The real reason streetcars are making a comeback

>2 mile Disneyland-like streetcars are shit
Who would have thought.

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Clapistanis use Skodas?
pic rel

>ambitious 37 mile network
kek

>>1098775
People didn't know this?

>tfw want to create a simple good light rail network in my area but will never have the money for it
>tfw know it would be good in the long run considering the way things are growing or changing here

>>1098775
why would they ask for it? once the network develops, their properties are already connected

its not rocket science

>>1098775
Wait... You mean to tell me that political figures make decisions based purely on profitability while publicly claiming to be working for the common good?

WHAT A REVELATION!

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What is surprising? My city turned a slum of abandoned factories and homeless people into a posh area for nouveau riche hipsters in the course of three years by extending the light rail to it.
Wherever the tram went, it turned forgotten suburbs into popular areas with housing prices shooting up.

>>1099395
Most light rail projects in the US are grade separated. "Streetcars" in the US are a unique phenomenon because they are entirely ground-level and lack any real expansion opportunities or even the ability to connect to the light rail system.

Take the Seattle approach. Link Light Rail is planned as some 187 km of interconnected track, with underground routes in the downtown areas, elevated tracks along bridges and adjoining routes, and surface tracks along low-density boulevards. All of the lines can be accessed without leaving the station, and the lines follow major transit corridors in the region.

However, Seattle also operates two completely disjointed streetcar lines that only run 2.1 and 4.0 km, respectively, entirely at-grade and slower than existing bus lines already achieve. The only nice thing about them is that they're so new that the seats don't smell like urine yet.

At-grade rail is stupid in dense areas if it never leaves the road. Buses are cheaper and more flexible. The value of light rail over streetcars, buses, or even monorail is that it can transition easily between above, below, and ground-level service to find the best cost/benefit ratio.

Streetcar services as implemented in the US (short, disjointed, frequent-stop, at-grade only) are fucking retarded.

>>1099607
i think the problem is, broke cities are building them thinking they need to keep up with the transit jonses. street cars are slow, and arent exactly mass transit, but they play a part in a larger infrastructure by giving people another option. but if the streetcar is your only option for urban mass transit, especially if you city is already struggling, then its probably a poor choice of spending. BRT is cheaper from the outset and probably carries twice as many people. the streetcar "works" in places like portland because there was already a larger, dense urban infrastructure in place. for a city like, i dunno, des moines or omaha, who might choose to return to some kind of rail option, id say they should consider an alternative first. in five or ten years, there might be automated, all electric buses and a slow, at grade trolley will already be outdated....liberal boomers have a hard on for two things, urban nostaligia and rail transit, sometimes at any cost...

>>1098775
Fuck I hate light rail. We have it at the Gold Coast and the wires / pantograph is a complete eyesore. It's electric doesn't go far or fast. They should be all runinng of Supercaps or flywheel charging from station to station with a fraction of the infrastructure - why this was not done I have no freaking idea in the current year.

>>1099911
i love the look of the wires, its very cozy

>>1099847
No, the point is that anywhere a streetcar can do well, buses can do better. The only justification for road-integrated rail is as a cheaper interim in lower density areas with long, light-prioritized boulevards. Dedicated street rail is retarded precisely because streetcars are essentially buses that are more expensive, less reliable, and far less flexible.

Streetcars were popular in 1910 when buses didn't exist. Modern attempts to re-create that "environment" are headed by people who are completely ignorant as to why everyone switched to buses in the first place.

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Well he did trash the American "streetcar" completely, completely justifiably that is.

>>1099395
You see, Svea-bro, as much as we like joke about the "local special circumstances" that hinder all progress, in America that truly is the case, as pointed out in >>1099607

The way they stiffly classify vehicles into road and rail vehicles and require very over-rated collision stiffnesses from rail vehicles make American trams into the same kind of huge single target market yank tanks like their automobiles. (Like seriously, saw and american imprt sedan the other day, not a SUV or anything, and it was like 1.5 the dimensions of an European car and 1.8 of and Asian car, and didn't even fit into the parking spot.) The trusty Düwag GT6 and GT8 for example, would never have passed as road nor railworthy in the US.

Still, I can't but be positive about this. It seems America is about to pull it's trade mark stunt - when situation turns from bad to "ridiculously bad, and not even in the funny way", then they stand up as one people and say "we've got to fix this!" and they do, so that the thing in question will be world class for the time being. This time, with urban planning and tranffic management, after overdoing the freeway network and "automobiles and houses affordable to everyone" bits.

Like USPH for example, its standards now set the base level of requirements for the things they cover for pretty much the whole world. They are very destined to make sure that where ever an American citizen goes, he won't contract polio or malaria, or eat any human poop and not too much rat poop (because there's always some in grain). I work in a shipbuilding business for example, and because of them, we have to use thick (3 mm, I think) acid proof steel pipe with welded joints above "mess areas", to make absolutely sure there wont be any leaks, that possibly, under some circumstances, could drip on peoples' plates :)

>>1099607
I have to add, I don't see the Seattle situation that hopeless. They have a some kind of expansion plan for the system, to which they have sticked so far, even if the progress is slow. DC is hopeless.

So is the case also in Portaland, but the two east-west lines, maybe even the Lake Oswego extension along the old railway right of way, are "in the works". At that point america should have two concrete domestic examples of modern street level tram made right.

>>1099926
Except nobody that isnt poor want to ride a stinky bus. Streetcars attract more upper class patrons

>>1098775

LOL Vox. Acting like this is some new shit, when street cars only existed in the first place because developers.