Have Streetcars Adequately Demonstrated Their Development-Generation Potential?

[W. K. Lis]

Almost half the businessess on Spadina felt the line had no impact?

Most likely they never asked their customers the question, or the same people came before and after.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Most likely they never asked their customers the question, or the same people came before and after.

What do you mean? Either they saw increased business after the construction of the Spadina ROW or they didn't. What does a customer's opinion have to do with anything.

If these were the results of the same survey taken along Sheppard E people would be calling for the line to be mothballed!

Besides the thread is about the ability of LRT's to encourage redevelopment of regions not their ability to improve existing businessess profits, or make customers 'feel better'.

 

[Asterix]

Almost half the businessess on Spadina felt the line had no impact?

Downturns are much more noticeable and recalled than moderately steady increases in business. They weren't asking for financial proof the line had any impact, just what they felt off the top of their head.

We also don't have for comparison what the impact to their business would be with increased congestion on Spadina if they'd stuck exclusively with buses (presumably requiring many more buses than currently running streetcars).

 

[doady]

I think any transit system that is built right and well-used will shape the city it serves. Singling out a single mode seems kind of silly.

 

[Glen]

Several areas. The synopsis is available from this link:

Well if we are just quoting newspapers then I offer this one..........

We found that:

• Instead of living up to pre-construction reports that streetcars on dedicated lanes would cut travel time from Bloor Street to Queen’s Quay by 5½ minutes — the environmental assessment boasted of up to 10 minutes in savings — the 510 appears to take longer than the buses that plied the route from 1948 to 1997. A TTC document obtained last month says the trip takes one minute longer in the afternoon rush hour than in 1990. Data on historical and current transfers indicate a 17-minute bus trip in 1993 now takes 19 minutes by streetcar.

• The 510 may be the slowest of all routes between the Bloor-Danforth and Queen Street. Travel times on TTC transfers put Bloor-to-Queen trips at 12 minutes on Spadina, 8 minutes on Bathurst and 10 minutes on other routes.

• The TTC says ridership on Spadina is up 30 per cent since 1997, the year the line opened. But when compared with 1992, the last year before construction tore up the street and cut into ridership, Spadina appears to be down 1.5 per cent, while overall TTC ridership is up about 3.4 per cent.

• TTC cost-to-revenue ratio lists show the Spadina and Harbourfront lines (now considered one for accounting purposes) have plunged to 35th-best among the TTC’s 132 surface routes. In 1997, they were No. 1 and No. 9, respectively, with the Spadina bus one of only seven routes turning a profit.

reproduced here…..
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=210484

We discussed this here before. What remains unclear is the questions, does the change from bus to rail increase ridership? In my opinion, on Spadina, it did not. It is difficult to compare the old Spadina 77 ridership with the 501 because the 501 includes Queens Quay now. Add to that changes in the other factors that influence ridership, like the number of condos on QQ, employment levels, etc. and attributing any change to mode alone would have to be based on opinion. Not fact.

As to the question at hand in this thread, if LRT was to be truly stimulative, it would have to show an absolute change in aggregate development. If the growth around the lines occurs at the expense of other areas it is a zero sum game.

 

[rbt]

We discussed this here before. What remains unclear is the questions, does the change from bus to rail increase ridership? In my opinion, on Spadina, it did not.

I agree with this BUT there is a point where a larger vehicle size is required to enable pent-up demand to be served and I do believe Spadina was at that point. I tend to think a number of routes in Toronto are at that point today, where the current vehicle size is insufficient for demand and increasing frequency will have limited effect.

A 100foot bus in a ROW would have also demonstrated similar growth on Spadina. I think rails are more appropriate for our winter climate past a certain length (buses with two or more articulations probably wouldn't work very well given Ottawa's issues with single articulations).

 

[howl]

Well if we are just quoting newspapers then I offer this one..........


reproduced here…..
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=210484

We discussed this here before. What remains unclear is the questions, does the change from bus to rail increase ridership? In my opinion, on Spadina, it did not. It is difficult to compare the old Spadina 77 ridership with the 501 because the 501 includes Queens Quay now. Add to that changes in the other factors that influence ridership, like the number of condos on QQ, employment levels, etc. and attributing any change to mode alone would have to be based on opinion. Not fact.

As to the question at hand in this thread, if LRT was to be truly stimulative, it would have to show an absolute change in aggregate development. If the growth around the lines occurs at the expense of other areas it is a zero sum game.

Using proximity to a more robust transportation line as justification for moving higher density development to certain area and away from less well-served areas is a reasonable and even desirable objective. The City fought against higher-density development at Lawrence and Dufferin but supports higher-densities at Lawrence and Allen. This gives more people the opportunity to use transit on a daily basis and discourages high concentrations of units that are more likely to be accessed by car.

In some ways the actual net gain or loss in ridership is irrelevant when considering the affect on development. People perceive the proximity to a robust transit system as a positive and desirable neighbourhood feature and this creates a higher demand for units. Whether or not those people actually use the transit is a totally different issue. It may be that the new development contains both residential units and commercial units and therefore people can live and work without using transit daily. It may be that at one time people didn’t feel safe walking along Spadina so they took the bus a few stops, but perhaps now more people walk or cycle because the avenue is perceived as being safer. Part of that unsafe image may have been due to the number of diesel buses on the street. The important thing is that the transit system is capable of handling the potential load from the development even if it isn’t maxing out right now.

The biggest problem with trying to measure the impact a transit line has on development or business is that there is no consistent base line. There are too many other factors that are constantly at work to say that any particular amount of growth, or lack of it, is directly related to the transit system. Also there is no such thing as a ‘control’ street to compare an evolving street with because every street is different and is affected by so many other factors.

 

[Hipster Duck]

The biggest problem with trying to measure the impact a transit line has on development or business is that there is no consistent base line. There are too many other factors that are constantly at work to say that any particular amount of growth, or lack of it, is directly related to the transit system. Also there is no such thing as a ‘control’ street to compare an evolving street with because every street is different and is affected by so many other factors.

This is a great point. Even the most scientific studies that try to "prove" a causal link between transit growth and a mode choice rely on very shady statistics. There is just too much at play, and people make transport choices based on too many factors - including personal ones that would escape a statistical analysis - that we cannot say with any certainty that one mode choice is better than the other. It's also next to impossible to do a true comparative study because no two human environments - like, say, two cities - are alike and are just too contextually different to draw useful conclusions. Comparing Toronto to Vancouver, or even Spadina to St. Clair is fraught with contextual problems because the two have totally different cultures, demographics, travel patterns, trip generators, financing mechanisms...I could go on. In fact, I probably could never uncover the full range of idiosyncracies that differentiates one city from another. Too many of these studies in urban planning imply that we can uncover the way cities tick in the same way that a physicist running two parallel experiments in a vacuum could, or a biologist starting with two equally sterile petri dishes.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Further to Hipster's point, I think it's nearly impossible to accurately compare the same route over a long time period. Consider all the changes in Toronto since 1990, 1993, or any of those other dates. While it may still be Spadina, the trip generators, demography, and so on, along that line have changed remarkably. While not a strictly accurate comparison, it's akin to using ridership data from 1990 to nay say a transit route into Liberty Village in 2010.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Article on Will Streetcars Invade California? at this link.

By Bill Fulton

Streetcars are the hottest thing in the downtown revitalization business these days. They’re in operation in Portland and Seattle and in planning and construction stage in places like Washington, D.C., Oklahoma City, Cincinnati, Fort Lauderdale and Kansas City. And don’t worry – California will get its share of streetcars as well, especially Southern California. The Downtown Los Angeles streetcar appears all but certain to be open by around 2016, and three Orange County cities – Anaheim, Santa Ana, and Fullerton – are exploring the idea.

At last week’s New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Kansas City, one of L.A.’s leading streetcar advocates – Shiraz Tangri, a lawyer for Alston & Bird and the general counsel for LA Streetcar Inc. – laid out the game plan for how the downtown streetcar will be built. A critical piece of the puzzle was put into place last fall, when downtown voters approved a Mello-Roos District to help finance the streetcar. It’s one of the few cases in California history that a Mello has been successfully adopted in an urban location – which, all by itself, may be a harbinger of things to come.

At first glance, streetcars would not seem to have much of a place in the 21st Century. These self-propelled single-car vehicles are much slower even than light-rail trains and they typically run in the street with regular traffic. Yet they’re catching on all over the country as a more efficient downtown circulator than the typical bus or shuttle – and one that will generate new real estate development along the way.

That’s clearly what’s happened in Portland, where the streetcar connects downtown with the hopping Pearl District and with the South Waterfront, where it connects to an aerial tram to Oregon Health Sciences University, which is located atop a nearby hill. Other cities are trying to replicate the Portland story. Virtually all streetcar projects seek to connect disparate destinations in or near downtowns. They’re all starting with only a few miles of service and compared to other rail transit investments they’re cheap -- $100 million or so on average.

But, as Tangri pointed out in his presentation in Kansas City, no city in the country is better poised to use the streetcar well than L.A. “It’s a history project and an identity project,†he said of the L.A. streetcar. “We should be the most pedestrian-friendly city in the world. We have a great climate. It is incredibly dense.â€

Downtown Los Angeles is already experiencing an amazing renaissance. The opening of the Staples Center in 1999 and the city’s pathbreaking adaptive reuse ordinance shortly thereafter kickstarted a rejuvenation that has increased downtown’s population from 10,000 to 50,000. Downtown is the hub of a burgeoning regional transit system that is likely to double in size over the next decade, thanks largely to Measure R.

Even so, as Tangri pointed out in his Kansas City talk, Downtown L.A. is big – it’s a long way from Staples to the hip lofts east of City Hall – and it can be tough to get around. Furthermore, some parts of Downtown have not shared in the rebirth. For example, along Broadway – once Downtown’s premiere shopping street – the upper floors of 12-story buildings remain mostly empty even as neighborhoods all around have new life. (Tangri says there is 1 million square feet of vacant space on Broadway.) Indeed, Broadway is the focal point of the streetcar project; Councilmember Jose Huizar has assigned the same staff member to be the point person for both the streetcar and Broadway.

Like so many other streetcar projects around the country, the L.A. project is being put together entirely outside the traditional public transit structure. (L.A. Metro is supportive but has nothing to do with the project.) And as Tangri and others often point out, when business leaders promote – and pay for – a transit project, it’s going to have different a completely different goal: economic development rather than mobility. “We talk a lot about transit-oriented development,†he said, “But this is development-oriented transit.â€

Though some cities around the country are relying on state and federal funds to help pay for their projects, L.A. – like other cities, including Kansas City – is relying almost entirely on what amounts to a parcel tax. Among other things, the Mello is levied as a gradient – those close to the line pay more. And, as Tangri and other streetcar experts frequently say, you’ve got to link those places that are hot in the real estate market with those that aren’t. It’s a way of extending the hot market to new locations.

The Mello-Roos victory last November is an especially interesting and important aspect of the L.A. streetcar effort. Originally a Proposition 13 workaround, Mellos have traditionally been used only in greenfield locations because they require two-thirds voter approval. In areas with few voters, the vote is among property owners only, which means developers and local governments have typically negotiated an infrastructure finance deal and than the developer (often the sole landowner) votes the Mello district into existence. Cities have usually stayed away from urban Mellos because they fear voters won’t go for the extra tax.

In Downtown L.A., though, all those new hipsters helped the cause. Whereas many property owners may have been reluctant to tax themselves for the streetcar, the new downtown residents – the voters – were more than willing deliver the two-thirds vote for the additional tax, which of course falls in the property owners and not – at least not directly – on those residents who are renters. The streetcar vote could flip traditional California thinking about urban Mellos on its head.

Tangri said the streetcar should begin construction next year and open in 2016. This is a similar timetable for many other streetcar projects around the country.

 

[ssiguy2]

Streetcars have become "flavour of the month" especially in the US.

These studies that show the amount of urban renewal that takes place along the routes as proof of their success are completely disingenuous. Any street is bound to rejuvenate when putting gobs of money along it regardless but what has to be looked at is value for the dollar and in viewing it in this regard many of the projects have been a failure.

City politicians love nothing more than a ribbon cutting ceremony and new streetcar lines are great for that and hence good for their re-election but often offer little in retunr for the amount spent. Cleveland decided to buck that trend and is very glad they did. The LRT lobby scoffed at Cleveland for building a BRT along it's famed but deteriorating Euclid Avenue stating that BRT may move more people but will never create the king of TOD and urban renewal that a streetcar would but it seems Cleveland got the last laugh.

It's BRT Healthline has been a stellar success beyond anything the city imagined. Not only did ridership soar 80% within the first 2 years of it opening on what was already the city's busiest bus route but also Euclid is thriving with TOD development on a huge scale. New apt. restaurants, condo, offices, shops are springing up along the route much to the dismay of the LRT lobby. This in a city with thousands of vacant and derelict houses.

The Healthline has POP, ROW, high frequency service, attractive stations, signal priority, and uses very attractive and modern articulated buses. They refer to it as their "streetcar on wheels" but came in at one-third the price of a proposed streetcar without the ugly overhead wires, mass disruption of ripping up the road, tracks and wires to maintain, and is easily extended. It has everything a streetcar has so they asked the logical question, so why does it have to have tracks? Well, it didn't have to and they are very pleased that they didn't waste their money. Much of the savings was also put into the corridor itself with attractive public art, parkets, wider sidewalks, bike lanes, tree planting along the roadway, and more attractive lighting.

Another thing these planners don't take into account when deciding if streetcars are worth it is that the much higher price tag also robs the system of extra funds that could be used on other transit initiatives. If you can get 3 km of Healthline BRT for the price of one km of streetcar that means three lines can be built potentially serving three times as many people/destinations. That also means a lot as connectivity improves ridership levels rise disproportionatly.

Cleveland is a good case study as well as it already had one Metro line and 2 LRT lines so they made an informed decision. By providing this first class service it has improved connectivity within the entire system and Cleveland has enjoyed skyrocketing transit ridership over the last 4 years. It's ridership has grown faster than ANY major transit system in the US despite Cleveland's stagnating {it is no longer declining and the downtown population is rising very fast} population.

L.A,'s Orange Line BRT has also been a great success and has higher ridership levels than many US LRT systems including the $2.5 billion LRT line in touchy-feely ever-so-green Seattle. So many US cities have spend biullions on streetcars and LRT often for no other reason than "everyone else is doing it" and it has been money poorly spend and those city's would have been far better off {as would the travelling public and taxpayers} if they would have built Ottawa stlye BRT for rapid transit and Cleveland stlye BRT for it's main corridors.

Miller exemplifies this attitude in places like Finch which could have a BRT system for a fraction of the price of it's LRT that will run at the speed of a streetcar for a cool $1 billion and use those savings to grade separate lines that need total grade separation like Eglinton.

 

[calimehtar]

I remember reading in the Star a couple of years ago interviews with business owners who were still adamant 20 years later that the streetcar had ruined Spadina. And I have no doubt you'll find the same thing on St. Clair. There are more vacant storefronts than ever around St. Clair and Oakwood.

On the other hand, it seems like most people who live near the line love it. When I was house shopping a few years ago I basically ruled out neighbourhoods too far from streetcars, and ended up near St. Clair. In addition there are now decent-sized condo developments that are on the St Clair streetcar line and not terribly close to the subway.

Streetcars don't just attract development (I think they do), they encourage some times of economic activity over other types of economic activity. I guess that the business that suffered are those that attracted car drivers for whatever reason - for example on St. Clair some of the bigger business that are failing are furniture stores. I suppose they have had to compete with big suburban stores, and the perception that St. Clair is difficult to drive and park on has driven more customers away. At the same time restaurants, in particular, seem to be doing very well.

 

[drum118]

I remember reading in the Star a couple of years ago interviews with business owners who were still adamant 20 years later that the streetcar had ruined Spadina. And I have no doubt you'll find the same thing on St. Clair. There are more vacant storefronts than ever around St. Clair and Oakwood.

On the other hand, it seems like most people who live near the line love it. When I was house shopping a few years ago I basically ruled out neighbourhoods too far from streetcars, and ended up near St. Clair. In addition there are now decent-sized condo developments that are on the St Clair streetcar line and not terribly close to the subway.

Streetcars don't just attract development (I think they do), they encourage some times of economic activity over other types of economic activity. I guess that the business that suffered are those that attracted car drivers for whatever reason - for example on St. Clair some of the bigger business that are failing are furniture stores. I suppose they have had to compete with big suburban stores, and the perception that St. Clair is difficult to drive and park on has driven more customers away. At the same time restaurants, in particular, seem to be doing very well.

One reason for the vacant retail along St Clair was the mom and pop operation, operating on a string line and competing again similar business around them. Then the landlord started to jack up rent to meet their bottom line as well wanting a better client. But most of all, they saw the gravy train coming with this ROW.

St Clair been on a slide for the past 20 some years as one generation moves out while another moves in where the retail doesn't meet today residents needs.

It has been proven time after time that on street parking does not generate the great turn over per spot or put more money in the local business as claim by local business.

If you spend time or travel this route as well others, you will find those parking spots are used for 2nd, 3rd car of local residents as well shop owners or their employee.

Big box stores have taken a bit out of local business near Old Weston Rd and when the Stockyard open up late this years as well next year, it will take a bigger bit.

Location Location is the key word for business to survive and if you don't have the right business for the area, you will not last long. Take a look at the Queens Quay to see this as an example for another area.

You can only saturate an area with so much retail before it becomes a blight with high turn over or places that can't be rented out at all.

As for BRT vs. LRT, capital cost will always be won by BRT, but operation cost will be won by LRT hand down. Just have to look at APTA book to see those cost comparison for all the systems in the USA.

You can travel a lot faster on the 512 these days since the ROW was built than in mix traffic before it.

The USA for some reason builds LRT lines for low ridership for some reason compared to us, yet they end up drawing a lot more riders than plan in a short time frame or exceed the number completely.

Norfolk built a line for 5,000 riders today, yet is seeing 7,000. Phoenix built a 20 mile line for 40,000 by 2020, yet is seeing this today with 62% of the ridership on off peak service. The Orange line was to be LRT but was converted to BRT and cannot keep up with the demand to the point they are trying to figure out how to convert it to LRT. What the Healthline BRT line was to be and what it is today are not the same as BRT and a mistake not going LRT. Ridership hasn't increase as much as they thought it would.

There are very few LRT lines that have fail to meet the target numbers so far.

If we look at the 501 line today, ridership and service is less than late 60's and 70's due to various changes. Traffic being one of them. I had to wait for 25 minutes for a westbound 501 on Wed at Park Lawn to the point It was getting very tight to catch my GO train to Burlington.

One thing that is starting to show up is the cost of building LRT per mile where it has jump from the low $30 to the low $60 in the past few years for unknown reason in many cases.

This is by a person who has been transit director, sectary of transit for the state, consultant and so on.

THE FACTS ARE OUT THERE FOR ALL TO SEE
I went through this in Pittsburgh. We hired DeLeuw Cather to study
which was better and Light Rail won, but only because I would not
let DeLeuw Cather take short cuts.
DeLeuw Cather figured out Light Rail cost job by job and mile
by mile but for bus costs, they just took the system average. I would

not allow that. They agreed to price out BRT job by job and mile by
mile and lo and behold, LRT was less costly. Everyone on the

panel wanted BRT but me but I got LRT because the data supported

it. It so happened that way because the Light Rail served a pros-
perous area with lots of automobiles, so most riders were in the peaks
avoiding traffic congestion.
Most bus riders were transit dependent so rode all day long creating
a much different peak hour labor cost. Pittsburgh had a four hour
minimum tripper so many bus drivers got paid four hours for one round
trip with passengers only one way.
Ottawa shows clearly the difference. They were sold BRT by
dishonest bus salesmen so for a decade as they expanded the
BusWay they lost a million passengers a year. Albert and Slater
Streets downtown got so congested with buses it ruined business
and slowed buses to 3 miles per hour downtown. Ottawa is now
building Light Rail to alleviate their mistake.
The best example on a small scale was the Route 103 in subutban
Philadelphia. It was Light Rail until1967 when it was converted to
BRT. Even with slightly more frequent service riders fell 15 % and
costs went up. By now, bus riders have fallen 80 %.and service is
just a shadow of what it once was. Routes 101 and 102 are still
rail and have had no such heavy losses but they lost some riders
when Regional Rail fares were brought down and service speeded
up. E d T e n n y s o n

 

[ssiguy2]

Any roadway or street that gets hundred of million spent on it for transit is bound to have higher transit ridership in the end, that's no miracle.

We are not talking about spending money on transit but rather value for the dollar. Cleveland's Healthline cost a third the amount as the streetcar they were planning yet had resulted in huge amounts of TOD, infil, and skyrocketing ridership levels. In many cases LRT is the right choice where the ridership numbers warrant it suchas Calgary's very successful CTrain system. Most cities, however, don't come even remotely close to that kind of ridership level.

Yes Norfolk has 7000 passengers a day which is twice what was estimated for by this time but that doesn't mean it was a good use of scarce public transit funds. That line cost $400 million so the question should not if it beat it's low ridership projections but rather would it beat the ridership numbers of $400 million spent on BRT whether that be Ottawa rapid transit or Healthlline streetcar-like service. Instead of servicing one small section they could have built true rapid transit BRT to serve hundreds of thouusands of more people and destinations.

Connectivity means a lot and the more lines of rapid transit the far higher the ridership levels....the ridership levels grow expontionally when a system is larger.

Calgary and Edmonton are a perfect example of this. They built their respective systems are roughly the same time but Edmonotn decided to built a smaller system because it wanted the LRT underground downtown. Calgary decided the opposite and wanted a larger system serving more people and decided to have the downtown portion at grade along a transit-only corridor. The money they saved helped build a far larger system serving many more people, destinations, and work places. Proof is in the pudding, similar sized cities but with the CTrain carrying 3x as many passengers as Edmonton's LRT.

 

[doady]

Calgary and Edmonton are a perfect example of this. They built their respective systems are roughly the same time but Edmonotn decided to built a smaller system because it wanted the LRT underground downtown. Calgary decided the opposite and wanted a larger system serving more people and decided to have the downtown portion at grade along a transit-only corridor. The money they saved helped build a far larger system serving many more people, destinations, and work places. Proof is in the pudding, similar sized cities but with the CTrain carrying 3x as many passengers as Edmonton's LRT.

Problem with your argument is, Edmonton Transit System actually has an overall higher transit ridership per capita than Calgary Transit.