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Why Streetcars Make People Crazy! (Picture)

tkip said:
Never going to happen. Considering the mess they made of the St Clair ROW, and I live in the area so I saw it first hand, I have zero confidence in the city/TTC doing this properly. Ever.
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Sounds like somebody is feeling a bit of regret over filing that lawsuit.
 
Electrify said:
I think we need to get back to reality when it comes to articulated buses. Cities across the country, most of which get far more snow than Toronto, run arctics with little issues. And I've been left high and dry by standard 40 foot buses because they've gotten stuck in inclement weather.

Yes, the arctics Toronto got back in the 80s were duds. But they were built 25 years ago in the USSR! The Soviet Union was not known were their auto workmanship qualities, and the technology with arctics has improved to improve safety, stability, and reliability.
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I agree people here are focusing too much on how articulated buses get stuck in Ottawa. We should be looking at other cities as well:

[video=youtube;8kMkYhc4F2g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kMkYhc4F2g[/video]
 
Please keep in mind that the snow and ice problems with artics are mainly suffered by pushers, less so by pullers. Still, it's obvious to me that replacing our streetcars with any type of artics, hell, even bi-artics, is not possible due to (most) of the streetcar routes having very high ridership, more than even artics would be able to handle. Plus they would likely screw up traffic even more with their weaving in and out of lanes.
 
reaperexpress said:
I agree people here are focusing too much on how articulated buses get stuck in Ottawa. We should be looking at other cities as well:
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Yes, because non arctics can never, ever have problems with snow...

[video=youtube;Yey__X3Phqg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yey__X3Phqg&feature=fvst[/video]

We should just use rail for all our transportation needs, since it is immune completely to bad weather...

[video=youtube;6iz1ruj9w5g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iz1ruj9w5g[/video]

I say we just go back a few hundred thousand years to when we were just a bunch of apes living in Africa, and stop ourselves from discovering how to control fire. Sure, when done properly it is very beneficial and has lead to the development of the human race as we know it, but someone could get burned!
 
To those who get upset with streetcars getting replaced with buses during construction or maintenance, the results are the same (actually worse) when the subway replaced with buses, like this past weekend on the Yonge section between Eglinton and Bloor.
 
I feel the same way about streetcars as I feel about houses with pools. It's great when you already have one, but you would never spend the money to build one from scratch. Streetcar lines have a modest capacity improvement over buses and probably are more cost effective to operate on a daily basis, but they do not justify the cost of new line construction. A streetcar is, after all, just another form of local, surface-operated transit and does not have the major network, speed and capacity advantages of real rapid transit.

Also, this discussion about artics getting stuck in the snow is pretty silly. There might be two days in a year when the disadvantage of getting artics stuck in the snow outweigh the advantages of having to buy and service one less 40 ft. bus and pay one less driver on the other 363 days of that year.
 
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Coming home from St. Mike's this afternoon, a street car's cable came loose from the overhead wires and caused a line up of about 20 cars. It was like being stuck on the DVP during rush hour. No one could move for ages. It's ridiculous that we're still using this method of transportation. Why can't buses be built with the same dimensions as street cars?
 
Some have suggested that front wheel drive arctics are better than rear wheel drive ones. I mentioned this in another thread and was gf that at the end of the day it makes little difference to help or hinder in inclement weather.

One advantage of streetcars is that it can provide a stepping stone before investing in full rapid transit. Ideally I'd argue that 300m is the most ideal distance between stops, but if it is dense enough in the area that you have to got 200m or less, then streetcars with POP boarding and increased capacity could work to an advantage.
 
Nads Gone Bads said:
Coming home from St. Mike's this afternoon, a street car's cable came loose from the overhead wires and caused a line up of about 20 cars.
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Well that's what people get for trying to drive down Queen Street. Why would anyone do this?

Nads Gone Bads said:
Why can't buses be built with the same dimensions as street cars?
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A 23-metre bus? The new streetcars will be 30-metres ... do you really need an answer that.

I'm tired of drivers who are the minority on such streets, whining that they can't drive on a road they probably shouldn't be on in the first place. It's ridiculous that we are still letting cars drive as through traffic on this part of Queen Street.
 
Nads Gone Bads said:
Coming home from St. Mike's this afternoon, a street car's cable came loose from the overhead wires and caused a line up of about 20 cars. It was like being stuck on the DVP during rush hour. No one could move for ages. It's ridiculous that we're still using this method of transportation. Why can't buses be built with the same dimensions as street cars?
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You really want to see buses the size of this? lol!

v-2.jpg


I think the benefits of streetcars will become all the more obvious when the new ones hit the streets.
 
MisterF said:
You really want to see buses the size of this? lol!

v-2.jpg


I think the benefits of streetcars will become all the more obvious when the new ones hit the streets.
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I think stop spacing will need to be reworked once the new streetcars hit the streets, and signal priority on routes that have their own ROW need to be turned on before the benefits become obvious. The new streetcars will be nothing but a new vehicle running on the same broken system.
 
Hipster Duck said:
I feel the same way about streetcars as I feel about houses with pools. It's great when you already have one, but you would never spend the money to build one from scratch. Streetcar lines have a modest capacity improvement over buses and probably are more cost effective to operate on a daily basis, but they do not justify the cost of new line construction. A streetcar is, after all, just another form of local, surface-operated transit and does not have the major network, speed and capacity advantages of real rapid transit.
Click to expand...

Streetcars are more cost effective to run, and carry more people than buses, but they should not be built because the capital cost is too high. Wow. That is some serious stuff you're smoking. Many cities are trying to reinstall streetcars. A good chunk of a transit project's cost is rebuilding the streetscape, and relocating utilities, which is unnecessary, since many modern trams are not as heavy as LRV's and do not require the infrastructure for higher speed operation. Portland's streetcar system was built for a fairly low price by not relocating utilities.
 
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