Charlie Hales is the Portland city commissioner who admitted that rail transit doesn’t lead to economic development, so he demanded that the city subsidize such development. Then, he persuaded the rest of the city council to build a streetcar line, subsidized development along that line, and proudly proclaimed that streetcars led to economic development. He spun that line into a high-paying job for a consulting firm convincing Atlanta, Cincinnati, and other cities to build streetcar lines, and is now back in Portland running for mayor.
In his campaign, he says, “streetcars carry more people than buses. Because you attract more riders who don’t ride transit now. And actually the operating costs are not any greater than the bus.” The Oregonian‘s PolitiFact column decided to check this out.
“On whether streetcars carry more people than buses, there is no ambiguity,” claims PolitiFact. “Streetcars have a maximum capacity of 92 riders, according to Fetsch. That’s nearly double the 51 or so riders who can fit on a single bus.” That’s dead wrong because, in addition to the capacity of individual vehicles, you have to consider frequency. For safety reasons, streetcars must be separated at least two or three minutes apart. Buses can run on downtown streets every 22 seconds. That means, even if a single bus has only half the capacity of the streetcar, a bus line has three more times the capacity of a streetcar line.
