Would a street car system help your town?

Wry Catcher

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Aug 3, 2009
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San Francisco Bay Area
Can streetcars save America's cities? - CNN.com

As a kid I rode the Street Cars to school everyday 'til I got my driver's license, and today ride BART to the Street Car and on to AT&T park (the home of the World Champion Giants, btw).

Building the cars and rails would provide jobs, badly needed today, reduce our need for foreign oil, reduce pollution and make commutes less stressful for many.
Of course some disagree. What's your opinion?
 
It has to be a really high density town to make it worth while. It is good for SF, as the population density there can support it.

BART also is pretty intelligently designed in terms of where they put the suburban stops. I don't know what the folks at TRI Met were thinking when they installed the MAX system, except how to get the lowest possible level of ridership for the trains.
 
We had street cars in Pittsburgh until the mid 1960s. GM had a bus building division that had more political sway than Port Authority Transit.

Could I get just one streetcar named "Desire"?
 
Can streetcars save America's cities? - CNN.com

As a kid I rode the Street Cars to school everyday 'til I got my driver's license, and today ride BART to the Street Car and on to AT&T park (the home of the World Champion Giants, btw).

Building the cars and rails would provide jobs, badly needed today, reduce our need for foreign oil, reduce pollution and make commutes less stressful for many.
Of course some disagree. What's your opinion?

I think it would.

We have over 4,000 people in our town and people really want to go places.

A streetcar would likely be the answer.
 
Can streetcars save America's cities? - CNN.com

As a kid I rode the Street Cars to school everyday 'til I got my driver's license, and today ride BART to the Street Car and on to AT&T park (the home of the World Champion Giants, btw).

Building the cars and rails would provide jobs, badly needed today, reduce our need for foreign oil, reduce pollution and make commutes less stressful for many.
Of course some disagree. What's your opinion?

I think it would.

We have over 4,000 people in our town and people really want to go places.

A streetcar would likely be the answer.
But streetcars need specialized infrastructure. Tracks, stops, power supplies. Dayton, Ohio has a system that uses electric motors and overhead lines in downtown routes. The 'streetcars' are actually modified buses with rubber tires. As they leave the electrically powered routes downtown, they transition into diesel powered buses for the residential routes.
 
We had a great street car system in our town, and we have one trolley now. Of course it is really a bus that looks like a trolley, but it is pretty popular.
 
I think the biggest help in jobs and energy reduction, etc would be in a intercity light rail network.
Most cities are too spread out to have trollies benefit them much.
America was mostly designed around cheap gas.

A monorail system down the median of many sections of interstate would be very nice.
 
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Can streetcars save America's cities? - CNN.com

As a kid I rode the Street Cars to school everyday 'til I got my driver's license, and today ride BART to the Street Car and on to AT&T park (the home of the World Champion Giants, btw).

Building the cars and rails would provide jobs, badly needed today, reduce our need for foreign oil, reduce pollution and make commutes less stressful for many.
Of course some disagree. What's your opinion?

In Seattle we have a pretty good transit system with buses that run on electricity from overhead wires and they run on deisel when running out of the power grid. I think that makes more sense than a dedicated street car system. The bus system is safer in an emergency in that the routes can be changed to meet circumstance. A street car or trolly system is locked into the routes they have and if event of a power failure due to eathquake or a number of reasons the system is useless.
 
We had street cars in Pittsburgh until the mid 1960s. GM had a bus building division that had more political sway than Port Authority Transit.

Could I get just one streetcar named "Desire"?

New Orleans has a Desire St. There was a street car on it, but the folks in New Orleans had better use of taxpayer money than funding an unpopular route. It runs past the Bunny Friend park and Greater Liberty Baptist Church.


There is a St Charles streetcar.

It is a cool thing in itself, and the route is something really special.
 
We had street cars in Pittsburgh until the mid 1960s. GM had a bus building division that had more political sway than Port Authority Transit.

Could I get just one streetcar named "Desire"?

New Orleans has a Desire St. There was a street car on it, but the folks in New Orleans had better use of taxpayer money than funding an unpopular route. It runs past the Bunny Friend park and Greater Liberty Baptist Church.


There is a St Charles streetcar.

It is a cool thing in itself, and the route is something really special.
I'm trying to remember Blanche Du Bois and the directions she was given to arrive at Elysian Fields and the Kowalski home. I know she mentioned another streetcar line other than "Desire".

I'd watch the movie again tonight, but I've got a strict Christmas theme going on this month and neither Williams nor Kazan put a Christmas scene in "A Streetcar Named Desire".

<All the movies I watch this month are either about Christmas or have a Christmas scene in them. example~I watched The Godfather because Tom Hagan is kidnapped buying a sled and Michael and Kaye discover the assassination attempt on the Don while leaving Radio City Music Hall and a screening of The Bells of St. Mary's. The next movie I watched was The Bells of St. Mary's.>
 
A light rail or other similar system is planning for the future when gas is $10/gal or somesuch.
electirc power for the system makes sense.

But no lets just wait till our country comes to a near standstill becuase of high oil costs or a shortage/both.
 
Almost before my time, the Key System had electric rail cars on the Bay Bridge, taking people to and from a bus terminal in downtown San Francisco to northern and sourthern Alameda County. It was dismantled in the late 50's along with the car-ferry system.
It seems we were ahead of our time before our time. If I were a commuter, I'd much prefer transport by rail or vessel than a car I needed to drive. Time to read, talk with others or plan the day before work, and relax and reflect after.
It's unfortunate too many Americans are focused on the bottom line, and not on the pleasures of living.
 
I expect that few know that many streetcar systems and such were bought by automotive, tire and gasoline interests and shut down?
 
Cars take you from where you are to where you want to be in less time than it takes to talk about it.

Mass transit always seems to go between two places I don't want between my pick up point and my destination, and take twice as long.

The reason I started taking my bike was that I had to take two buses and 55 minutes to do a distance that on my bike took 40 minutes on a direct route.
 
No, but they're wasting money and driving us into debt to build one


they tell us it will take longer than the bus and go through the street fucking up traffic

only city council and the company building it have ever been heard voicing support for it
 

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