The Portland Streetcar has done a lot of good for the Pearl District, but it was introduced as a development tool, and as it was presented, it was always very clear that the emotional attraction of the vehicle itself was an important part of why we should build it. Why should we build a streetcar instead of just running a really good bus service? We’re moving into a much leaner time. We may start having different conversations about how important it is to have emotionally appealing vehicles, as opposed to creating a system that maximizes people’s personal freedom.
Willamette Week
2 comments:
Here's some facts I dug up for a post over at bojack.org:
The Gateway EmX line cost $41 million for 6.7 lane miles (roughly 3.35 route miles) - just over $10 million a mile. For Streetcar, you'd buy three Streetcar vehicles but no track, wire, facilities, stations - just the two vehicles. You'd buy a quarter mile of rail, but no vehicles or anything else. Light rail is even worse.
The original Eugene-Springfield EmX line (Franklin Corridor) was $25 million or $6.25 million/mile. $6.25 million would get those two streetcars - and nothing else. No rails, no platforms, no maintenance facility, no nothing. Or, a couple hundred feet of rail.
Up in Snohomish County, the SWIFT BRT project cost $29.5 million for its 16.7 mile route - or $1.8 million/mile. (In comparison, TriMet's WES commuter rail is 14.9 miles - and cost $165 million.) Also, Community Transit has reported that the operating cost per boarding ride for SWIFT was as little as A DOLLAR. (WES is $19. MAX is around $2.00, the bus system average is around $3.00, but TriMet's 72 Killingsworth/82nd Avenue bus is the cheapest - it's about 80 cents.)
And here's an interesting tidbit from up north: When King County Metro replaced the 174 route (which itself was a pretty heavily used bus line) with the RapidRide A Line, ridership spiked from 5,000 weekday boardings to 8,000 weekday boardings. All, by making targeted improvements in BUS service - new buses, better schedules, new bus stops, and dedicated bus lanes, queue-hopper signals and other ITS improvements. For $61.6 million, or $5.6 million/mile.
I love these statistics Erik. You quote the full price of a BRT system, and then compare it to the cost of 1 mile of a streetcar system.
Ex: EmX = $41M, but "For Streetcar, you'd buy three Streetcar vehicles"; when what you mean is for $10M.
Come on Erik, if you want to whine about something, at least be honest about it and do an apples to apples comparison.
Maybe you thin embellishing the truth helps your argument; it does not -- it simply discredits any truth of your argument.
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