Posted on 07/02/2015 12:01:45 AM PDT by Forgotten Amendments
Meet the Thighmaster of urban public policy: streetcars.
Municipal politicians across the country have convinced themselves that this costly, clunky hardware can revitalize their flabby downtown economies.
That includes the fearless leaders of America's capital city. The D.C. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade trying to erect a streetcar line in the up-and-coming neighborhood of H Street. The project has been an epic disaster, perfectly demonstrating how ill-suited streetcars are to modern urban life.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Please don't call them "RINO's"! They are socialists/facists. Which is what the GOP is. There is no room in the GOP for conservatives. There never was.
Monorail, monorail, monorail...
Well, that wind based power source is mellenia more mature.
In before the streetcar named desire reference.
;)
STELLA!!!
Reason is a bit short on facts from time to time, aren’t they.
The bus is as old as the streetcar, frankly, whether motorized, electrified or horse-drawn. What is wrong is how governments and their politicians of every level make both technologies (contemporaries of each other, remember) into political footballs over who can spend the most on them.
But Reason, if they so feel like it, can play the game with the politicians instead of telling it straight.
Use rail guns to send peeps where they want to go.
Busses are obviously more flexable wrt routes. A dedicated ROW could provide better throughput for the express routes.
Alas! When you began your sentence it was true, but by the time you had finished, it was not.
I saw a short clip of a street car that was driven by the riders. Seats arranged along the outsides pointing inwards. You sit down, hold onto a bar and pedal!
That’s what they should put in every urban city. But, you’d get some people saying it was racist because it is the modern day version of a slave ship with rowers.
Still, a neat idea. Get your exercise, or don’t. You have to realize some will fake it and just ride the pedals, and the tram will go much slower. It’s like that in real life, too. When too many don’t pedal (what we are approaching— or have now) then it sputters to a stop at the first incline.
A guy with a rhythm drum and a dude shouting “ramming speed!” as well.
I see hatred in your eyes, forty-one....
H Street was wrecked by the 1969 riots and left destitute by D.C.'s crash and burn of the 1970's. It is one of those puzzling but interesting areas that has resisted innumerable attempts at revival, for reasons that call for a modern Jane Jacobs to chronicle. It is now reviving, with Capitol Hill's gentrification to the south and the neighborhoods north of H flipping fast. H Street is becoming a playground for the current wave of gentrifiers, and is filling up with restaurants and nightspots. If I were 30 years younger, I'd probably be down there; as it is, 8th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue S.E. are a lot closer, and more sedate.
The streetcar was originally supposed to link the Minnesota Avenue metro station on the other side of the Anacostia River with Union Station, a major hub for metro, bus, and trains. There were conceptual notions of eventually building a much broader network as well, eventually creating a surface light rail network to complement (and fill some of the major gaps in) the below-ground metro system. To make this work, of course, the city would have to decisively privilege streetcars over automobiles, and that remains politically difficult. That said, if you have logged enough quality hours in D.C. congestion, you would be tempted to at least consider the idea.
The congestion is driving gentrification, as more and more people are weighing suburban square footage against brutal commutes, and choosing closer-in neighborhoods. Streetcars are attractive to the gentrification demographic. They are resisted by many of the people who are threatened by gentrification. (Reason, of course, was careful to seek a couple of these out, and to put a racial twist on the story.) Suburbanites are mixed; some of them, especially those who use the city for recreation, like the idea. Those who care nothing for the city outside of their own office building are likely to dislike streetcars as impediments to traffic.
Anyhow, the danged thing is built. It is a sunk cost. It's time to go operational. If the city needs to close a traffic lane on H Street to create the needed space, that's fine with me. The only people that will seriously inconvenience are PG county commuters using Benning Road, which connects to H at our infamous starburst intersection. Benning Road commuters can find another route, or take metro.
Lol.
Ben Hur, as redone on a pedal tram.
Two trims are especially significant. The project now does not connect at either end. To the west, it stops short of Union Station, and on the other side of the rail tracks coming in from the north, leaving a walk of several blocks to actually connect with another train. To the east, the streetcar line stops well short of the river. As a practical matter, at either end, you will wait for a bus.
What is left is a two mile tourist excursion shuttle up and down H Street. This amounts to deliberate sabotage. Taking a bus to take a streetcar to take another bus is dumb. This is not what was planned, but it is what happens when the city elects the wrong people, who don't quite have the guts to pull the plug on a project well along in implementation, but lack the will to complete it properly.
LOL Atlanta recently revived a streetcar that travels about a mile for a gazillion dollars. It then had no ridership so it was decided by the morons in Atlanta that it would be free until the end of this year. A local news report last night could hardly contain their excitement that ridership has been going up for the last month——well, duh!!! Interviews with the patrons asking if they would pay a buck to ride were, however, not as encouraging—probably not.
Why have vehicles that must have rails to run on within cities. Rubber tired vehicles do the same thing but can go on any road. I’m a believer in expanding bus services.
“The Secret Scam of Streetcars: How to Sell a 100-Year-Old Technology as the Future of Transportation”
While I do agree with the above, one must also look at non-rail intercity transportation 100 years ago...and if you did, you’d find that the country was LOADED with TOLL ROADS. In fact it wasn’t until 60 years ago that freeways even started being built.
So what does “Reason” magazine want? Why they want to FLOOD this country with TOLL ROADS, including the conversion of our now-free Interstates to TOLL ROADS (look up Robert Poole).
So please forgive me if I think they’re being a bit selective in their outrage here.
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