The Christian Science Monitor has another puff piece about streetcars and how Portland’s streetcar attracted “around $2.5 billion” worth of development. I don’t need to repeat again that this development was really attracted by other subsidies.
The article quotes Urban Land Institute researcher Robert Dunphy, who says that streetcars are not transportation but “amenities.” The article says that “most streetcars operating today — with the exception of those in larger cities such as Portland or San Francisco — fall into that category.”
But San Francisco doesn’t have any streetcars (unless you count cable cars, which are quite a different beast) and Portland’s streetcar is clearly an amenity. I suspect the writer is confusing streetcars and light rail. Another recent article about the wasteful San Jose BART extension confused light rail with commuter rail.
So I’ve put together this spotters’ guide to rail transit. You can also download this guide in PDF format. Many thanks to Benn Coifman for designing the delightful fonts that make this guide possible.
Vintage trolleys usually are designed to appear old fashioned and are mainly used as tourist attractions. They connect to the overhead wires with a single pole.
Modern streetcars are usually streamlined to look modern and most often run in streets as single cars that are powered by electricity, connecting to the overhead wires with a single pole or pantograph. Unlike the vintage trolleys, streetcars are supposed to mainly serve downtown residents and local shoppers.
To examine a lot more about an alternate treatment for pancreatic cancer, be sure to only deal with sellers who order cialis are delivering the real deal. Kamagra, a generic version of generic viagra pill respitecaresa.org is widely preferred than the genuine one. It is still prudent to take a quality probiotic supplement cialis canadian prices http://respitecaresa.org/event/554/turkey1/ that provides a diverse and broad spectrum bacterial count. Another interesting fact is that about 95% of the serotonin present in the body at any time is in the sexual health products such as levitra side effects, Cheap viagra, viagra prices etc. respitecaresa.org is an oral drug, which is under clinical trial and intends to cure diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.
Light rail may run in streets or on exclusive rights of way, often runs in trains of two or three cars, and is powered by electricity, connecting to the overhead wires with a pantograph. The “light” refers to the load capacity, not the weight of the cars or rail.
Heavy rail runs in subterranean or elevated lines, always on exclusive rights of way, in trains of four to eight or more cars, and is powered by electricity. The “heavy” refers to load capacity, not weight.
Commuter rail usually runs on existing or abandoned freight railroad tracks, which may cross streets or pedestrian paths. It is usually powered by Diesel locomotives pulling several passenger cars except in the New York-Connecticut areas where it is usually powered by electricity.
Before about 1990, the Federal Transit Administration and Census Bureau used the terms “streetcar,” “subway” (or elevated), and “railroad” to refer to these types of transit. But the light-rail industry decided that streetcar or trolley sounded too old fashioned, so purely as a marketing ploy they came up with the term light rail. That led the transit industry to describe subways and elevateds as heavy rail. No one really knew what “light” or “heavy” meant, but the truth is that all forms (except possibly streetcars) use about the same weight of rail, and light-rail vehicles are actually heavier than heavy-rail vehicles.
Since about 1990, the Federal Transit Administration has used the terms light rail, heavy rail, and commuter rail. However, it conflates vintage trolleys and modern streetcars with light rail. Another form of rail transit, people movers or automated guideways, is in use in many airports as well as Detroit and Miami. Outside of airports, these people movers have not proven successful, though they maintain many proponents.
“ I don’t need to repeat again that this development was really attracted by other subsidies.â€Â
Could you repeat it or show me where you’ve provided evidence for the claim. I don’t think you’ve provided enough evidence for this statement yet (at least from what I’ve seen). I’m not saying that this statement is false, I just haven’t seen data to support it. I’ll look around on your site some more. Of course you could help me out and point me in the right direction….
Could you repeat it or show me where you’ve provided evidence for the claim.
Here is a start. We are still gathering information to beef up the case:
http://www.DebunkingPortland.com/Transit/LightRailDevelopment.htm
Thanks
JK
One clue for spotting suspect arguments is when we find one 11-year old quote from a hearing, as opposed to a recent quote from the literature.
Of course each site varies, but such broad-brush claims on personal vanity advocacy websites are simply not true [#**] .
DS
**e.g. Since the opening of the BART system in 1973, population growth has grown faster in suburbs away from the BART stations than in those adjacent. Overall employment growth, however, has been higher around BART stations particularly in downtown San Francisco. The downtown BART stations of Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell, and Civic Center gained 28 million square feet in office space between 1973 – 1993, greater than all the other BART stations together. Cervero and Landis (1997) do not see the BART system as the decisive factor in influencing the above growth but as a vital ingredient to facilitate such growth. [pg 10]
I would love to see a listing of new projects that received a subsidy near a max line. Of course subsidies are given out to projects all over the city as well, so showing that as well I think would be important. Could be a difficult process…I don’t know, perhaps showing two areas that both received equal amounts of subsidies, one on rail, one off and see which area attracted more development. That could potentially do it for me if done well.
Providing quotes from other people seems problematic. I don’t even understand this one (from Jim’s page), seems fairly non-sensical to me (perhaps someone can explain it me?):
“during the 10 years MAX has been in existence, the City has seen no mixed-use developments adjacent to the light rail lines . Most of those that occurred were in the Central City, Lloyd Center and Gresham”
As I implied, pdxf, in my quote above, I suspect there may be either other types of development adjacent to light rail lines, or mixed-use developments may have occurred near light rail lines [making the assertion disingenuous].
DS
You write ” San Francisco doesn’t have any streetcars”
They actually do. It’s called the F-Line.
See
http://www.streetcar.org/
Rail opponents such as Randal also still regularly quote a nearly 20-year old report by Don Pickrell to support their claims of actual ridership coming in much lower than projections. However, the record since the early 1990’s most new rail lines have meet or exceed their original traffic projections. These include Salt Lake City, Denver, and Minneapolis, as well as the Portland Streetcar (3,500 daily riders original projection).
The original Pickrell study excluded the San Diego Trolley in the analysis, giving the extremely lame, fundamentally intellectually dishonest excluse that the Trolley didn’t not use any Federal funding–but it would have clearly put the lie to Pickrell’s exercise since by 1990 it had significantly exceeded its 1995 ridership projections.
Similarly, a number of the systems examined by Pickrell had exceeded their projections, albeit somewhat later than originally expected. Before recent extensions, the Sacramento LRT was carrying nearly 30,000 daily, versus the final EIR figure of 20,500.
The MAX Banfield line now carries about 50,000 passengers per day, including the Airport branch. Most of this is on the “main stem” original line, quite close to the original 42,500 per day projection. The major reason this wasn’t acheived until after 1998 is that MAX didn’t have enough rolling stock until then to carry the 42,500 per day figure. You might recall that with only 26 cars before 1998, the Banfield LRT was stretched to the limit–limited by the crowding acceptable to the transit-riding public. Of course this sort of factor is NEVER mentioned by Randal or the knee-jerk anti-railers like Karlock.
Similarly, the Los Angeles Blue Line LRT patronage soared above its previous fleet size limits when they extended platform lengths to three cars and added sufficient rolling stock, to around 80,000 riders per day (vs. the original year 2000 projection of 54,000 daily).
I’m also disappointed that Randal missed the fact that San Francisco indeed has streetcars in addition to its overpriced LRT system. See this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Market
The F Line is by far the most successful of the new generation of streetcar lines, followed by the Portland Streetcar, if ranked by ridership (e.g., 20,000+/day and 9,000+/day, respectively).
San Francisco does indeed have a streetcar (and I have ridden on it a few times). But in my spotter’s guide, it falls more under the heading of “vintage trolley” and not the downtown streetcar line that CSM was promoting. But that may merely be a quibble.
Yes, I cite Pickrell’s report. I also cite Dantata’s much more recent report that found that rail lines built since 1989 have had, on average, the same cost overruns that Pickrell found in lines before 1989.
Pickrell’s exclusion of the San Diego Trolley was not lame. For one thing, Pickrell works for the feds so it is appropriate to focus on federally funded projects. For another, Pickrell’s argument is that federal funding encourages waste. Since the original San Diego Trolley line was entirely locally funded, they had an incentive to minimize such waste. Later San Diego lines that received federal funded ended up costing much more and carry far fewer riders than the first line.
I will address the streetcar-did-not-generate-development issue in an upcoming post.