Quote:
Originally Posted by M1EK
So the answer was "no", then. No, there was no apples-to-apples comparison. Thanks.
|
It's destinations, M1EK. Every destination on the route is served by a bus that leaves frequently from the Downtown core.
Quote:
The bus I ride most often has two doors - about as many doors per potential passenger as your streetcar has. And again, if everybody's getting off at the same stop, even twice as many doors still isn't going to be enough for very quick unloading.
|
The low floor doors, 2, are 40% wider than rear bus doors and twice as wide as front bus doors. The upper level door has an open standing area for quick exiting, so even that is more efficient.
Quote:
"getting them around" works fine on a bus. It did for you. Unless they decide to buy a car, in which case you actually need to compete with that car - which means that being stuck in traffic isn't going to get the job done.
|
So now you're telling me what I prefer and what works best for me?
Living and working in an actual city core, I have many options available to me. Dining and shopping and meeting friends in SLU involves the Streetcar unless I'm taking photos of all the great buildings under construction.
Seattle has a very high car ownership level, but it stomps Austin completely flat into the dirt in terms of actual usage. It even stomps Dallas, a place that already has light rail. Parking, regardless of your lovely lies, is cheap in Seattle. It may look expensive from afar, but people make more here by a factor of 25%.
Quote:
Listening to a transit-dependent commuter lecture me on what it takes to make rail transit successful is pointless. They've got your business either way.
|
No, if a bus is slow, I walk. If a bus is crowded, I walk. Actually, I only ride the bus 4 times a week, yet work 5 and go out 7. I walk 40 miles a week versus around 8 miles of buses. In fact, since it's snowing tomorrow, I'm skipping my usual morning bus ride to walk to work.
This is because buses make many more stops than they should, they don't have good enough traction in the rain and snow and they're jerky.
Transit doesn't have my business "either way" since I can walk to everything I need easily enough.
Quote:
You're arguing against a lot of success stories with a statement like that - and their success stories are 25, 30, 40 thousand people per day; not the comparatively miniscule numbers you're seeing on the SLU streetcar.
|
You're ignoring that SLU is under development still, again. And again. And again. And you're ignoring the scale of the SLU Streetcar. If LRT trains are meant to go 50 miles, carry 800 people per trip and do 280,000 passengers a day, what should a Streetcar going 2 miles and carrying 80 people per trip be doing?
Of course, in terms of Austin (and unlike Portland, FW and Seattle), people hate the idea of LRT and voted it down, so I guess the argument of having a diverse set of transportation options is useless since free-thinking Austin seems to have a love affair with the car.
Quote:
As for the current conditions there, I still see a LOT of people from Seattle arguing for reserved guideway, especially on the new lines; and as with Austin's most likely shared segment (Manor Rd), you're ignoring the likelihood that as new development hits the area, car traffic will increase - so using today's conditions as evidence that car traffic doesn't slow the streetcar down is kind of stupid.
|
I'm not ignoring the new development-- I'm acutely aware that parking inventory has been slashed and transit usage increased. Paul Allen got Amazon.com to bring 6,000+ employees to SLU by saying "alright, we've got the Streetcar that will drop people off at the Tunnel, so don't worry that we provide parking for less than 40% of your employees."
The Clise family stipulated in their sale contract for development rights on their property that for the 14,000,000 square feet of developable space, there can only be parking equivalent to 5,000,000 square feet of developed space. The sale of those rights is set to go forward in the first post-recession quarter, probably the first half of 2010. Same stipulations.
Your previous argument of parking being more scarce and expensive in Seattle is also excessively wrong. 70% of parking inventory is used (30% is scarcity?) and with an average income 25% higher than in Austin, parking rates are comparable.
Quote:
Finally, it's nearly impossible in the real world to upgrade a runningway from shared to reserved (a bit more feasible on one-way streets, but on two-way streets, you want reserved runningways in the middle and shared runningways on the right). Even in the examples people sometimes cite, it actually was more like "close and destroy the shared line for 4 blocks, then connect the old line to a new segment of reserved guideway". It's basically tearing up the old one and starting over.
|
It may seem impossible to you to paint a street, install bumps and change signal priorities, but it's a whole lot easier than wresting control of a lane from taxpayers for something that's a new technology to a city. Politics, my friend.
Rome, after all, was not built in a day.
I think Fort Worth can pull this off. Multi-modality is the best thing ever. Of course, they won't have a monorail, water taxis, and a massive ferry system, but they can at least have multiple types of rail!