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  #1  
Old Posted Nov 11, 2023, 9:32 PM
DetroitMan DetroitMan is offline
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An east-west streetcar? Kansas City transit officials unveil proposal for 16 new stop

An east-west streetcar? Kansas City transit officials unveil proposal for 16 new stops



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On Thursday, they unveiled plans for 16 stops along 39th Street, Linwood Boulevard and Main Street. The route would connect Van Brunt Boulevard all the way to the University of Kansas Health System. The proposed stops are around a quarter to a half-mile apart and would connect with nearby public transit, similar to the Main Street streetcar route and bus lines. The proposed route was identified in the first phase of the East-West Transit Study, which involved public meetings, one-on-one meetings, micro meetings and digital engagements, project manager AJ Farris said during a meeting held over video conference. The results he received from the phase one survey suggested the streetcar is the preferred option, with 73% of surveyors wanting the streetcar instead of a bus line. In the same survey, 60% of people preferred the route to go through Linwood Boulevard instead of 31st Street. Alex Miller, a communications strategist at Parson + Associates, said “a little over 2,000 people” took the survey, and around 1,500 of those people took the survey online. He did not reveal the demographics of the participants in the survey. On Thursday, they unveiled plans for 16 stops along 39th Street, Linwood Boulevard and Main Street. The route would connect Van Brunt Boulevard all the way to the University of Kansas Health System. The proposed stops are around a quarter to a half-mile apart and would connect with nearby public transit, similar to the Main Street streetcar route and bus lines. The proposed route was identified in the first phase of the East-West Transit Study, which involved public meetings, one-on-one meetings, micro meetings and digital engagements, project manager AJ Farris said during a meeting held over video conference. The results he received from the phase one survey suggested the streetcar is the preferred option, with 73% of surveyors wanting the streetcar instead of a bus line. In the same survey, 60% of people preferred the route to go through Linwood Boulevard instead of 31st Street. Alex Miller, a communications strategist at Parson + Associates, said “a little over 2,000 people” took the survey, and around 1,500 of those people took the survey online. He did not reveal the demographics of the participants in the survey.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/loca...281689973.html
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  #2  
Old Posted Nov 12, 2023, 3:01 PM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is offline
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Unfortunately, it appears that boosters in KC are expecting a repeat of the success of the first streetcar segment, but I'm not seeing how that is going to happen with this proposal. The density isn't there in Westport and the only way to achieve it is by tearing down the very structures that make 39th attractive as-is and replacing them with monsters. There are more developable sites along Linwood, must nothing there of interest to someone who doesn't live there.

My guess is that most of the ridership of the existing KC streetcar line is coming from tourists, and that many of them are traveling very short distances (i.e. bar hopping). Tourists aren't going to be traveling between the Home Depot and hospital on this proposed line.
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Old Posted Nov 22, 2023, 4:35 PM
2000_Watts 2000_Watts is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
My guess is that most of the ridership of the existing KC streetcar line is coming from tourists, and that many of them are traveling very short distances (i.e. bar hopping). Tourists aren't going to be traveling between the Home Depot and hospital on this proposed line.
You're absoluely right. Tourists (or even most residents from the rest of the city) aren't going to ride the streetcar just to go to 31st & Van Brunt.

HOWEVER.... Just two (2) miles from the east end of this proposition is a massive, hulking, concrete fortress that seats 80,000 fans of one of American Football's most rabid, loyal, and supportive franchises and will host a World Cup match in 2026. For the moment, that 80,000 seat concrete fortress is accompanied by another 40.000 seat shrine that's used 90 days of the year for alleged Major League Baseball.

The fact that the City of Kansas City, RideKC, the KCStreetcar, the Feds, and whoever else is considering spending money to build this just to stop two miles short of the Truman Sports Complex is irresponsible, indefensible, and low-key moronic. The 8-12 home NFL games justify the added cost for the extra two miles alone. There's no point in pinching pennies just to be pound foolish.

It's almost as if the KCStreetcar is building a mass transit utility just to say they built it, rather than designing and building it to function for the practical and efficient mass transit of actual people
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  #4  
Old Posted Nov 22, 2023, 5:10 PM
lrt's friend lrt's friend is offline
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Too many American cities build toy streetcars that don't actually serve as real transit for the local population. Trains should offer 'mass' transportation where it is most likely to succeed. It should not be mainly for visitors to imply that transit is succeeding in the city when it is not.
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  #5  
Old Posted Nov 22, 2023, 7:07 PM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is offline
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Originally Posted by lrt's friend View Post
Too many American cities build toy streetcars that don't actually serve as real transit for the local population. Trains should offer 'mass' transportation where it is most likely to succeed. It should not be mainly for visitors to imply that transit is succeeding in the city when it is not.
Cincinnati's streetcar uses the same CAF Urbos 3 streetcars as Kansas City. In my opinion, they are the best-designed modern streetcars (at least until an Urbos 4 comes along). Similarly, much if not most of the ridership in Cincinnati comes from tourists.

The problem is that wasn't what was anticipated. It was designed to be used by existing and new residents. But almost all of the new infill is auto-oriented. Several new public underground garages have been built since the streetcar went in, and all of the new apartment buildings have their own garages. All of the new residents who can afford the high prices can also afford a car and are using their own cars or calling Uber to get around.

For new fixed rail projects to really work, they need to be paired with residential development that does not include parking. Even then, highly-paid residents are likely to keep using Uber.
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  #6  
Old Posted Nov 22, 2023, 10:24 PM
lrt's friend lrt's friend is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Cincinnati's streetcar uses the same CAF Urbos 3 streetcars as Kansas City. In my opinion, they are the best-designed modern streetcars (at least until an Urbos 4 comes along). Similarly, much if not most of the ridership in Cincinnati comes from tourists.

The problem is that wasn't what was anticipated. It was designed to be used by existing and new residents. But almost all of the new infill is auto-oriented. Several new public underground garages have been built since the streetcar went in, and all of the new apartment buildings have their own garages. All of the new residents who can afford the high prices can also afford a car and are using their own cars or calling Uber to get around.

For new fixed rail projects to really work, they need to be paired with residential development that does not include parking. Even then, highly-paid residents are likely to keep using Uber.
That will never work without a transit system that allows access to many parts of the city with good frequency. A two or three mile (slow) streetcar by itself will never allow people to live without a car.
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  #7  
Old Posted Nov 23, 2023, 2:43 AM
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Nouvellecosse Nouvellecosse is offline
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I'm not really clear on what problem the streetcar is intended to solve or what goal it's meant to achieve. A secondary link from within the cited source said that they're:

"evaluating an east-west, high-capacity transit connection between The University of Kansas Health System and a terminus on the east side of Kansas City, MO. The vision for the East-West Corridor is to create a fast, efficient, and attractive public transit service that aligns with existing Streetcar and MAX services."

With the mention of high capacity, does that mean that they need the upgrade to handle the ridership on an overly-busy existing service? And when they mention speed, does that mean this is the most practical way to reduce travel times? The links don't seem to have a clear answer other than that a survey showed people preferred the streetcar option over a BRT route but not why they're looking at such options to begin with. A survey is usually created to find the public's preferred way of solving a particular problem so it's strange that there isn't more info on that background.
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  #8  
Old Posted Nov 23, 2023, 11:25 AM
mrnyc mrnyc is offline
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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse View Post
I'm not really clear on what problem the streetcar is intended to solve or what goal it's meant to achieve. A secondary link from within the cited source said that they're:

"evaluating an east-west, high-capacity transit connection between The University of Kansas Health System and a terminus on the east side of Kansas City, MO. The vision for the East-West Corridor is to create a fast, efficient, and attractive public transit service that aligns with existing Streetcar and MAX services."

With the mention of high capacity, does that mean that they need the upgrade to handle the ridership on an overly-busy existing service? And when they mention speed, does that mean this is the most practical way to reduce travel times? The links don't seem to have a clear answer other than that a survey showed people preferred the streetcar option over a BRT route but not why they're looking at such options to begin with. A survey is usually created to find the public's preferred way of solving a particular problem so it's strange that there isn't more info on that background.
its funny as im down under in melbourne, which is probably the streetcar capital of the world. its still literally webbed with them. kinda fun to get a taste of anywhere large or small in america in like the 1930s. anyway, i find the streetcars are best when used for short distances around the city. they arent any better than a bus for longer distances, like across town. in fact just today i was on a long ride on a trolley that stopped halfway due to construction and we had to change to a bus the rest of the way. the bus picked up the route and it wasnt any different from the trolley. in fact the ride was smoother (this was the 19 sydney rd tram to the cbd from brunswick). so i dk, trolleys are fine, but almost on a par with regular busses. yes the dedicated lane sections where they exist help speed it up a bit of course, but brt can do that too. and for the future, electric busses are likely bumping trolleys back toward nostalgia again anyway.
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  #9  
Old Posted Nov 24, 2023, 2:29 AM
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^ Yeah that's how I tend to feel about it. Streetcars can be higher capacity than a bus since being on tracks makes it possible to get longer vehicles around turns. Which is especially important for narrower corridors which is how trams are often used in Europe. But in some of the newer systems in NA, they don't use streetcars that are much (or any) longer than an articulated bus nor are the streets particularly narrow. So it almost seems like some of them are just city beatification projects or something, not that different from say, nice landscaping. Which is fine if you have lots of money to spare because otherwise these are questionable uses of funds.
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  #10  
Old Posted Nov 27, 2023, 3:41 PM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is offline
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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse View Post

"evaluating an east-west, high-capacity transit connection between The University of Kansas Health System and a terminus on the east side of Kansas City, MO. The vision for the East-West Corridor is to create a fast, efficient, and attractive public transit service that aligns with existing Streetcar and MAX services."

With the mention of high capacity, does that mean that they need the upgrade to handle the ridership on an overly-busy existing service?

The problem is that the next-best route is probably in and close to Downtown KC and might even parallel the existing route, if only for a few blocks. Whenever a "phase 2" is funded publicly, there is pressure to build in an area that doesn't already have the service, even if the ROI is lower.

This is how we end up with systems that fan long distances in every direction (i.e. DART, Denver, etc.) yet get low ridership, when it's likely that the higher ROI and networking effect could be achieved by creating a second line that partly serves an area that already has service.

For example, in Los Angeles, the extension of the u/c Wilshire subway to DT Santa Monica would probably get higher ridership and ROI than the same sum spent on various light rail projects around the region. But it's not going to happen for a long time because Santa Monica already has the Expo Line.
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  #11  
Old Posted Nov 30, 2023, 8:10 PM
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Help me out here. What is this route supposed to accomplish?

I get why KC would want to expand its streetcar. It's been a success. It's a good brand. That makes sense.

What doesn't make sense to me is this route, which seems to connect some low-density single-family neighborhoods with the sparsest section of the Main Street corridor. What are the ridership generators? Where are people who might use this supposed to be going? I just have a really hard time believing there are enough passengers on this route to justify it.

Now, if you started on Linwood and then turned north on Main Street to go downtown, and this functioned as a branch of the existing line rather than an entirely separate line, that would make sense to me. But how many people are going to Main & Armour?
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  #12  
Old Posted Dec 1, 2023, 12:14 AM
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Looking the system map, Linwood has no bus service, and the busiest east-west bus route in the city appears to be the corridor just 200m to the north, 31st Street. This proposed streetcar might also interfere with the existing bus service along Main, which appears to be a BRT route. It would also interfere with the bus service along 39th Street, which is also one of the busiest routes in the city.

If they want to improve transit connections to this hospital maybe add some new bus routes to southwest? The bus service on the Kansas side appears to be non-existent. I'm not sure if there are political barriers but it looks very odd. Literally, there are only two east-west all-day routes connecting the Kansas side to the Missouri side. This streetcar is already a guaranteed failure.
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Old Posted Dec 1, 2023, 2:08 PM
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Originally Posted by Doady View Post
Looking the system map, Linwood has no bus service, and the busiest east-west bus route in the city appears to be the corridor just 200m to the north, 31st Street. This proposed streetcar might also interfere with the existing bus service along Main, which appears to be a BRT route. It would also interfere with the bus service along 39th Street, which is also one of the busiest routes in the city.

If they want to improve transit connections to this hospital maybe add some new bus routes to southwest? The bus service on the Kansas side appears to be non-existent. I'm not sure if there are political barriers but it looks very odd. Literally, there are only two east-west all-day routes connecting the Kansas side to the Missouri side. This streetcar is already a guaranteed failure.
Kansas and Missouri are two different states with different legislatures, different governors, different taxes, and different political priorities. Of course the local bus networks interchange poorly.
I disagree that this east-west streetcar route will be a failure. As you implied above, the heaviest used bus lines parallel the streetcar route on both its north and south sides. So apparently there are many existing transit users to attract, and I suggest a streetcar will attract more non-existing transit users.

And as always, politics build public transit systems. No public transit system in the USA builds anything without the political support of its community. So it will always be considered successful to the citizens of Kansas City Mo no matter what experts think elsewhere.

As for your transit line to the middle of a low density residential area, the busiest bus route in Dallas was to the closest, richest neighboring suburb city to downtown Dallas. The single family owners of these mansions did not wish their household help parking in front, or in their driveways. So the help arrived and left everyday by bus. My point being is that there are always exceptions to a general rule of thumb.
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Old Posted Dec 1, 2023, 3:06 PM
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I'm not sure it makes sense to assume a streetcar route will be successful because it parallels the two busiest bus routes because 1) usually a streetcar route is expected to have ridership well above a busy bus route because of the extra capacity street cars provide and the much higher cost to create them. 2) the most highly used route in a city doesn't necessarily equate to an actual highly used route because some cities have very modest ridership. And 3) a streetcar or LRT would usually replace a highly used bus route rather than compete with it on a very nearby corridor. Competing means that both routes (or in this case all three routes) would have less ridership individually because they would cannibalize each other.

And political support for something being built in a certain way definitely doesn't guarantee political satisfaction of the results. If reports come out showing a low number of riders relative to the taxpayer cost - whether in terms of the initial capital cost or operating costs - public support can change quickly. The average person is not a transit expert and therefore always doesn't have realistic expectations. So they very well may choose a less than optimal plan, be unsatisfied when it gets a poor return on investment, and then blame others such as the government and planners. Or simply conclude that transit isn't efficient in their region or in general. So assuming that one can avoid potential blame by relegating important decisions to focus groups or surveys doesn't work. The public never blames itself.
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  #15  
Old Posted Dec 1, 2023, 4:42 PM
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Streetcars can be blocked by idling trucks, improperly-parked cars, or accident sites. BRT generally can't. I'd typically prefer BRT.

Even without real BRT, buses can be faster and nicer by simply bulbing out the stops, reducing stops, providing dedicated lanes in busy stretches, maybe adding light priority...
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Old Posted Dec 1, 2023, 8:57 PM
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Kansas and Missouri are two different states with different legislatures, different governors, different taxes, and different political priorities. Of course the local bus networks interchange poorly.
I disagree that this east-west streetcar route will be a failure. As you implied above, the heaviest used bus lines parallel the streetcar route on both its north and south sides. So apparently there are many existing transit users to attract, and I suggest a streetcar will attract more non-existing transit users.
This proposed streetcar would not replace any of these bus routes, and it would actually interfere with the operations of these buses and hurt their ridership.

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And as always, politics build public transit systems. No public transit system in the USA builds anything without the political support of its community. So it will always be considered successful to the citizens of Kansas City Mo no matter what experts think elsewhere.
Yeah, that was my entire point. If it's only Missouri that matters, then don't build a streetcar line into Kansas.

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As for your transit line to the middle of a low density residential area, the busiest bus route in Dallas was to the closest, richest neighboring suburb city to downtown Dallas. The single family owners of these mansions did not wish their household help parking in front, or in their driveways. So the help arrived and left everyday by bus. My point being is that there are always exceptions to a general rule of thumb.
That was Cirrus, not me. I live in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, so I know how important it is to have transit in low-density suburbs. That was exactly why I pointed out the lack of transit in the suburbs on the Kansas side.

Dallas always had poor transit ridership no matter much rail it built, and it only saw major ridership gain in 2019 after a major increase in bus service (30% increase in bus ridership, 14% in overall ridership). This shows the importance of having a complete and successful bus network to support a new rail system, something that Kansas City lacks. A rail line that has no connecting bus routes from the Kansas side, that will interfere with bus routes on the Missouri side, is a guaranteed failure.
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