Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy
Why the devil do any of those cities need streetcars? There is nothing a streetcar could do that a bus couldn't but the bus would cost one-tenth the amount to implement.
If there is one thing that Canada can learn from the US on transit is that all these streetcar lines that have been constructed for the sole reason that "everyone else has one" is that they are money pits and have nothing to do with transit and everything to do with vanity and political ambitions. Nearly all the new streetcars have absolutely deplorable ridership and are universally panned as an obscene waste of limited transit funds.
Ridership on the new Seattle streetcar has collapsed and the new Atlanta one has such poor ridership they are thinking of closing it down. Downtown Kansas City's only attracts 3,000 passengers a day and it's free!
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Yeah, I agree with this post completely.
These downtown streetcars are basically total failures when it comes to transit investment: they're slow, they don't go anywhere, they cost an obscene amount to build and an obscene amount to operate. They also require an entirely separate division of managers, maintenance crew and operators that a small transit agency cannot rationally support.
US cities built them as a sop to the construction industry post-2008. Many of them were funded by TIGER grants. They also were meant to be downtown revitalization schemes, not actually to serve transportation needs.