San Francisco Bike Blog

We know GM got rid of the streetcars, and we know about white flight to the suburbs, but I wonder how much worse urban decay could have been made by the tearing out of all the streetcars. Reading phrases like this about streetcars and urban decay is pretty common:

The streetcar line was shut down in the 1950s, and Eckington suffered the sort of decline that afflicted many urban neighborhoods in the ensuing decades.

This is the first time I’ve actually thought, however, that removing the streetcars really hurt urban areas.

Meaning, we know that removing the streetcars helped make more room for cars, and forced more people into cars because nobody wanted to ride the bus (still true), so of course urban areas were hurt by this ‘motorization’ effect that destroyed the livability of cities and so obviously that hurt urban areas, but what if those urban areas still got to hold onto their streetcars? Could the presence of the streetcars — which seems to be somewhere in the ‘decent to good’ range to me — have ameliorated some of the ill effects of motorization in our cities?

Is there any evidence to suggest that the presence of streetcars - even in the face of anti-democratic, corporate hostility - helped prevent the worsening of urban decline in cities that held onto their streetcars? In theory, it should be possible to look into this, since some cities, like San Francisco, preserved some of their streetcar infrastructure — even if it was only token.

Up until now I had been buying into the notion that suburban sprawl was just something that just kind of happened - it was just kind of ‘inevitable’ because, we’re told, cars were so awesome and people loved to drive. We know that roads were so heavily subsidized that people might have been seen as almost crazy not to drive out to the suburbs to live — but now I’m starting to see a different picture. I think there might be more to the story.

The introduction of cars - a fundamentally anti-human, disconnective technology - into urban areas, would have had terrible effects on urban living by itself. But to make matters worse, one of the core connective technologies of urban areas - the streetcars - were ripped out. It was a double-whammy. And I think I remember reading that phrasing before, so it’s possible I’m just repeating what I’ve read somewhere else.

So, we are left with the possible corollary to the title of this post — Add Streetcars, Watch Revitalization?

Maybe Portland knew what they were doing?

…This was about as poorly written as anything I’ve posted on this blog - no small accomplishment! To sum up my point — Was the removal of the streetcars the cause of decaying downtowns and city neighborhoods? Or possibly even a cause?

Obviously, we might have a bit of trouble separating that out, but we have plenty of cities that did a range of different things - some had streetcars and kept them or some of them, some had no streetcars, and I’m curious if any city was able to add streetcars while GM was on its tear.

So says someone who is actually dependent on the bus — someone who has actually ridden the new Cleveland BRT:

Mr. Litt:

I do not agree with your glowing praise of the RTA HealthLine bus [corridor] (PD 11-09-08.) The bus shelters are too confusing. They have fare boxes that don’t work, or accept bus passes. So, riders don’t know where to stand on the platform, or which door to enter to get on the bus. And there is a large gap between the bus and platform, which is dangerous and could cause severe injury if a passenger slips and their leg is caught in this 24 inch deep opening.

The new shelters only have 3 seats — metal seats that freeze in the winter, and are colder than traditional wood or plastic benches. So riders have to stand while waiting for the bus. Why? Every shelter along Euclid Avenue has only 2-3 seats for the many people who ride this route. Especially at rush hour, when 10-20 people board the bus, going home from work. Is this good customer service?

The HealthLine cost $200 million and runs every ten minutes, yet it is frequently standing room only. The first time I rode this bus, I expected to see a large roomy bus with many seats. But upon closer inspection, when I examined the bus and counted the seats, I discovered that the super size extra long HealthLine bus only has about 40 seats — less than half the seats of a traditional bus. And half of the seats are situated along the side of bus are on raised platforms, making it difficult for seniors and disabled to step onto the platform.

This platform also juts into the aisle making it a one aisle lane. To get off the bus, passengers have to squeeze past the standing passengers. Hey, this is just like the old No. 6 bus line, only even more crowded. Wow! What an improvement!

If you personally ever ride this bus, (and from your praise, it is evident that you have not had this thrilling experience yet), please take a tape measure with you and discover for yourself that each seat measures only 18″ across.

Does this seem like a comfortable size seat for anyone over the age of five? And since the seats are side by side, passengers have to sit thigh to thigh. Why is that? Imagine how exciting this will be in the summer time when the weather is 98 degrees and everyone is wearing shorts!

This first time I rode this bus, I did not know which shelter went eastbound and which went westbound. There were no signs. So I watched as the bus passed me by, and I had to walk two blocks to the next stop.

I have ridden the Healthline only 3 times, because I had appointments that were past the Trolley route. I dread taking the HealthLine bus, and try to take the Trolley whenever possible.

I give you permission to publish this letter.

Jeanne Coppola

[The bold is mine.]

The only people who like BRT are the people who are not dependent on transit, do not have to ride the bus, have not ridden the bus, and are not overly enamored of the thought of providing dignified transportation to working-class people.

It also goes to show the wide reality divide between those in the press and everyone else. BRT cheerleading from BRT proponents like Streetsblog and Streetfilms does not leave one hopeful for a better ‘new’ media.

Norfolk is looking at selling the naming rights to their light rail line (LRT) - the train, the stations, the parking, the whole enchilada - or possibly just parts of it. They’re saying that can get $29 Million ‘over about 20 to 30 years’ - whatever that means. The article also states that the Cleveland Healthline BRT is getting $11 Million over 10 years. In each case, that would work out to about a million dollars a year. This struck me as very odd because, as you know, I think LRT is almost a decent way to travel and I think BRT is the pits.

A million dollars a year to put your name on a few buses? I’m not buyin’ it. Especially hospitals — is there any business that is less suited to sponsoring buses than a hospital?

Turns out, the numbers get confusing. When the Norfolk LRT line is finished, it’ll stretch about 7 miles - similar to the BRT line in Cleveland, so no major discrepancy there.

This summer, Streetsblog echoed a report which talked about the $12 million price tag for the Cleveland BRT naming rights ($12 million, $11 million, close enough). I was pretty sure, though, that I’d read about naming rights for the BRT being priced around half that - and that’s what this Michigan-based newspaper blog post from November says - $6 million over 25 years. An older Cleveland.com blog post (from February 2008), echoes the ‘$6 million, 25 years’ numbers. And and RTA Press release confirms the lower numbers (pdf).

If the $6 million/25 years numbers are true, that would represent about a quarter of the value of the $11 million/10 years numbers - down from about a million a year to about $250,000. Still, I think those hospitals got sold a bill of goods, too — they overpaid by about 90%. In fact, I expect there’s a clause in the contract that allows the hospitals to terminate that contract if and when the BRT really starts falling down. And since we haven’t heard about the tainted concrete, yet, I imagine that means it is tainted — the mayor probably fought for a delay in the test results and is now ready to perform damage control. This is just speculation, of course - hopefully we’ll know more soon.

End of the day, it could be that nothing has been reported incorrectly at all - though this does seem a bit unlikely. These deals are set up with a lot of incentives, so those initial deal numbers could be based on all sorts of things which might try to guesstimate the relative success or failure of the line, and that would include how the overall economy is doing, how the local Cleveland economy is doing, etc.

Any deal as long as 30 years, however, as is the case with Norfolk, should pretty much be rejected out of hand by taxpayers. There’s no rational basis for politicians and corporations to come up with that lengthy a contract term — except deceit.

Side note - the projected cost of the Norfolk light rail is about $290 million - it’s probably safe to add another 20% to get a real estimate of the cost - that gets us up to about $350 million. The Cleveland BRT was $200 million, and as far as I can tell, it came in on budget (Though, I’ll admit that it just seems odd that that figure seems to have been set and never once budged. It’s just odd, that’s all I’m saying.) So, if you’re in Cleveland right now, are you having second thoughts about your fancy new BRT? $150 million difference - that’s a lot of money - but there it is. You bet the future of your city on a bus — do you want a do-over?

Places like New York City and San Francisco can succeed in spite of BRT — we already have decent rail infrastructure, relatively-speaking. Here in San Francisco, our BRT projects are throwaways - nobody cares about Geary and Van Ness - they’re traffic sewers and they’re going to remain traffic sewers - we don’t need any new development or ‘TOD’ to justify spending infrastructure money — the ridership is already there. People will realize what happened after they see these gargantuan buses running up and down the street, and some will be angry, but they’ll get over it. Hopefully we’ll get a couple of bike lanes painted on the street, so those who are truly fed up can hop on their bikes. Our kids will figure out the rest.

But Cleveland is…Cleveland. Cleveland has the Browns. Cleveland can’t rely on Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge — they have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the worst weather of any city in the Milky Way. Cleveland planners just took their most important corridor and converted into a busway. I don’t know if BRT can single-handedly kill a city, but with Cleveland as our BRT guinea pig, we might get to find out.

I’m surprised to hear that SamTrans is not on-board Google Transit, yet — they hosted the last TransitCamp in their offices in San Mateo. [Which makes me think, it's almost time for another, ain't it?] I emailed their customer service to try to get the scoop.

Anyhow, while looking around for info on SamTrans and Google Transit, I stumbled upon this page, which details a SamTrans Citizens Advisory Committee’s (CAC) meeting agenda from sometime in 2007. The first item on the agenda is ‘Pledge of Allegiance’.

Whether you choose to call yourself an ultranationalist or a patriot or whatever else, I don’t really care, but this definitely did strike me as a bit odd. If it was a ‘Pledge of Allegiance to Transit’ or something I could understand reciting some words about how much you loved streetcars or something at the beginning of each meeting, but I don’t suspect that’s what the pledge is about. Us bikers have one, why not transiters?

And that is your useless factoid of the day.

Caltrain is already used by folks to commit suicide, as are other passenger rail systems throughout the U.S. and the world. Outside of friends and family, people say that the trains’ drivers often get the worst of the emotional aftermath — they are ‘behind the wheel’ when they see someone step onto the tracks, and then it goes from there.

I’ve been thinking about making cars and trains more pedestrian-friendly, and maybe that could include making trains more ’suicide proof.’ You increase pedestrian safety, deter suicides, and that has the side effect of improving transit service. I was thinking something like a cushion-type device on the front of the train could work - even as a small deterrent, which is sometimes all it takes - but then I remembered we’re introducing high speed rail, and it doesn’t seem likely that any amount of protections could prevent ’suicide by high speed rail’.

The whole problem of ’suicide by rail’ makes me think that motorized transport is just a bad idea altogether. I’m not trying to be a spoilsport, but I think it’s important to be able to look at dreadful problems like this that don’t seem to have readily-apparent solutions, and start re-asking some of those fundamental questions, like, what justifies the existence of these systems?

As a non-transportation example, I tend to think the same thing about war. If there are 18 veterans killing themselves every day in America as a result of PTSD from the Iraq War, then we might need to ask ourselves if going to war was the right answer. Similarly, we have to ask ourselves if building more and faster rail is the right thing to do with respect to our car problems.

I’m not trying to equate war with high speed rail — I’m just saying we need to not lose sight of the bigger picture - what do we want society to look like in 50, 100, 500 years? Yes, I think the same way about bridges and any other modern system we’ve created that could or does make it easier for us to devalue human life. Every time a Caltrain smashes another human body to bits, and the train stops for a while, and then just starts going again when things are cleaned up - we’re devaluing human life. Think of the automobile — recently folks have been talking about how declining driving has led to a corresponding decline in auto-related deaths. We all know, now, if we didn’t before, just how much we’ve devalued the lives of people who are killed by cars.

Really, the idea of being able to move your body faster than, say, the fastest human on earth (about 25 MPH), seems a bit unnatural to me - unless it’s human-powered transport, because then at least you have an appreciation for what’s going on around you — you’re probably directly responsible for it. When you think about how fast we can travel, you realize that it had a lot to do with why everything is so sprawled out. Even fast trains, like the Caltrain, allow people to commute umpteen miles to work or play or whatever. When you start walking and biking, your world shrinks drastically, which is great for reducing energy consumption. When you build high speed trains, your world expands drastically, which, presumably, would be great for expanding energy consumption.

We might need a rethink on speed. Maybe the Slow Bicycle Movement needs to spread to the transit and transportation areas?

Ciclovia -style events won a Streetsie Award this year - cool. I was really hoping BRT would come through, but it was not meant to be. Perhaps 2009?

There was a ‘Best Bus Project‘ winner, though. Sure, the category is a bit contrived, but as long as buses are still in use, we should definitely recognize projects that make ‘the bus experience’ slightly less horrific.

There was no ‘Best Rail Project’ category. Maybe I’ll suggest that for next year. Here is a list of categories from 2007 - I’m not sure if they all stayed the same year over year.

I like having all these things highlighted - props to Aaron and crew for that - good work.

I’d like to see the Streetsies grow into something bigger — maybe even offer small prizes or something - like a BRT ride or something.  ;)  These geek kids out in the Valley are always rewarding themselves with more awards — we might be able to take a couple of hints from them. It’d be cool to get the Streetsies their own website, etc. — like the Webby Awards.

I’d be interested in possibly shifting the Streetsies up a couple of months, or more?, to coincide with elections — that way we could really boost or shame the responsible parties.

About A Month In Iraq.

The Second Avenue subway (wiki) - it’ll be something close to a miracle if they ever complete it. It should help get rid of a bunch of East-West bus service in Manhattan, which warms my heart.

The New York City subway is pretty darn ugly, in my opinion, and it definitely does not do what any good transit system should do - move people and uplift their spirits (except for the express trains which at least are uplifting in that they’re kind of cool/terrifying) - but that thing does work. The subway is a big part of why New York has been able to ‘absorb’ all the new people and ridership. Adding the Second Avenue line will help to keep at least one American city competitive with the world’s other megacities.

This video just won a Streetsie 2008 Award. The bridge needs physically-separated bike lanes - cycle tracks. It’s a must. Cycling next to huge, speeding objects that can injure and kill you is not dignified — we cyclists (and pedestrians) deserve better. The idea is spreading — let’s do our best to get everyone on board.

Cruising through Wikipedia, I landed on the Human-Powered Transport page, and started seeing some cool pics:

[Image: Wikipedia / Ekimebam]

[Image: Wikipedia / Liftarn]

Some Toronto artists put together a nice bike car - the cops didn’t like it too much.

I’d like to start seeing more of these things around town — maybe starting with the different bike rental companies. At a minimum, they might serve to expand our imaginations about what is possible. We need more pedicabs, real bike infrastructure so pedicabs don’t have to run pedestrians over on the Embarcadero, etc.

I especially want to see more cargo bikes being used in American’s 2nd Densest City — good-looking cargo bikes like this, from La Petite Reine (English translation):

Hat tip, Springwise.

p.s. The New Amerstdam Project - the bike delivery business out of Boston/Cambridge - has changed its name to MetroPed - they’ve got a blog.

SFCitizen directs us to a ‘picture a day’ project, which just happened to take this cool snap before the official start of the project:

There’s an RSS feed for the project here.

[Image: Flickr / Dustin Diaz]

…Adding, it’s kind of a fantastic picture, too.