Turn restrictions? Station spacing problems? Elimination of parking? None of that would happen with a streetcar. Maybe you guys are thinking of light rail running in a dedicated transitway. I'm talking about a streetcar operating in mixed traffic, like in Toronto. It would operate exactly the same as the buses do today. The key difference is drastically higher capacity (and a smoother ride).

But if a subway is going to be built anyway then a streetcar is redundant, so unnecessary. But if a subway is 30 years away then a streetcar could help more immediately. How long until the subway is built? I'd like to request that someone start a separate thread (or link to an existing one) and show us some info on this proposed Broadway SkyTrain.

Salt Lake : APTA 3rd Quarter 2012 numbers

Light rail: 56,900
Commuter Rail: 6,000

Total: 61,900

Three new light-rail lines are opening this year. A new 40 mile stretch of commuter rail just opened (Front Runner South)

Mixed-traffic streetcars have big problems. First, capacity. The 99-B actually has about the same ridership as Toronto's busiest streetcar corridors. Second, maneuverability around obstacles. The ride is smoother than on buses and there's more capacity, but there isn't that much more capacity unless you go with longer LRVs, and there's no improvement in speed without dedicated lanes.

In principle, Translink wants the line in operation by 2020. In practice...

See discussion in the Vancouver forum's relevant thread.

There are far larger streetcars available than those in Toronto's - even the articulated stock. But the streetcars will be replaced soon with much larger cars making the routes less cramped.

"Unless you go with longer LRVs" is not a constraint. Streetcar vehicles can be as long as you want, and you can couple them into trains whenever you want. If you want more capacity then you would buy longer LRVs, or you put 2 of them into a consist. Done and done.

From APTA:
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8098/...58a5e43f40.jpg

But the point still remains it would simply be a band-aid solution, no need to spend the money putting in these rails, buying rolling stock, building an OMC, hiring new labour force, etc... for a route that will require a full metro a decade later (in fact it already does). Just extend the skytrain now.

You're right. Get the damn shovel in the ground already!

I wouldn't be surprised if there are a couple of very high utilisation bus corridors in Hong Kong (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nik_cla...n/photostream/) and London (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gstreme...photostream/); in some places, you can end up with back-to-back double-decker jams. Quite simply even with a high capacity rail network it comes down to cost, hence the 2.4bn ridership on London Buses, and equally as high ridership in Hong Kong.

There's some double counting there. I can't be the only one whose ever taken both the 99-B and 14 or a 9 in Vancouver, to get to/from the non-express stop I want.

It's still impressive though. And not surprisingly the location of a planned rapid transit line. Part of the uniqueness here is so many are using this for quite a long haul to get to UBC.

There are surely other examples though. When ridership gets that high, you often end up with multiple routes sharing a busy section, and then branching off in various directions further down. I wonder if buses per hour might be a better way to judge ... as then you count all the service in a particular location - and discount the very busy lines, that have lots of people jumping on and off for short distances. (which might make the 99-B stand out even more ...).

It is a constraint when the blocks are sometimes shorter than the vehicle. Most are longer than 100 meters, but a few dip down to 50 or less (for example, the two between Main and Kingsway).

And on top of that, longer LRVs in mixed traffic are even worse than streetcars in mixed traffic - more chances to get stuck behind a car. The reason the turn restrictions, dedicated lanes, etc. are proposed for the light rail solution is that otherwise the service would be slower than the bus is today.

I totally agree; I've already conceded that point. If the SkyTrain is imminent then streetcar doesn't make sense. But if SkyTrain is still a generation or more away, then a band-aid may well make sense. That's the point of band-aids.

I'm not very familiar with the Canadian funding mechanisms or decision making process for a big investment like a subway, so I'll have to rely on you to tell me how many years away the SkyTrain is from reality.

Yes, at some point there's a constraint. You can't lengthen endlessly. But you can still have much longer streetcars than buses on almost any conceivable context, including a place like Broadway. I just measured the block between Main and Kingway on Google Maps, and it comes to about 70 meters. So if that's the shortest one that you don't want to block, you could go all the way up to that 63 meter tram. And even if you were much much more constrained, and could only use the 27 or 36 meter trams, they're still vastly longer than an 18 meter long articulated bus.

Main-Kingsway is 2 blocks, not 1 block. You could start banning turns and crossings on Nelson, but by this point you're starting to have the same problems of any other attempt to do rapid transit on the surface.

36-meter trams have more capacity than an 18-meter articulated bus, but remember that light rail would have to replace more than one bus line, because the 99-B has relief lines that are at capacity as well. And a mixed-traffic streetcar wouldn't even be able to have the higher frequency of either own-lane light rail or rapid transit, because sharing space with cars introduces the same bunching issues that buses have.

Boston could really use those 72M Trams....

Boston should reinstate all-door boarding first.

I thought they already did a few years ago , they did when i was there which 2011....

I don't see where Nelson crosses Broadway. I'm looking at a map. Where do I need to look?

No it wouldn't. You don't have to stop running buses just because you start running trams. You're allowed to run them both on the same street at once.

Irrelevant, since we're not debating rapid versus non rapid. But also incorrect. You know how 3-door buses have faster loading and unloading than 2-door buses? An 8 door streetcar is faster still. It would still be expected to have some bunching problems, but they wouldn't be as bad. There would be some improvement, at least at the margins.

SF Muni is the only US system with universal all-door boarding on buses and trains.

Watson, not Nelson. My bad.

But then you're looking at higher operating costs, whereas the plans for rail involve replacing buses with rail to cut operating costs (and a full SkyTrain extension has the greatest reduction).

The 99-B already has all-door boarding. Yeah, it could be a 4-door bus instead of a 3-door bus, but mixed traffic introduces its own bunching problems. The really high-frequency light rail lines aren't in mixed traffic, but are in transit malls with signal priority (which the 99-B doesn't seem to have for an inexplicable reason) or in dedicated ROWs.

There's just no money for both.

Right now the transit authority is being accused of being "very inefficient" with system-wide operating cost recovery of only 53%. They are in the process of trimming redundant and low productivity routes to achieve a recovery of ~70% in less than 10 years. I don't see how any parallel high-frequency line can survive once any mass transit [band-aid] solution is implemented. The only thing that could be left would probably be basic local #9 service.

A route near my area is deemed "extremely low productivity" with 28 boardings per hour and it is slated to be cancelled completely in a few month. That's how much they're trimming service...