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Street Car vs. Bus

kettal said:
This is actually a very good thing. Calmed traffic makes a street more attractive to pedestrians. Queen Street, College Street wouldn't have the same life to them if they were high speed roads.
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Yep.

Another reason to question the use of ROWs.

Compromise is very important in the implementation of traffic calming projects in all three cities.
Successful projects are the result of compromise on all levels, from policies to projects. The program of building
underground parking to replace parking lost implementing traffic calming or open space programs represents a
clear compromise. Removing cars from the surface provides real traffic calming and livability benefits, even if
not as environmentally beneficial as simply eliminating the cars.
A fourth lesson is that in some ways we have reached a point in traffic engineering where ‘obvious’
solutions are no longer true. Some examples include reducing vehicle space (e.g. narrowing arterials) and
maintaining traffic volumes; mixing transit and vehicles at tram stops without increasing accidents; removing exclusive transit lanes, but maintaining transit priority. What is important about these examples is that while they have minimal impact on traffic they provide enormous benefits for other users such as pedestrians,
bicyclists, residents, and businesses on the street.
This last point brings up an important area for additional research. There is clearly a need for more formal
study on the traffic impacts of these types of non-intuitive findings. For example, how narrow can an arterial be
made and still have it function effectively? Another area for more research is how to obtain the funding needed
to implement traffic calming on a larger scale.
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http://www.plankton.enhancements.org/download/trb/trb2004/TRB2004-001101.pdf
 
Personally I love riding on rail-based transit, but I don't like riding streetcars in Toronto. I find them to be slow and plodding. You might as well walk. They certainly aren't any good for long-distance transit.
 
nfitz said:
Given that many of the buses still operating in Toronto built in the 1980s dont' have A/C either. I really can't understand the point of this post.

And even the buses that are older than 3 years (those 7000-series) frequently don't have functioning A/C ... and then they are far worse than a streetcar, as the windows are small, very high, and often no one bothers to open them, despite the heat.

Comparing 30-year old streetcars that never had A/C to the newest buses where the A/C hasn't broken yet, is an odd game. Let's see how those hybrids are doing in 20 years time ....
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Most of the buses are new though. Even Eglinton West which had a ton of the old GM's is now running mostly new buses. I also have yet to ride a new bus with broken AC. Until the new streetcars are delivered and the streetcar system downtown becomes more reliable, I'll still prefer the bus over the streetcar.
 
Tuscani01 said:
I live between 2 streetcar routes and try to avoid them as much as possible. Neither of them are on a ROW. I do prefer buses, but put the streetcar in a ROW and I will take it over a bus. I also like that the buses have AC, while the streetcars dont.

My final verdict, Bus > Streetcar.
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During construction on Dundas, I avoided taking the replacement bus on Dundas. Less passengers, the faster the bus.

During the CNE, there was the time I would have used the 522 Dundas Exhibition streetcar to get to the Dufferin Gates. Now that it was replaced by the 193 Exhibition Rocket, I bypass the Dundas West station and head either to Bathurst or Union stations and take either the 511 Bathurst or 509 Harbourfront streetcars to the Ex.

As for the air conditioning, the streetcars are 30 years old. Try to find a 30 year old bus with air conditioning, not likely.

Rushing out to buy the latest thing is expensive. We still have the original washing machine when we bought our house 20 years ago. If something is still running, keep it until it actually needs replacing.

In the States, it was reported that in the 1950's with the replacement of streetcars with buses, general ridership went down faster than the cities that kept them. For 39 reasons that streetcars are better than buses, see this link.
 
I have an affection for them. I grew up on Gerrard St. and the constant rumble and shaking of the house 24 hours a day was soothing.
 
Comparing new buses to geriatric CLRVs in terms of mod cons may not be fair. It is fair to point out that if something's economics depend on it at least operating for half a century, it will eventually be outdated. These multi-decade lifespans can really be a PITA in terms of flexibility. It makes you bet on all kinds of assumptions on what will be neccesary decades from now, a simply impossible task. People in the '70s never thought we would want buses with A/C or accessible to weelchairs, but that's how things turned out and it will take a decade or so longer for our streetcar fleet to be converted than our buses because they have such high upfront costs which have to spread over decades.

Who knows what will happen between now and the latter half of the upcoming streetcar's lifespan? We are betting billions that not much.
 
Tuscani01 said:
I live between 2 streetcar routes and try to avoid them as much as possible. Neither of them are on a ROW. I do prefer buses, but put the streetcar in a ROW and I will take it over a bus. I also like that the buses have AC, while the streetcars dont.

My final verdict, Bus > Streetcar.
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If you're lucky enough, you could get the one streetcar that's air conditioned. ;)
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
Personally I love riding on rail-based transit, but I don't like riding streetcars in Toronto. I find them to be slow and plodding. You might as well walk.
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What? I live along a streetcar line ... with the exception of some kind of accident (that has the cars blocked as well), I've never been able to walk faster than the streetcar, even for a couple of stops. It's quite typical to leave one stop, not see the streetcar behind you, and it's passed you before you get to the next stop; in rush-hour. There's certainly some pressure points, but they aren't the norm, and the transit-priority on the traffic lights has dealt with many of them.

One advantage streetcar has over bus, is that it doesn't constantly have to pull into the parking lane at every stop, and then get back into traffic; though since they changed the law so that the buses have right-of-way to re-enter the traffic, the buses do a lot better than this.

Personally I much prefer the streetcars. They are smoother, more spacious, more comfortable, and a lot quieter (and given that I can hear the major road near me, I'm quite happy not to hear the diesel bus engines going up the hill every 3-minutes).
 
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A. Badaraco said:
If you're lucky enough, you could get the one streetcar that's air conditioned. ;)
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Everytime I've been on that one in the summer, all the windows are open. How we got all the new hybrids windows screwed shut almost overnight, yet these windows left to be opened is quite a mystery.
 
I prefer streetcars first, electric trolley buses second, and regular buses last. They're interesting. Regular buses are boring. I love the sound of the wheels on the track, the occasional hum of the wires and, at night, the odd sparks as streetcars travel through splices in the wire. A bus sways. A streetcar rides very smoothly. In San Francisco, when a diesel bus route is electrified, ridership allegedly goes up 10 per cent. One of my fondest memories is riding the Carleton streetcar right after a heavy snowfall. There were few motor vehicles. The streetcar cleared its own path. Cool!
 
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