36 Reasons Streetcars Are Better Than Buses

[W. K. Lis]

The Infrastructurist at http://www.infrastructurist.com/ has an article on 36 Reasons Streetcars Are Better Than Buses at this link. I've quoted the list below:

1. New streetcar lines always, always, get more passengers than the bus routes they replace.
2. Buses, are susceptible to every pothole and height irregularity in the pavement (and in Chicago we have plenty). Streetcars ride on smooth, jointless steel rails that rarely develop bumps.
3. Streetcars don’t feel “low status†to transit riders. Buses often do.
4. Mapmakers almost always include streetcar lines on their city maps, and almost never put any bus route in ink. New investment follows the lines on the map.
5. The upfront costs are higher for streetcars than buses–but that is more than made up over time in lower operating and maintenance costs. In transit you get what you pay for.
6. There is a compelling “coolness†and “newness†factor attached to streetcars.
7. Streetcars feel safer from a crime point of view.
8. Steel wheel on steel rail is inherently more efficient than rubber tire on pavement. Electric streetcars can accelerate more quickly than buses.
9. Streetcars don’t smell like diesel.
10. Streetcars accelerate and decelerate smoothly because they’re electrically propelled. Internal-combustion engines acting through a transmission simply cannot surge with the same smoothness.
11. The current length limit for a bus is 60 feet, but streetcars can go longer, since they are locked into the rails and won’t be swinging all around the streets, smashing into cars.
12. Streetcars have an air of nostalgia.
13. New streetcar and light rail lines usually come with an upgraded street experience from better stops, landscaping, new roadbeds, and better sidewalks, to name a few. Of course, your federal transit dollar is paying for these modernizations, so why wouldn’t cities try to get them!
14. Perhaps the most over looked and significant difference between street cars and buses is permanence. You’ll notice that development will follow a train station, but rarely a bus stop. Rails don’t pick up and move any time soon. Once a trolley system is in place, business and investors can count on them for decades. Buses come and go.
15. Streetcars are light and potentially 100% green. Potentially they could be powered by 100% solar and/or wind power. Even powered with regular power plant-derived electricity, they are still 95% cleaner than diesel buses. [Source? -Ed.]
16. Streetcars stop less. Because of the increased infrastructure for stops, transit planners don’t place stops at EVERY BLOCK, like they do with buses (SEPTA in Philly is terrible for this). Instead, blocks are a quarter to a half mile apart, so any point is no more than an eigth to a quarter mile from a stop.
17. People will travel longer distances on streetcars. At one point, in the 1930s, a person could travel to Boston from Washington solely on trolleys, with only two short gaps in the routes.
18. Buses are noisy. I ride them every day in Chicago, and I am constantly amazed at how loud a diesel bus engine is–even on our latest-model buses [and] the valve chatter is an irritant to the nervous system. By comparison, streetcars are virtually silent.
19. Technological advances already make the current generation definitely NOT your grandfather’s streetcar. Low floors are standard, for easy-on easy-off curbside boarding. Wide doors allow passengers to enter or exit quickly. So streetcar stops take less time than buses.
20. Passengers can take comfort from seeing the rails stretching out far ahead of them, while ever fearing that the bus could take a wrong turn at the next corner and divert them off course.
21. Once purchased (albeit at high cost) streetcars are cheaper to maintain and last way the hell longer (case in point, streetcars discarded in the US in the 40’s, snapped up by the Yugoslavs, which are still running).
22. Streetcar tracks are cheaper to maintain than the roadways they displace.
23. People get notably more excited about the proposed extension of the streetcar system and expect revitalization of the neighborhoods around the planned stops.
24. Streetcars create more walkable streets. This is because streetcars, as mentioned above, are more attractive to riders than buses, which in turns prompt to more mass transit usage in general, which in turns prompts to more walking–a virtuous cycle that creates more attractive city streets.
25. Most European cities and countries kept investing in public transit during the decades when America was DISinvesting. Now I look across the pond and see dozens of European cities extending or building new rail transit systems, including many streetcar lines, and conclude: ‘They probably know what they are doing; we should do some of that too.’
26. You know exactly where a streetcar is going – but have you ever tried looking at a bus route map?
27. Streetcars are faster than buses or trackless trolleys (aside from 2 lines in Philly, do any other cities run trackless trolleys, or trolley buses anymore?) because trams tend to have dedicated lanes. Even if they don’t, if they operate on streets with multiple lanes, people stay out of the tram lane, because it’s harder to drive a car along tram tracks (the wheels pull to one side or the other as they fall into the groove).
28. In buses you’re still jostled by every pothole and sway at every bus stop. I thought bus rapid transit would be a significant improvement - there’s still a bit of sway and they concrete was not installed as smoothly as line of steel rail.
29. With buses transit planners are pushed by funding formulas to capture every pocket of riders thus you can get a very wiggly route – something that’s less practical on a fixed rail system
30. Buses lurch unpredictably from side to side as they weave in and out of traffic and as they move from the traffic lane to the curb lane to pick up passengers. In streetcars turns occur at the same location on every trip, so that even standees can more or less relax knowing the car is not going to perform any unpredictable lateral maneuvers.
31. Most streetcar riders don’t consciously think about the differences between a bus ride and a streetcar ride. But their unconscious minds–the spinal cord, the solar plexus, the inner ear and the seat of the pants–quickly tally the differences and deliver an impressionistic conclusion: The streetcar ride is physiologically less stressful.
32. An internal-combustion engine is constantly engaged in hammering itself to death and buses tend to vibrate themselves into a sort of metallurgical dishevelment. Interior fittings–window frames, handrails, floor coverings, seats–tend to work loose and make the interior look frowzy and uncared-for. By age 12 the bus is a piece of junk and has to be retired. A streetcar the same age is barely into its adolescence.
33. Streetcar stops are typically given more attention than most bus routes and the information system is more advanced. In Portland, the shelters even have VMS diplays that tell you the times of the next two streetcar arrivals. This valuable information gives people the option to wait, do something else to pass the time, or walk to their destination.
34. One great advantage of streetcars is that the infrastructure serves as an orienting and wayfinding device. The track alerts folks to the route and leads them to stops. Because they are a permanent feature of the streetscape, the routing is predictable and stable (unlike bus routes). So unlike a bus, a streetcar informs and helps citizens to formulate an image of their city, even if folks don’t ride it. It is a feature of their public realm. Because of this, these streets get greater public attention.
35. When you ride one of the remaining historic cars in Toronto or San Francisco you can tell they’re “old†in the sense of “out of style,†but when you look around the interior everything still seems shipshape, nothing rattles, the windows open and close without binding. The rider experiences a sense of solid quality associated with Grandma’s solid-oak dining table and 1847 Rodgers Brothers silver. And that makes everybody feel good. Unlike, say, an aging bus.
36. For those of you who cannot see the difference between a bus and a streetcar, I suggest riding a streetcar when you get the chance. Then, if you can locate a bus that more or less follows the same route, give that a try. Compare the two experiences.

Among the comments in the article are some from Toronto.

 

[RedRocket191]

Before we get into a semantics war, I think it's safe to say that the source of the quote is talking about what we in Toronto would call modern light rail.

 

[APTA-2048]

I just want to say, I support streetcars and buses, but some of these things mentioned need some extra info or correcting. Also I don't mean to start a war.

#7. Not sure how that works. TTC is adding driver barriers and has CCTV to both streetcars and buses.
#10. HEVs and trolleybuses accelerate smothly too.
#11. You can get an 80 footer. It's offered to North America
#12. London's Routemaster buses have that same air of nostalgia.
#13. Busway can get those as well.
#15. Trolleybuses use the same electricity
#18. Buses are getting quieter, and trolleybuses are quite quiet.
#19. Buses have wide doors and low floors.
#27. More than just Philly operates trolleybuses. San Francisco operates them along side streetcars, and Vancouver has just upgraded their fleet of trolleybuses.
#35. Same can be said about a beautifully restored bus.

Again, I appreciate streetcars, but I also appreciate buses. And some facts on the new 2010 diesel emissions standard:
NOx: 0.2 g/hp-hr
Particulate matter: 0.01 g/hp-hr

 

[kEiThZ]

Yet many of those advantages could accrue to buses by simply using trolley buses and implementing exclusive or partially exclusive right-of-ways.

 

[doady]

Streetcars stop less. Because of the increased infrastructure for stops, transit planners don’t place stops at EVERY BLOCK, like they do with buses (SEPTA in Philly is terrible for this). Instead, blocks are a quarter to a half mile apart, so any point is no more than an eigth to a quarter mile from a stop.

LOL, this is just hilarious and a good example of what is wrong with LRT fanboyism. If you really want to believe that buses cannot have ROWs and limited stop service, then more power to you.

 

[MegaMax]

1. Streetcars are retro.
2. Streetcars are funner.
3. Streetcars are cooler.
4. Streetcars = awesome!
5. Streetcars are like a giant train set you had in your basement.
6. Streetcars are magic.
7. Streetcars increase the Starbucks ratio by 10.
8. ...

 

[wyliepoon]

6. There is a compelling “coolness†and “newness†factor attached to streetcars.

12. Streetcars have an air of nostalgia.

Isn't that a contradiction?

9. Streetcars don’t smell like diesel.

They sure don't, but here in Toronto more often than not I find that they smell as though someone took a piss on board.

 

[Hydrogen]

Subway, please!

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

Subway, please!

i prefer mr. sub.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

...but here in Toronto more often than not I find that they smell as though someone took a piss on board.

must be the same people that use the ATM machines and stairwells.

 

[Eug]

Yeah a lot of those reasons are bogus, but it's true that many people just hate taking the bus.

Rail and bus just "feel" fundamentally different to many of us. BRT is a significant step up from regular bus though.

 

[Archivist]

I always consider it a fact that I've done something wrong if I find myself on a bus. But that's just me.

 

[Eug]

I was mainly a car driver (because my workplace was a big pain to get to by transit and increased my travel time three-fold).

However, when I did take transit, I used to plan my trips around subway and streetcar, even when people would tell me an alternate bus route was a bit faster, just because I hated taking the bus - for many reasons listed above.

Maybe that's a bad attitude about bus, but it seems many people share it.

 

[GraphicMatt]

I've been trying to rationalize this. I'd never take a bus to visit attractions like the Science Centre or the Zoo but I'd be far more likely to visit them if there was a streetcar connection to those attractions.

It's not at all logical.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Wow, this article really sold me with points like:

6. There is a compelling “coolness” and “newness” factor attached to streetcars.

7. Streetcars feel safer from a crime point of view.

21. Passengers can take comfort from seeing the rails stretching out far ahead of them, while ever fearing that the bus could take a wrong turn at the next corner and divert them off course.

24. Streetcars create more walkable streets. This is because streetcars, as mentioned above, are more attractive to riders than buses, which in turns [sic] prompt to more mass transit usage in general, which in turns prompts to more walking–a virtuous cycle that creates more attractive city streets.

25. Now I look across the pond and see dozens of European cities extending or building new rail transit systems, including many streetcar lines, and conclude: ‘They probably know what they are doing; we should do some of that too.’

Whoaccio, scarberian? Over to you.