‘It Still Feels Like A Bus’
In the previous post we pointed to a passage from Xing Columbus - a review of the Cleveland BRT and some random thoughts and a bit of a comparison to streetcars. In bashing bus service as ‘undignified,’ I often go to the ‘ride quality’ of buses — here is the relevant part of Xing Columbus’s review (my bold):
Rolling Stock
On the outside, Euclid Corridor Vehicles (they don’t like to call them buses) are sleek and futuristic looking, with doors on both sides like a train. It is probably the nicest non-electric bus I have ever ridden, but on the inside it still feels like a bus. The hybrid diesel-electric engine provides for a smoother ride than most buses, but the rubber tires still make the ride kind of bumpy compared to rail, even on brand new pavement. There is a docking arm on the bus that makes the steering wheel vibrate so the driver knows when the bus is in position, and the passengers can feel the vibration.
Modern streetcars, like those in Portland and Seattle, are very streamlined and spacious vehicles. My memory of the Portland Streetcar is a very smooth ride in high-capacity vehicles powered by the sweet hum of an electric motor. The streetcar beats even a fancy bus in comfort, and the drivers don’t need a docking arm in order to position it in the correct location relative to the curb.
What BRT proponents are saying is, in effect, “They do not deserve rail.”
To that I say, “Who is ‘they’?”
It turns out that ‘they’ is everyone who currently rides the bus, which they do out of necessity, of course, because they’re too broke to afford a car, and/or too scared (understandably so) to ride a bike. Even hippie types are forced to go out and buy Priuses and other garbage cars because taking the bus is just not something most people would consider - nor should they.
I think everyone deserves to travel with dignity - I don’t care how much money they have. Let’s quit making excuses and start laying some track. It’s not too late to turn around on this BRT sham.
One thing I don’t quite understand is this - if most major cities in America had extensive streetcar systems, with the requisite installed rail lines, of course - how did they afford it all back then, and why can’t we afford it today? Even adjusted for inflation, it seems like the numbers surrounding construction of a light rail line are astronomical. Are they, historically-speaking?
I know there were many private railcar companies competing with one another back in the day, and I’m guessing they each had to pay for laying their own tracks, and I know many of them made profits, so why can’t we do the same thing today? Public-private partnerships and all that? I mean, maps of the old railcar lines are ridiculous - in downtown, there was track on just about every single street. And guess what other street had a streetcar line on it?
That’s right - Geary - the street so many people want to keep humming with buses.
I walked Geary tonight to see what it was all about. Traffic. Sewer.
But it has potential. And that potential can be realized, but not by keeping it a traffic sewer. You have to install rails, put trains on that thing, take away some space from the cars, give some space to walkers and bikers — the usual — common sense-type stuff. If you add more and bigger and faster buses, Geary will remain a traffic sewer - it’s that simple.
Below is a snapshot of a small section of a downtown streetcar map from 1925 - the red lines mark streetcar lines (see closer-up versions of the entire map from Flickr/Dollar Bin):
There’s every reason in the world to believe we can build a streetcar network today that is better than any streetcar network that preceded it. But we have to want it. We can’t keep handing over the city to cars and buses.
p.s. These old streetcar maps are way too difficult to find. I believe that any of us folks who are bike- or transit-oriented have a duty to make these things more prominent somehow - maybe even get them on Google Maps - ideally with nicer map tiles that can show the lines more clearly, but even a straight-up ‘My Maps’ map will work to start. I wonder if TOW or TB have done this, and/or if other folks have taken up the cause for other cities…?? If people know that there used to be rail tracks all over the place, and nary a car to be found, it’ll make it that much easier for them to envision a future with a lot fewer cars in it.
[h/t STB]
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