You City's Demolished Streetcars/Rail Lines

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by LMich

I think people forget that streetcars were often considered major noise nuisances, particularly when poorly maintained, and could be moderately dangerous for pedestrians and users of other modes. I know there is a nostalgia for them now, and that it was stupid to rip up entire systems whole cloth, but there were definitely a lot of lines that functioned better as (motor)bus routes. Oh, and the whole thing about cyclists? Yeah, the cycling community was not happy about the installation of the line on Woodward, recently. There was a whole piece about the speed of the new line so they had a person take a bus, a person drive, a person walk, and a person cycle. The cyclist end up wiping out early in his trip, if I remember it correctly, while trying to navigate the rails in the street. lol

I rode one of the historic streetcars in SF and yes, they were noisy. I had heard the comment about noise too and this confirmed it. The PCC streetcars were designed to address this problem and newer models would be even better as far as reducing steel wheel on steel rail noise.