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36 Reasons Streetcars Are Better Than Buses

Archivist said:
I always consider it a fact that I've done something wrong if I find myself on a bus. But that's just me.
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I love taking the #5 bus up Avenue Road and Oriole Parkway. Such a pleasant trip though it does sometimes make me feel like I'm a cleaning lady
 
Infrastructurist said:
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.
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That is the dumbest reason I have ever heard for infrastructure.

Archivist said:
I always consider it a fact that I've done something wrong if I find myself on a bus. But that's just me.
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Ohh, yeah, that's not snobbish at all. I personally feel like I've done something wrong if I don't find myself in the back of a limo. That way there are NO poor people to get in the way of my wonderful yuppie experience.

Re. HD: I should hope so. Can UT get a sarcasm emoticon?
 
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Whoaccio said:
That is the dumbest reason I have ever heard for infrastructure.
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It's a dumb reason, but a reason that many people actually give, myself included when I first moved to Toronto.


Ohh, yeah, that's not snobbish at all. I personally feel like I've done something wrong if I don't find myself in the back of a limo. That way there are NO poor people to get in the way of my wonderful yuppie experience.
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Yes, it's snobbish, but that's the way it is. For example, I try to avoid taking Greyhound at all costs because it simply makes me uncomfortable, so I can understand somebody else's attitude about city bus transit.


Bottom line is right or wrong, bus transit is stigmatized by a lot of the general public, at least when compared to light rail or subway.
 
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I think the article that WK Lis posted really does illustrate the fanboyism that is the undercurrent of LRT advocacy.

That's not to say that LRT and even "modern streetcars" have their place, and can be a very useful piece of transit technology. There's many examples in North America and the world in which it has been a tremendous success. But there's also failures and disappointments as well.

In fact, promoting LRT is nothing like promoting gadgetbahns like Monorails and PRT, where the kookyness is really apparent. But there is an element of it in the LRT fanclub.
 
Hipster Duck said:
What do people who actually study transit and use tools like statistical analysis have to say about bus vs. rail choice?

"The main conclusion of the study is that there is no evident preference for rail travel over bus when quantifiable service characteristics such as travel time and cost are equal,"


Ben-Akiva, M. & Takayuki, M. (2002). Comparing ridership attraction of rail and bus. Transport Policy, 9(2), 109-116
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Here's the entire quote:

"The main conclusion of the study is that there is no evident preference for rail travel over bus when quantifiable service characteristics such as travel time and cost are equal, but a bias does arise when rail travel offers a higher quality service."

That makes sense, and I said earlier that BRT gives a significantly better impression than standard TTC bus transit.
 
Eug said:
... BRT gives a significantly better impression than standard TTC bus transit.
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And that right there is the crux of the problem. LRT is always compared to standard bus service as opposed to BRT, which would make for a much fairer competition. Because LRT comes in with its own (often exclusive or partially-exclusive) ROW, service automatically improves well ahead of the standard bus route. Give a bus some of those same advantages and I think you'd find that a lot of that bias would disappear. Indeed, there's people in Ottawa who are complaining about a conversion to LRT because it will end the era of one seat rides from the suburbs to downtown.
 
MegaMax said:
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. ...
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Ha!

You summed it up where in my opinion :p

What a silly, silly, silly list. If this list was presented to anyone that supported buses not only would they laugh they'd probably get the impression there's a certain category of people who support streetcars, ones that like throwing out what they consider facts without any grounding in reality or green yuppies. Further helping their agenda.
 
kEiThZ said:
And that right there is the crux of the problem. LRT is always compared to standard bus service as opposed to BRT, which would make for a much fairer competition. Because LRT comes in with its own (often exclusive or partially-exclusive) ROW, service automatically improves well ahead of the standard bus route. Give a bus some of those same advantages and I think you'd find that a lot of that bias would disappear. Indeed, there's people in Ottawa who are complaining about a conversion to LRT because it will end the era of one seat rides from the suburbs to downtown.
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LRT has higher capacity than BRT. You can only run buses so close to eachother for practicality and safety's sake. Meanwhile one long LRT can be equivalent to many buses, or if you wish, many buses running end to end.
 
This list is not as good as "36 reasons that Harrier Jump Jets are better than LRTs".
 
Eug said:
That makes sense, and I said earlier that BRT gives a significantly better impression than standard TTC bus transit.
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A lot of it is branding. LRT in American cities where middle class people wouldn't be caught riding the bus is a largely different beast - given a fancy logo, given fancy stations, park and rides, etc. Clearly different from the standard bus.

Viva is great example of how even a different set of bus routes is superior because of the branding - a fancier bus, a different name, fancier stops, etc. So a lot of the weaker arguements about LRT can be applied to a properly-branded, decent, quality-bus or BRT.
 
kEiThZ said:
And that right there is the crux of the problem. LRT is always compared to standard bus service as opposed to BRT, which would make for a much fairer competition. Because LRT comes in with its own (often exclusive or partially-exclusive) ROW, service automatically improves well ahead of the standard bus route. Give a bus some of those same advantages and I think you'd find that a lot of that bias would disappear. Indeed, there's people in Ottawa who are complaining about a conversion to LRT because it will end the era of one seat rides from the suburbs to downtown.
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Epi said:
LRT has higher capacity than BRT. You can only run buses so close to eachother for practicality and safety's sake. Meanwhile one long LRT can be equivalent to many buses, or if you wish, many buses running end to end.
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That's what I was going to say. Isn't it the problem that, to implement BRT up to the same standards as LRT, the bus's inherent cost advantage will start to decrease? In addition to the increased construction cost, there will be more buses needed for the same capacity, fuel usage and pollution problems, and also the generally shorter lifespan of buses compared to rail vehicles.

This is a report done by Hamilton in evaluating the operating cost of BRT vs LRT, not sure if it had been posted in the Hamilton thread before: www.myhamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/1065F84D-A0CC-4B72-9748-15253523F527/0/OperatingCostsFactSheet.pdf
One of their conclusions being, above ~1600 passengers per hour, LRT breaks even with BRT and becomes more cost effective to operate.
 
Eug said:
Here's the entire quote:

"The main conclusion of the study is that there is no evident preference for rail travel over bus when quantifiable service characteristics such as travel time and cost are equal, but a bias does arise when rail travel offers a higher quality service."

That makes sense, and I said earlier that BRT gives a significantly better impression than standard TTC bus transit.
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Actually, my post was to dispel this myth that people inherently prefer streetcars. In another thread, MisterF said "all things being equal, people prefer rail". The researchers dispel this.

Of course it makes perfect sense that people would prefer rail if it offered a higher quality of service. If the bus offers higher quality of service over rail (and it happens) it would go the other way around. One time I was on a bus in Germany and a lady got on and asked the driver when the train (which was going to the same place) would be coming. A teenager from the back of the bus piped up and said "the bus is faster", and the lady shrugged and took a seat. When I travel on the TTC and my option is to take a parallel bus route over a streetcar route, I normally opt for the bus, which is generally more reliable and faster - if it doesn't have more capacity. There are few places where this happens, but if I'm midway between College and Harbord and I need to head east, I usually walk up to catch the 94.
 
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