress.
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Portland streetcar under construction in the Czech Republic.
Flickr photo from Portland Transport.
Oh yes, the company had to go to the Czech Republic, where Portland’s existing streetcars were made, to steal the technology. (The company that made Portland’s streetcars refused to “sell its expertise,” so the company “struck a deal” with a Czech competitor.) The Czech manufacturer wanted to bid on the contract, but Defazio had inserted language making foreign companies ineligible.
For only $4 million, Oregon Iron Works (warning: inane audio intro) is going to build one streetcar prototype. Four million? That’s more than the cost of a light-rail vehicle (which can carry almost three times as many people) and about twice as much as Portland spent on the Czech cars. Granted, a prototype may cost more than copies, but why should taxpayers fund the prototype? Portland didn’t pay the Czech manufacturer $4 million for its prototype.
So some poor Czech workers are going to lose their jobs so an Oregon company get get a fat government contract, an Oregon politician can get fat campaign contributions, and Portland can pat itself on the back once more for being a transportation pioneer. Everybody wins — except the Czech’s and the U.S. taxpayers, and they don’t count.
In short, a bloated program just got more bloated. Representative DeFazio (the Eugene politician) predicts American cities will buy $1 billion worth of streetcars in the next twenty years. We antiplanners can only hope he is wrong and that the pork stops here.
Four million dollars is chump change compared to the cost of light rail systems.
The cost/effectiveness of streetcars is much better than light rail because the cost is much lower (provided the track is a short length) and the political benefits are nearly as great. The political benefits include:
1. a monument to politicians
2. good subject for postcards and pictures with tourists
3. another transport choice.
Of course it shares some of the main faults of light rail – it kills people, increases traffic congestion and hasn’t been economically competitive against buses since the 1930s so it is a very poor choice if your goal is to move people economically.
Tad Winiecki said:
Of course it shares some of the main faults of light rail – it kills people, increases traffic congestion and hasn’t been economically competitive against buses since the 1930s so it is a very poor choice if your goal is to move people economically.
JK:
Of course its real purpose is as an excuse to give incentives to land developers. For instance see “Portland Streetcar Development Oriented Transit” prepared by the city of Portland and the streetcar team: http://www.portlandstreetcar.org/pdf/development.pdf
Thanks
JK
Why streetcars? Why not electric powered busses? I wonder why something needs to run on rails for the transit lobby to consider it a valid form of mass transit.
Tad Winiecki said: “Four million dollars is chump change compared to the cost of light rail systems.”
Yes, but we are not talking about a streetcar system here. We are talking about one vehicle. A bus costs about $300,000. A light-rail car costs about $3 million. This is $4 million for one streetcar — a streetcar that we already know can be purchased from the Czech Republic for little more than $2 million.
As far as cost-effectiveness goes, light rail probably has streetcars beat because it carries more people more passenger miles at faster speeds and thus does a lot more work for its higher cost. Of course, buses can do better than either of them. Unfortunately, we don’t have good data on Portland’s streetcar system because the numbers reported by the FTA conflate streetcars and light rail.
For the record, electric-powered trolley buses tend to cost at least twice as much as a Diesel bus. The capital and maintenance costs of the infrastructure is also high. Today, only four U.S. cities have trolley buses: Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, and Dayton Ohio. Philadelphia, which pioneered trolley buses in 1923, took them out of service in 2003 but plans to start up trolley service again in 2008.
Randall, you are thinking about light rail and trolleys as transport. I am saying they are not economical transport compared to buses so I am comparing them on the basis of how well they satisfy the objectives of politicians as monuments, tourist attractions, and pacifying rail fans and environmentalists who want “transport choices”. The less spent on the system the more cost-effective it is. It is like if the more riders you have the more money you lose, the cheapest system with fewer riders is more cost-effective.
Also, short streetcar lines don’t need feeder buses like light rail systems.
Of course I am assuming that trolleys will sufficiently satisfy the objectives. Some people are never satisfied. They don’t want to stop building urban railways until the government is bankrupt and can’t afford firemen, police or schools.
Rail opponents always claim that buses are cheaper and more effective. Of course, some original data collection and research I’ve been involved in shows that rail attracts 35% to 43% more riders when other conditions are held equal, e.g., speed, frequency, etc. However, this proposition has never been tested directly “in the field”, if you will.
Here’s an experiment I’d like to see Portland try. Shut down the existing Portland Streetcar line for two weeks, and runs substitute buses on the same schedule, which ought to be easy for buses to keep with since the average Streetcar speed is only 7-8 mph. I’d even concede running the buses somewhat more frequently in order to provide the same overall capacity, seated and standing, as the current streetcar vehicles. Thus, instead of every 13 minutes, the buses would run every 8-9 minutes. Same fare rules would apply to the buses, e.g., free within Fareless Square. Most current Streetcar stops can readily be used by buses, and those that can’t can be served by temporary bus stops usually within a half block.
Under these circumstances, I seriously doubt that the substitute buses would achieve the reported Streetcar patronage. I’d bet substitute bus patronage would be at least 1/3 less than current Streetcar usage, and most likely 50% or less. Of course, if I’m proven correct in my assertions here, I doubt it would silence rail critics like Randal or Karlock.
msetty Of course, if I’m proven correct in my assertions here, I doubt it would silence rail critics like Randal or Karlock.
JK: Well there is that little matter of $1.67 per passenger-mile for the streetcar vs $0.34-$0.83 (lowest cost-average) for bus. For the math challenged that is about FIVE times the cost for a little more ridership.
The proper question is: If you are going to increase cost by a factor of FIVE, what is the best way to attract customers. Since we are giving away services anyway, why not give away enough goodies to the bus rider so that the total bus cost is the same as streetcar?.
The average trip is 3/4 mile so you can give away about $1.00 per boarding to attract riders:
1. Just pay people $1.00 to ride the bus.
2. Free drinks.
3. Lattee
4. Continental breakfast.
5. $1.00 vouchers to give to the street beggars.
How do you suppose the ridership would now compare?
Thanks
JK
Karlock:
As usual, you’re really quite confused about “transit math”.
If bus ridership is 1/3 less on the current Portland Streetcar route and average trip length is the same and bus capacity is increased to match that available via the streetcar, then cost per passenger mile is increased even more than the $1.67 you claim. Bus costs would be more like $1.90 per ride, or $2.50 per passenger mile. Bus costs per passenger mile are lower on other TriMet routes ONLY because average trip lengths are much longer than the Streetcar, which currently functions as a downtown shuttle serving short distance trips.
Given TriMet’s costs of nearly $100 per vehicle hour for buses, you’d have to carry 75-80 passengers per bus hour to get PER PASSENGER costs comparable to the streetcar. According to the 2005 NTD data, TriMet bus productivity averages in the neighborhood of 30 passengers per hour. I’m sure the best routes do better than this, but there are relatively few routes that carry more than 50 riders per hour, or anywhere less than $2.00 per trip.
It also appears you’re using last year’s data regarding the average trip length on the streetcar, BEFORE it was extended further. I don’t think this data has been reported yet.