I don’t think so, but at the end of the day, what’s wrong with buses? As long as there are lots of them to serve the demand.
Myself, while I enjoy the streetcar and subway (provided my fellow passengers are evidently sane and sober), I hate taking TTC buses, but much of my youth was spent in the fish bowl buses of the 1980s with their forever rattling windows and roaring engine noise. I couldn’t get my drivers license fast enough in those days.
In 2004 I interviewed for a job in Fredericton. Notwithstanding my feelings about buses, as a one vehicle family, I was pleased to see a bus stop outside the office, but when I enquired about it, my future employer laughed that only the poor, the old and students take the bus.
A streetcar carries how many riders and what does a 40's and 60's using TTC standards. Now divide the all the streetcar riders and divided by the 60's numbers to see how many buses you new. You need to add another 30% to the bus numbers that are spare ratio. At the same time, that the maximum number of buses that will be used for service and multiply it by 4 that will give you the base numbers of drivers to run the line. To compare apple to apples, do the same thing for the streetcar to see how many drivers are needed. Take those 2 numbers and multiply them by $100,000 for each driver.
Now, you have a few other things to look at using buses in places of streetcars. How do you plan to load and off load riders at Spadina Station and Union Station?
Where do you plan on housing these buses since there is no space for them in the current garages as well maintain them??
How many more personnel need to be hire to service these buses daily?
Do you plan on using the existing ROW for the buses? If so, have you factor in the cost to convert the ROW to buses??
Your future employer in Fredericton is a car folk and doesn't understand transit in his city. My son and family live there and we been there a few times. The last time we were there and going from memory without pulling out the photos for the last trip, I believe there at 15 routes that meet downtown every 30 minutes a day with a few less on the weekend and some seeing hourly service. The big rush hour tie up is the 10 minutes it take to get over the river bridge when the area is not flooded that can happens a few times of the year, depending on the weather. The times I have shot the downtown station at peak time, more office workers than old folks and students.
If buses replaced streetcars in the past, why did streetcars return to Spadina again??
If you move to the east coast, its all buses out there and no train service of any kind in Federation. The station still exist as well the CP ROW, but have to go to Moncton to catch a train.
Need to visit St James to walk on the river bed for a fair distance when the tide is out and a charmingly place to visit and shop. You are not too far Fundy National Park and only 4.5 hour drive to Halifax.