Taken over the course of two minutes this morning as I walked to work. The garbage truck was serving the hotel and the garbage man had to park the truck, walk to the sub-grade parking level, push the garbage can to the street, dump it, and then replace the garbage can. The streetcar just had to wait...and wait...and wait.
Kinda does illustrate the advantages of bus doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteEven a trolley bus has limited ability to change lanes, and depending on the bus itself can operate off-wires for a short distance. I know Metro's older trolleys could do that; not sure about the newer trolleys.
ReplyDeleteHere's a perfect case where there's two sets of rails (MAX and Streetcar) yet one set of tracks is blocked and there's nothing that can be done. A successful streetcar line also requires adequate loading zones for vehicles - look in front of the Nines hotel in the old Meier & Frank Building as an example.
True, buses are far from perfect and have their own issues, but the light rail/Streetcar supporters seem to discount any problem with their preferred mode while exaggerating the problems with buses - here...the 9 sails on by, while the Streetcar waits.