Portland Streetcar Jumps the Tracks

A Portland streetcar went off the tracks last week, totaling three automobiles and injuring at least two people. When the streetcar came to a stop, it completely blocked Grand Avenue, one of Portland’s most important north-south streets, and it took authorities close to six hours to unblock it.

With their slower speeds, streetcars would seem to be less dangerous than light rail, which kills roughly 12 people per billion passenger miles, about twice as many as automobiles in urban areas and three times as many as buses. According to the Federal Transit Administration’s safety data, streetcars have killed an average of one person per year since 2011, but most of those have been in Philadelphia, which I consider to be more like light rail than streetcars.

But Portland’s 30-seat streetcars weigh about twice as much as a 40-seat bus, which makes them far more prone to damage other vehicles. According to one rather sarcastic series of articles, when new Portland’s streetcar killed a few people and the tracks are still fairly dangerous to cyclists.

Kamagra tablets are actually the product of Ajanta pharma is infused with superior composition which regulates the action and outcomes of various hormonal and best prices cialis enzymatic actions. Most of the doctors in the levitra generika http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/top-10-cutest-opossum-babies-youll-see-today/ UK and elsewhere. This medicine should not be used if you are allergic to Sildenafil or any of viagra online store its ingredients. With the advent of free viagra 100mg internet and by the storm it has taken the whole world, almost everything can be purchased online. The real question is: why do cities need expensive, overweight, 30-seat vehicles that can’t get out of their own way when buses can move more people safely for far less money? Portland’s streetcar actually carried a record number of riders in April. However — as the Portland Mercury points out — this is really a symptom of bad transportation planning. The streetcar, observes the paper, is the “least reliable, most expensive form of public transportation” in the city and is “not a feasible transportation option” for the vast majority of people.

“What population is Portland’s public transit catering to?” the paper asks. “Tourist and higher-income residents [or] lower-income carless Portlanders?” Of course, everyone knows what the answer is.

Drive safely this holiday and stay out the way of streetcars.

Tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

3 Responses to Portland Streetcar Jumps the Tracks

  1. LazyReader says:

    “dangerous than light rail, which kills roughly 12 people per billion passenger miles”
    Don’t take a page from Darrell Huff’s book “How to lie with statistics”
    The fact is the rail has few casualties because you have dozens of people in a slow moving sardine can. The people aboard have no control over. There’s something way more newsworthy. San Francisco; The BART board of directors rejected the proposed 5.5-mile , 2 Billion dollar extension of the Dublin-Pleasanton line into Livermore.

    Also, some opponents of the Livermore extension argue instead of spending so much money to expand BART, the agency should use the funds to improve capacity and efficiency.

    The Livermore extension is a boondoggle; selected because Livermore is home to Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Sandia National Lab annex with over 10,000 employes. The government already shuttles federal workers using buses; why spend billions on a suburban extension, apparently federal workers get preferential treatment so instead of inexpensive buses they’re entitled to fancier transportation at taxpayer expense. Besides being a waste of money, forgetting the fact BART has over 10 Billion dollar Backlog in long term maintenance. Combine a decline in ridership and fares. BART has a long list of things to do before ti’s up to speed. Possibly raising fares for maintenance bucks, Cracking down on turnstile jumpers. But the biggest thing BART needs to do is crack down on lewd disgusting behavior that deters riders in the first place.

  2. Most of the people killed by light-rail trains are not on board the trains. Compare light-rail fatalities with light-rail passenger miles and you will find about 12 fatalities per billion pm. BART, of course, is heavy rail, not light rail, and heavy rail tends to be about as safe as buses.

  3. the highwayman says:

    So did that DeLorean some how double in weight in BTTF3? :$

Leave a Reply